skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think there's less disagreement about the well-controlled result derived and more about whether

a) Your controls were right, and
b) What the most optimal decision is in light of this new information.

(a) is well known to be one of the most difficult parts of scientific reasoning and is almost always open to endless debate and improvement. In short, it's the question of whether ATR is a human-sensible metric. (b) however has an interesting direct answer: figure out the distribution of "live" ATRs on an interesting population of real servers and then, to borrow Eliezer's phrase, shut up and multiply.

If a lot of servers that you're targeting with M2 fall across that 60% divide (under circumstances similar to your controlled microbenchmark) then of course Superpoll is a good compromise.

Jacques is arguing a combination of (a) and (b). Perhaps ATR is not a sufficient metric to understand all interesting server loads. Moreover, perhaps many interesting servers live at really low or high ATRs all the time and so Superpoll must gracefully degrade to either poll or epoll.

In any case, driving for empirical data is noble, but possessing data is never sufficient to whitewall all detractors. It's really nice to have strong empirical support for the breakeven point between the two (ie. the ratio of their constant time components) via your benchmark, but science isn't just statistics.

(edit: I'll also add that pushing the pipetest microbenchmark past where people are usually making hyperbolic claims is a pretty big deal and a good catch.)
In 2008, Minneapolis-based retailer Target Corp. agreed to pay $6 million to the National Federation of the Blind, a Baltimore-based advocacy group, to settle charges that the design of Target's retail pages on its website illegally denied access to the visually impaired.

It already started a couple years ago.

http://www.businessinsurance.com/article/20100727/NEWS/10072...
Unless the customer is comparing the feature rarely listed: usability.

Check why Consumer Reports rated iPhone 4 highest among all the phones tested (despite the supposed antenna problems).
It shuts about your qualities, instead.

What annoys you about people? Do you try to understand them? As the old adage goes: "He who knows everything, forgives everything."

Getting along with people we like and who like us is effortless. But how well we are able to get along with people we don't like or who don't like us, tells how much effort we are both willing and able to make to build a rapport.
What is the threshold between "few" and "frequent"?
Android still doesn't have the app sales volume iOS does, no where close, both from the fragmented platform (os versions mainly), and the fact that only 13 countries participate in Google checkout at all (the primary payment vendor), only 9 as sellers.
Thank you.

Now I (and other submitters) know not to use any kind of auto-shortener. That's what I needed to know.
I'm not sure a little stop energy is such a bad thing. I'd say take their views with some salt...but Silicon Valley tends to be an echo-chamber. What's important in the valley isn't always important everywhere else. Unless your business/venture/idea is only targeted at people in the Bay Area, it pays to keep a little attention elsewhere.
That's great, look forward to utilizing with my clients--have multiple accounts.
> You don't find it a little odd that you feel it necessary that I provide the links and resources to easily findable information, but the commenter who I replied to need not substantiate his claims in a similar way?

Most of what he posted was his opinion. How would he substantiated that what he posted is actually his opinion?

You made a readily verifiable claim and got it wrong. In doing so, you actually provided evidence supporting one of his points.
Could you name some of the run-down neighborhoods next to campuses? I don't see it, unless there are some Yale campuses in Fields Corner that I don't know about.
I see the downvotes. Unfortunately, I have no spam at this time so a screensnap would be useless because people would say the option shows up only when there is spam. What a time not to have spam!
I wanted to chime in something here: I went to school at a state school "down the street" from CMU in Computer Engineering. It was "what my family could afford" since my father was between jobs.

Myself and a CMU grad might have the same degree (B.S. in ECE)but our starting salaries are vastly different. I started out around 40K (w/no bennies) whereas CMU students would probably start closer to 55-60K + bennies.

Was this because CMU was also #1 in the world in ECE at the time? Yes, of course. But the point I'm getting at is private school's higher prices often imply that you will receive a better starting offer. Assuming our job markets are equally flexible, it could be 5 years before someone like myself "catches up".

Kids like the one from the NYTimes article have been raised to work smarter, not harder. Why spend 5 years paying your dues when name recognition or knowing someone will get you to same place without brow sweat?

It's not necessarily a college's fault. They're catering to wealthy entitled people and trying to take as much as they dishonestly can. Likewise, entitled children don't really understand a world that isn't catering to them.
So long as there is due-diligence on charities. I've heard stories of charities banking most of their money and only using a small fraction of what's given.
PR Stunts and Start-Ups
"From the user perspective"

You don't really believe that do you? You can't honestly tell me that it's easier to explain to a user that they have to play a silent audio clip to have an application keep working when it's not visible. And you can't tell me that for <any multitasking app>, it's easier for the user to use because it can only work in the background if its a short potentially volatile task, a location or audio service. How is that 'easier' for the user?
Er, a more literal translation is: "Man with a wicked conscience: what he would do, he thinks others would too."
Lots of hot, young girls in NYC ... but if you're running a startup, goooood luck. Tell them you work at a hedge fund instead, then maybe you'll get laid.
It is one thing for a mult-national business, but I am a little worried that some expensive regs will hit non-business sites.
"The things you own, end up owning you." - Tyler Durden (fight club)
Thanks for sharing that. What strikes me is that even given all that Jared argues, it's somewhat preposterous to call agriculture the worst mistake in the history of the human race.

Agriculture paved the road the specialization, and hence the progress, diversity, safety and richness we see in our lives today. We can argue over whether these are virtues or not, but we can't turn our heads from the Darwinian view of life. Living as a nomad, with everybody toiling just to feed the mouths doesn't scale. And, Natural Selection says any group that is able to specialize even a little bit gains strategic advantages over non-specialized groups. No wonder hunters and gatherers were driven to extinction.

Is Jared kidding us when he says that social echelons are bad? I guess, he thinks our hunter-gatherer ancestors treated everybody equally and with respect. I guess 30 seconds in front of Discovery Channel would tell him how apes live - alpha males "ruling" over females, and killing other males over food and right to reproduce. I'm quite amazed at his ability to scorn at social echelons and other malices brought upon us by agriculture while giving a silent nod to killing for food in the same breath!
We do this at Notifo once we push committed code to GitHub. We get a message on our phones using Notifo and the GitHub hooks that plays, coincidentally, that same kids cheering sound. We also have a Commit Cam in the office which posts to DailyBooth to capture commit rapture. The first one came out perfect: http://dailybooth.com/jazzychad/6742332
Ask HN: Help test my app Launchset.com
Hello HN,

I'm relaunching my app Launchset.com. I made some big changes to it from last year. It was inspired by the 'Review my Startup/App' & 'What are you hacking on' threads here.

I'm targeting fellow developers who have side projects.

Thanks.
what do you think of this (i'm co-founder)

http://readness.com
Retooling Stale Businesses (turnarounds)
What I have done to prevent that is to use the OS's environment variables:

http://github.com/roder/riakaws/blob/master/clouds.rb#L10
You can register at http://www.launchset.com/accounts/register/.

The invite code is : HACKERNEWS50
This isn't quite accurate. Verzion vs. AT&T is total market share, including all subscribers on all phones. The smartphone market is smaller, and smartphones activated in any quarter is a small fraction of that.

Total market share != smartphone market share != smartphone activation share.
Here is the document from FEC that explains how corporations can get involved in election campaigns: http://www.fec.gov/pdf/colagui.pdf

It clearly states that corporations can't use their treasury to make contributions to campaigns. From what I gather, they can start a PAC but thats subject to the more or less the same limits as individual contributors.
Does "finding co-founders" ever work?
Recently Paul Graham confirmed what I had already suspected; that it is personal relationships that keeps startups going through the difficult times.

So what about the people who advertise they are seeking co-founders, and the public events where that is supposedly the goal? Does this ever work? Have any startups founded this way gone on to success?
Sadly no relation to Judge Judith Scheindlin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shira_Scheindlin

Westinghouse should have read : Judge Judy's "Win or Lose by How You Choose"

All they had to do was print a line in the manual and offer a download. Jeesh, why did they think they could rip people off.
Another perspective:

What a $100 billion can do -
http://www.visualeconomics.com/what-bp-could-have-bought-wit...
"commit to giving the majority of their wealth to the philanthropic causes and charitable organizations of their choice"

Would that not include non-profit research into the areas you outlined?
The Broken Window Economics of IT Security
Well, to each his own. I'm from Oakland, CA and I am fine with Chicago weather. It can get uncomfortable, but I'll take that as a trade-off for my near-downtown apartment in one of America's greatest cities at half the cost of a comparable place in NY or SF. The summers are actually better--Oakland will get these horrible 90-100 degree heat waves--and the problem of winter is easily solved by adding more layers.
Sorry, thought I acknowledged your point in a follow up comments to you. Just looking back on this now.
>Ever think that maybe you didn't understand it?

You purport that I didn't understand it, yet then you go on to state exactly what my interpretation of the statement was. I suggest that you choose your approach more consistently.

>Did they try to lock Microsoft out of the personal computer OS business? No.

Of course they tried, at least to the degree that is legally allowed, just as pretty much every company does.

>but did they erect any barriers to keep Google out of it? When Google entered did they do anything to try to take the market Google was going after?

At this point I have to think that you're writing satire or something.

Of course Apple tried very hard to keep competitors out. One by creating a compelling product and cross-marketing the symbiosis between it and their existing successful products in other markets (namely the iPod and iTunes). Two, and this is a very big one, by the app platform. Apple came very, very close to achieving the universal lock-in in the fact that an iPhone app almost became a pre-determined conclusion for most businesses, such that you were either with them, or you were living in a second tier world.

If you think Jobs et al weren't dreaming of a world where everyone had an iDevice, you are absolutely delusional. Of course that is what they want, and whenever anyone argues otherwise it just stinks of rhetoric.
I don't think it's possible for the FEC to collect data on all the ways corporate money can influence an election.

I agree that I would like to hear more about the logistics of how corporate money is translated into influence.

One argument is that the election itself doesn't really matter that much. Access to elected officials matters more: thus the economy of lobbying in DC. Lobbyists are former congressmen or staffers who can use their connections to influence existing legislation.

You may argue that lobbyists have no influence, but given the number of representatives and staffers that work on the contents of each thousand page bill, it's hard to imagine that they truly have ZERO influence. Once you've established nonzero influence, it's just a matter of hiring enough lobbyists to get some desired change.
Spot on. I programmed for a group of "idea" guys for while. Many a time I was torn off a work-in-progress only to begin another work-in-progress. It was so bad, I was only able to finish one project of dozens.

The key isn't having the ideas, starting the ideas, or even almost completing ideas. It's all about finishing.

Since I left, I now have one working idea; it's an amazing difference. I hope to have a MVP out soon, and I can't wait.
All of these articles are similarly flawed, and equally worthless. For all practical intents and purposes, iOS is the biggest mobile market. If you want to start a company, you just can't make an Android app and expect to make half or even a quarter of the money you will make on iOS.

Here are the facts working against Android:

1) Over 230,000 iDevices sold per day, compared to less than 100K Androids

2) Huge buyer loyalty and repeat/multi device sales among Apple consumers

4) On an Android, the first app you buy will likely require entering a credit card - there goes tons of sales

5) Multiple studies say people buy way more iPhone apps than Android apps.

6) Apple owners are on average wealthier

Don't get me wrong... I like Android, I make an Android app, and I even make a few bucks doing it. But my iPhone sales are way better, and it has everything to do with the quality of the market. I really did like getting paid fast by Google, getting my app posted same day with no review... but end of the day, Android revenues sucks.
I wonder if there is a market for a braille-based ebook reader. Refreshable braille displays already exist and it doesn't seem like it would be that difficult to build one in an ebook form factor that could read ebook formats.

Edit: I looked into it a bit. The refreshable braille displays on the market are very bulky, primarily so they can deal with the necessary wear and tear. While I'm sure a smaller, lighter version is possible (especially since it doesn't need features like cursor location) I wonder how small you can actually make it before you drastically cut down on its life.
Not all discarded computers are PCs. There is a lot of history that could be permanently lost if it's not deliberately preserved.

I keep a couple generations of Apple IIs, an 8-bit Atari, Amigas, RISC boxes and Macs (a couple months back you could see a perfectly functional Mac SE as part of my living-room decor) preserved. Lots of other important machines have been destroyed or recycled. I try to do my part preserving a small part of our heritage.
You're kidding, right? Even my small town school in India told me why I had to write letters or solve for x. We actually posted a letter to a relative and to the local council. We actually solved for x using everyday examples involving ice cream or something. I'm not saying the schools should force this learning, schools definitely should give a convincing reason why things like this are important and if I'm correct most teachers do. What I'm saying is, these things do have a reason behind why they need to be understood, and no should be exempted from learning basic sciences just because they want to be the next Leonardo or U2. Sure, go ahead, be the next big thing, but also do your Math homework, it's not going to hurt your progress.
That's why I said only some specific unions are this way, not all of them. The GM workers are one example. Yes, their corporate masters were overly well-compensated as well, but that cost was at least limited to only a few people whose ranks weren't likely to grow.

At any rate, I think government employee unions are a bigger problem. Corporations are more capable of standing up for themselves (as you say, sometimes too capable) than a government hobbled by political machinery.
Seconded. All I have to do in the clubs is tell them that I work in Murders & Execution and next thing you know, I'm hailing a cab with my new catch in-tow.
So how are new companies created in Japan? Doesn't someone have to stick their neck out and be an entrepreneur? You would think that if some of these young Japanese people started companies and hired some of their contemporaries, you could get around that societal disapproval.

I don't think any society would mind having companies that brought them wealth and employment.
It depends on whether you're a production engineer making things for use (ICs, software, bridges) or a development engineer trying to push the limits of what can be done.
> When considering that the national debt is directly related to inflation

Actually, it's not. Inflation is related to interest rates and the "value of the dollar", both of which affect our ability to pay off the debt, but the debt itself, the number of dollars owed right now, is independent of inflation.

> this pledge could reduce that significantly

It's less than 10% of the admitted debt, $8T, and that number is significantly less than the unfunded liabilities (SS, Medicare that folks think that they have pre-paid).

And most of those folks are giving their money to charity, not to govt, so it's not providing govt revenue that can be used to pay off govt debt.
Losing faith in UX
I'm s-l-o-w-l-y creating a web and mobile app for finding "agents" to supply news or information based on geo-location.

In terms of readers I would love to see a map based news reader that would give me geo-specific stories at an international/national/regional/local/hyperlocal level depending on how far I zoom in.
> "Hacker" comes from the verb "to hack", which is an expression that originated in the 50's of the previous century on the MIT and means solving a technical problem in an unique way.

bzzt, wrong. It originally means riding a horse around the English countryside for fun.

http://www.ruralsports.co.uk/hacking.html

And here's what you wear while doing it

http://www.countrysupplies.com/list.asp?deptid=668
I will not state an opinion on the content of the article. I am unsure what is and isn't true. What may be helpful to know is that the Examiner is not highly regarded in the district. It is little more than a tabloid for the district's rich lawyers. http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/articles/30063/its-all-in...
Are you sure those usages are connected? I'm not.
Me. Western NY area. Over 15 years experience in IT including systems admin (windows, unix etc), network admin, which are things I no longer want to do. No longer want to be on call all night or woken up because of emergencies.
Currently been doing QA for the last 10 years or so. Considering getting into coding, as it's one thing i've never really done aside from simple scripting etc. Any suggestions on what to pursue here?
Wish I could find a work from home/remote QA position. Never see those around.
Even Bruce Wayne has to sleep sometime.
i am thinking to buy one android

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6khBlUZ-Dp4
We have something cooking, should launch soon! Let me know if you would be interested in being an early user.
Are you working with NIH by any chance? I obviously really appreciate the research you're doing (and as far as cancers go, I know there are much more significant ones - from a statistical pov - but your work is very much appreciated by the Ohanian family). Any not-for-profits you'd recommend for exceptional work? ABTA.org has been our goto thus far.
Venture Pimp: IActionable wants to add game mechanics to, uh, everything
There are a billion people that do not have access to clean water. One human being dies every three seconds because of poverty(related issues).

I think that Bill Gates sees the point in helping eradicate malaria, rather than boosting growth at home. These individuals have done more than their fair share in boosting their local economies, and I believe their money would be better spent in supporting charities that are doing just this. And though I think that charities are not sustainable in the long run, this is the best thing that they could do with their money.
>But Apple (under Jobs anyway) is much more interested in profit share

Microsoft blazed a trail of both incredible profit margins and dominant market shares. I have absolutely no doubt that Apple was dreaming of the same scenario.

I do think there is a bit of lost perspective in all of this. Just a mere six months ago when people discussed Android desperately clawing for a slice of marketshare, universally there were comments that everyone everybody knows owns an iPhone, and no one owns an Android device. Effectively there was a short period where the iPhone absolutely owned the smartphone arena (I simply ignore RIM phones as generally they're work provided, or they're purely used as messaging phones, neither of which really qualifies). Major organizations were turning significant focus on iPhone applications: If you didn't have an iPhone, you were simply a second class citizen. Case in point -- CIBC here in Canada that spend millions of dollars advertising their iPhone application, while their terrible mobile web site withered.
seriously? It's a massively popular resource. The number 1 destination for greasemonkey users. There's real value there. I am a little shocked that you're ready to turn it over to someone else.

Obviously I know nothing about you or your situation - your startup may well be the next big thing. It just seems to me that you've got a big thing in userscripts.org already.
As a Chicago native and a current Manhattan resident I'll have to respectively disagree. The amount of single women in Manhattan is staggering, noticeable and quite frankly of higher quality. For the record - I still love Midwest women.
Peter Thiel link http://techcrunch.com/2008/09/08/peter-thiel-best-predictor-...
So, if it means adding accessibility features is a necessary condition to being awarded an education contract, I'm all for it.

Agree 100%. My sister served for several years as the Disabilities Coordinator for Georgetown Law, and changed my viewpoint on the matter. I used to be of the 'let the market decide' school of thought, but I've come around. If public money is being spent, it can't be exclusive.

There's already a fair amount of regulation in place to ensure universal access. For instance, if you want to sell textbooks to most any university, you're required to provide a digital edition to any student who requests it.
Interview with "Cook to Bang" author: Getting girls with food
Start with issue tracker / user list of your favourite OSS project. If the project has more comitters and stable its very unlikely you will able to contribute. So choosing the right project also matters. Most contribution to opensource came because of personal needs so IMO if you use your project extensively its likely you will be able to contribute back.

There is actually Google I/O talk The Myth of Genius Programmer. Where Googlers (Brian Fitzpatrick, Ben Collins-Sussman) talks about when to join in a collaborative (OSS) project It could helpful. http://code.google.com/events/io/2009/sessions/MythGeniusPro...
Am I the only one detecting a "frowning on education" theme on hacker news lately?

I don't necessarily disagree, but it seems like there has been an article a day about "should i go to college", "the diminishing value of a degree", etc.

Is something that the country is focusing on right now or is it hacker news specific?