skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I left the country right when it fell apart so I'm not exactly an expert on the current events, but from what I see doesn't seem like 20 years have made any difference.

I think you can trace this whole mess to Brezhnev's Zastoy(Stagnation) period of Soviet history (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brezhnev_stagnation). The upper echelons of government achieved a comfortable and stable enough level of life and pretty much froze the rest of society in time, in order to support their lifestyle. They cracked down on any dissension or change from the status quo which by definition means that they cracked down on the most entrepreneurial and dynamic members of society. They jailed the makers and made the thieves rulers.

And unfortunately you can keep this charade going for a while; in the 70's-80's you can steal technology from the West; in the 90's you can sell minerals and in the 2000s you can wait for your people to invent something and then steal it from them. When the Soviet Union fell down there was a glimmer of hope but it was silly to think anything would change. You have now 2-3 generations of people at the highest levels of power who grew up with this mentality and it's not going to change any time soon.

It's sad, I remember watching a talk show on a Russian satellite station where the discussion was whether Russia needed an "innovation economy" or whether pumping and mining is perfectly fine. An obviously liberal member of the panel was pleading and cajoling with the others that oil and timber don't last forever and they only enrich a few people. The other side, a representative of a mining concern, had an awesome reply: "They'll last long enough for me"

...and to hell with the rest of you
I am GTD practitioner and use Emacs' org-mode for it. If you can write an Emacs Lisp library that allows me to sync my Orgs with Redmine, I will happily pay $5/mo for it.

If these guys can make a web-based Org-mode, I would pay for it too. Five bucks is nothing, it costs more per month configuring Emacs and org-mode across disparate machines.
Ok, I guess I don't understand what "dismissed... with prejudice against all parties" would mean, then. If the company didn't "win" the suit, why do they get to recover lawyer fees?

I also worry about all the asymmetries: the basic one (company has deeper pockets), but also some subtler ones: the company hires more expensive lawyers, the company may retain lawyers, the company has more experience with these cases, etc.
Disclaimer: I work at Cloudkick.

Hopefully Cloudkick counts :)

But generally, the b2b space has much less splash and attention, partly because you generally need far fewer paying customers to be profitable compared to a consumer based business. Most consumer based businesses need to get millions of uniques to be considered successful, while a b2b application with 1000 paying customers can easily be pulling in more money, but has far less notoriety.
The comment doesn't meet the guidelines, certainly.

However, a lesson could have been gleaned from zero points. There is no need to dig a grave.
I didn't see the time frame for the program -- did anyone catch this?
Although a special eminent domain for Skolkovo-like projects is most likely to be passed this autumn, it is not really required. And you will be compensated for land only, not for buildings. And how fair do you think the applied "fair market rate" will be?
Yes, we're going to change "GTD" to "Getting Things Done" based on several mentions of that very confusion. It'll be a link to the book, too.

Things I keep in Atombox: wine and beers I like, places I'd like to go, the size of my dress shirts, restaurants I want to try in cities different than my own, affirmations and reminders (quotes), the continual grocery list, ideas for gifts for other people, replacement part numbers, ...
The cloud can (and will) get cluttered too...
It's amazing how quickly the systems are being built in East Asia. The 2015 plan map for Beijing is staggering. It's taken D.C. something like 30 years to build one new line (Silver). In that time, any major city in China, Korea or Japan has built entire systems.

One thing is also true, the newer systems, reliant on new construction techniques, are generally just nicer to get around in, better organized and better planned vs. the really old systems like NYC, Paris and London.

Outside of maybe Spain, western rapid transit systems seem to be in a stasis field, which is really quite sad considering how badly they need new systems (pick a city in Texas) or expanded systems (L.A., San Francisco, Seattle).
I just did the sign-up. I hate having to wait for the activation email, then click activate then having to "relog".

Sometime when this happen, I don't even go further and never even try the service. Do you you really need to wait for me to click an "activate" link before letting me try your service ?
> he says he's going to fight corruption, but he doesn't say how.

That's because he doesn't have a clue.

Last step is to rename "militia" to "police" with trivial changes to
law enforcement and direct insult of all those who served in
supposedly "ineffective" Soviet militia.
Actually, I've lived in small towns all my life and usually drive an SUV to get around. I've grown to hate and resent it, especially when I have to drive through cities and suburbs because, as convenient as it may be carrying around a traveling, air-conditioned cage with me, it's a lot less fun when you're on an interstate freeway which has spontaneously turned into a parking lot.

I just came into this to say teilo misread the article and that there's more regulations and taxations required to prop up car usage than some people are willing to acknowledge. You're the one started justifying why living in the suburbs is the ideal form of existence.

Incidentally, I'd be happier living in a suburb or small town that allowed for a car-free lifestyle than I would be living in a city like Houston or LA where you still need a car.
What is an atom? Right now I don't even know if that is a stupid question because your site shows and tells me nothing. Is it GTD lingo? Is this for me if I don't know anything about GTD?
I made a suggestion about this (clickable links in submissiosn), FWIW, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1569226.
As in, the look and feel of the page isn't very Web 2.0? I agree, but I don't think it has that much to do with the education itself, at least not the programmer's education.

I was thinking something related to the fact that the best universities in Chile don't have CS as a major - the most similar option is studying engineering with a mention in informatics. And though there have been efforts to shorten them, these majors are pretty long for American standards - at my university engineering has been shortened from six years to five.
A lot of downvotes without any explanation. Although, at this point it's already recovering.

Assuming the commentor hadn't seen unicode notation, how could they know it wasn't related to lisp?
Good-bye to Dubai
Knowledge of the C programming language is assumed. The microkernel handles most of the low level stuff, and the tutorial has some ready-made drivers.
Yes, I'm aware that politicians often speak "empty words". However, I would point out some politicians are indeed active and effective. President Obama has already signed over 200 bills into law, including one so large and complicated it took over 50 years of unsuccessful attempts: healthcare. I was just wondering if President Medvedev is more of the "empty words" type of politician, or does he genuinely feel compelled to do his best to improve conditions? As much as he safely can, that is.
VC's have been hindered by a lack of IPO exits. I guess "super angels" are benefiting from the increased M&A activity.

I guess the question is if IPOs will rebound and "super angels" will then fade into the background again as startups go for the home run again.
URLs in submissions don't get linked, URLs in comments do. If you want your URLs to be clickable, add a comment, just as I did.

This isn't a shot at you specifically because it happens again and again and again and again, but I'm constantly surprised, constantly surprised that people like yourself who have been here for months don't know the rules. It's something you simply need to know, something that you learn from spending time here, and wondering "I wonder why that happens."
What are the best uses of document stores?
That's why I mentioned the bookmarks, which point to stuff in the cloud.
I do GTD because keeping the things I have to do external to myself relieves my mind of having to track it all. This extremely enhances my focus and energy. YMMV.

We are focusing on people that do GTD as potential customers because they need an extremely fast (keyboard shortcuts), secure, easy-to-look-at way to track everything they have to do. So it may not solve a problem you have, but it definitely solves a problem I had: all the other list apps are too complicated and slow for my taste -- and there has got to be more people like me.

Thanks for the comment!
Well, the trend has been for a large quake to hit every 10-15 years, so now is the best time to come.
Yeah, we got really lucky with Kaylee, she was always a night sleeper ... well sort of lucky, since I'm not really diurnal, but am rather nocturnal ...

As for the books, yes. I feel that most of them are detrimental and written by quack new-age hippy psychologists. One of the books we were given literally told us to place crystals next to our daughter when she slept to keep her "biorhythms" in check.
Why do I expect the unemployment rate to increase?
Niggling:

>The best part: It's completely free!

It's not completely. I think you've over marketed that bit, would "It's free" do, or even "You can use it free forever" (I know, but it's clear IMO that forever is curtailed by heat-death of the universe, business ending and the like).
Hmm, thank you for that. We don't really need emails to be verified, it's just for forgotten passwords. I'll see if we can get it removed right away, thank you.

EDIT: We've changed the signup process to log you in immediately after activating, and we'll remove the activation requirement soon, thank you!
Rise of the European Superangel
That third source is the Rolling Stone article everyone has seen a thousand times, wherein many perfectly ordinary market maneuvers are presented mixed in with a few instances of meso-level shady-looking deals, spiced with inflammatory rhetoric to make everything look bad. Then the whole parade of anecdotes and claims is cast as a sinister, company-wide conspiracy to deliberately profit off ruining the American economy, putting Goldman on the same level as the mythical Illuminati. Of the sources you could have chose to cite, that one isn't the best.
A lot of big companies are learning the hard way that doing business in Russia is riskier than they thought, when the other party has the legal system on their side. One example that made it to national politics, and AFAIK ended up being settled by basically giving in to the demands: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfa_Group#Dispute_with_Telenor
What about curtailing the "positive actions" that encourage and enable driving? Cowen isn't talking about outlawing free parking or anything, just removing all the subsidies and mandates that prop it up. That's more of a non-action than an action.

Some of the other things you suggest (mass transit, bike paths) by necessity have to take either space or money away from roads for cars. I think those ideas are essential, but you can't accomplish them very well without impeding cars. (The naive solution of putting a bike lane right between on-street parking and moving traffic only works as a cruel joke on cyclists. Cities that take bike paths seriously physically separate them from motorways, but that often involves reducing the space of the motorway.)
Hmm, thank you for that. It's a remnant from the days before subscriptions, we'll see about changing it (even though it depends on what one means by "completely", i.e. "not forcing you to sign up" vs "all features").
I think that's an interesting suggestion, and would be a useful feature. It does suffer from the problem that links would only become clickable after a time (having to wait for votes) whereas it's the first few views that really most benefit.

It's a great piece of thinking though - kudos. I've upvoted you both here and there.
This is off-topic for this thread I think, but the thing that constantly surprises me is that there is no mention of or direct link to the submission guidelines from the submission page.
An atom is < 256 characters of text.

Doing GTD helps, since that's primarily what Atombox is designed for, but I think having a "augmented memory" service helps any information/knowledge worker.

--

edited to clarify: an "atom" is our lingo, not something in the "Getting Things Done" book.
And now I know!

I still can't figure out when the downvote arrow appears, though.
I disagree, especially considering the audience here. Most of us are trained at functioning for long periods of time without sleep, especially those of us in operations. I did all of the middle of the night diaper changing the first month, I got to the point where I could have her changed in 2 minutes without opening my eyes. It was like being on-call but far more pleasant, somehow. In the midst of all this we also moved our Datacenter 900 miles north to Seattle, as well as our employees, and ourselves. I'm saying all of this because it isn't as frightening as you think. The exhaustion isn't so bad because it is born in "purpose".

Ugh, even worse, don't ask the smart parents to bring you up to speed, at least not the ones who are going to start cramming some ridiculous child-rearing philosophy down your throat. I will not reproduce again, because I never want to hear the terms "La Leche League", "Co-Sleeping", or "Attachment Parenting" ever again.
Ask HN: toughest question you have ever answered
Technical or non-technical
Oh. Maybe we don't? I thought both "GTD" and "Getting Things Done" are trademarks...
>The examples you mentioned, such as monitoring elections and disaster response would do very well in developing countries, but they aren't necessary in countries like the US or UK.

Hurricane Katrina, hanging chads ...
Well, it's rather challenging to immigrate to the US, for one.
Here's a fairly good CAPTCHA alternate that doesn't annoy users:

* Add an extra input name="botcheck" type="text" to your form and label it "Leave this field blank".
* Use CSS to hide both the field and it's label.
* Then, when the form is submitted, if anything is in that box, trash it. There's almost 100% chance that it came from a bot and not a real person.

Caveat: This only works as long as you're small enough to not be target specifically.
"With prejudice against all parties" means, effectively, that the decision is final, i.e. neither side can re-file the claims as a new complaint.

Recoverability of attorney fees varies by jurisdiction. I've recently been involved in a claim against an insurance company and where I am, in civil disputes each party pays their own fees, regardless of the outcome. The only way you can recover your fees in addition to actual damages is to have the judge decide that the other party took an egregiously unreasonable position.

Seems unfair in that after fees I recovered only about 15% of my loss but I suppose the approach does serve to keep both sides honest.
Usually you'd be right, but roughlydrafted is an exception. I hate to apply the "fanboy" sobriquet, but he has earned it. The guy has never written a measured, well-considered sentence in his life. Once this ceases to be the case, there will be a HN headline: "Daniel Dilgar no longer batshit loon!" Until then, feel safe to ignore anything from that URL.
I think the fundamental shift that has occurred and carved out this space for Super Angels is that the cost of starting a company has come way down. It no longer takes $1mm to get a startup off the ground (2 guys and a pallet of ramen seems to be standard now). This increased capital efficiency has allowed startups to raise less money to reach the same inflection points that they historically have. As a result, a seed round of $500k can take a company to the point that normally, a $2mm Series A would have required.

Not needing millions of dollars in capital means that startups don't have to knock on the doors of VC firms with large funds. Instead, they can approach a Super Angel to lead a $500k round with $300k with $200k left for 4 to 6 value added investors.

I doubt that even if IPOs rebound, Super Angels will fade away. I think it's more of a tectonic shift and Series A's are de facto turning into earlier, smaller seed rounds.
If it harms users other than the ones who left their systems unprotected, then it would be a good candidate for intervention. Neutrality shouldn't be a suicide pact for the ISP, but a set of operating guidelines that cover situations short of outright abuse and vandalism.
From the FAQ at the bottom of every page:

http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

Why don't I see down arrows?

There are no down arrows on submissions. They only
appear on comments after users reach a certain karma
threshold.
The median is about 16:

http://www.google.com/finance/stockscreener#c0=PE&min0=1...

(There were 3891 total companies when viewing the whole market.)

The distribution skews high though, so it's quite possible that the mean is about 20. OTOH, just what does a "mean" mean for P/E? Capitalization-weighted? Earnings-weighted?

If you look only at companies with a market cap > $1B, there are 1626 firms, and the median is again about 16. Same with $10B - this seems remarkably consistent.

http://www.google.com/finance/stockscreener#c0=PE&c1=Mar...
No, but you can run a natural experiment: look at towns of similar size (let's say 30k-50k) that had shops downtown and competition from big box stores on the outskirts, but did not block cars from the downtown stores, and see what happened there. Answer: there are a few towns that retained or have regrown a vibrant downtown (I live in one), but not many. Most small cities have a downtown that is either functionally a ghost town, or that has been converted to low-traffic uses (like lawyers' offices).

Though not a certainty, it's a pretty fair conclusion that the bricked pedestrian mall is not what killed Richmond's downtown.
This isn't just "a" bacteria, but a gene making a number of existing bacteria types resistant.

The article cites "E. coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae" as already affected. It looks like cases in the U.K. link back to Pakistan and India.
When resistant versions of those hit the gut some will be in for tough times. MRSA is serious, this is worse.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/aug/11/antibiotics-ef...
The Hummus Manifesto - Part 1
This is the first in a multi-part series on the challenges facing the Israeli High Tech Industry and How We Can emerge stronger from both the global economic downturn and the challenges facing our tech economy.
Thanks for submitting that.
Use the Puddle
I love graphs like this that convey a lot of information in a very simple concise way.
fwiw, I found this http://claymath.msri.org/pversusnp.mov (warning: video/.mov) very lucid. She (Dr Ramachandran) starts from some basic problems and leads us to the problem P vs NP.

As a self professed 'dummy', I would recommend it anyone who wants to understand the gist of P vs NP
>Yeah, we weren't sure about how many atoms to allow for free, so we just picked 128.

Dropbox's model is good on this. Give away 60, say, but let anyone get 12 more who successfully invites a friend (you could pyramid scheme it!) but have an upper limit for number of free snippets.
Of course these services are needed, but in developed nations, they usually fall in the purview of the government, who is unlikely to hand it off to startups.
I seem to recall hearing that George R.R. Martin writes in Wordstar on DOS. That doesn't make it the best word processor though - you can probably find one fan of nearly any piece of software.
Groupthink
How much does a niche video site cost to run?
I need to figure out how much it will cost to run a niche video site per month, server and hosting wise. (a niche video site would be like 5min.com)

What they might look like at 1k users, 10k, 100k, 1M, etc...and, any variables you think that will affect costs (obviously aside from dev/design/integration).

Thanks
Also, davidu didn't mention that he is the kind of person who people might brag about knowing =)
It comes down to confusion, the attribution is an insurance policy, there's no fear that consumers believe that the origin of this service is the RTM holder as it's disclaimed hence no trademark infringement.

That's why, I believe, you get attributions for mere mentions of mega-corp names in some advertising copy.

In this instance I think that GTD should probably be avoided without a disclaimer as it's not a common usage that I've heard whilst "getting things done" (no capitals) is just a generic phrase used in all fields. I'd be surprised if a RTM was granted for this text, perhaps the specific form of the logo is RTM-ed?

IANA-TM-L but I worked in IP for a while.
hm I think I can't edit my posts?

I suppose monopoly in English only refers to market control (my bad).

In certain other languages, the word for monopoly is the same word for "complete control".

I was assuming the word monopoly in English has evolved to capture that meaning as well -.-

All Apple devices are closed and restricted, it is as if when you buy an iPhone, you don't own it; you're merely getting permission (from Apple) to use it.

Five years ago, one would've imagined that only Microsoft can do something as evil as that.
I didn't mean to imply that you don't need to, you very well may. I was just surprised nonetheless.
"it costs more per month configuring Emacs and org-mode across disparate machines"

This was one of my core frustrations when I started searching for a list system. I wanted all of my "augmented memory" in one place so that I didn't have to deal with multiple copies of the same thing and having to keep it all in sync. I also wanted to be able to access everything from any box.

Thanks for your comment!

Oh: and I hear 'ya about org-mode + redmine syncing. ;)
The industrial revolution: Fire and brimstone; why it started in Britain
Well Fecebook got a lot of folks to switch from Myspace, right? I don't use either service so I don't know what Facebook offered that Myspace didn't but you are right that Google will have to offer something compelling. They can't just offer a "me too" clone of Facebook, and I don't think a cosmetically better UI will really be enough either.

Before the Buzz debacle I would have thought that Google might compete on the issue of privacy, at least as one differentiator. I think they've lost the high ground on that however, and it should be obvious to anyone who thinks about how Google makes money that they have a huge temptation to mine your social graph for information that will help them target advertising to you.
Well said:

"Yet, in the Zionist republic of Microsoft, all of our engineers are Dot-net addicts. The Israeli Army is a Microsoft colony."
It's mooching precisely due to the nature of the inequivalence. One is the voluntary, contractual exchange of capital for equity; the other is glad-handing politicians giving away money taken from other people in order to foster a pro-business image through anti-market means. Participating in the former is commerce, participating in the latter is rent seeking. If this sort of consequence-free pay day doesn't count as mooching, then nothing does.