skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The two big ones I'm somewhat familiar with are:

"Jawboning": convincing companies to not decrease wages in the face of deflation, so they just went bankrupt instead. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Hoover#Great_Depression, first paragraph.)

And then there's the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_Finance_Corporat...

There's lots more although many not as consequential and unprecedented (i.e. excluding Smoot-Hawley and the massive tax rate increase), as a quick read of the first link will indicate.
As Hayek noted in The Fatal Conceit, "The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."
For the record, this book is pretty controversial. It theorizes about a society that may have existed over 6000 years ago. It references the Amazons - who were mythological - and there is quite a bit of disagreement in the academic community about the validity of the conclusions.
It doesn't always work though. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1632572 and http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1630579 were posted one day apart, with identical URLs.
Yes, yes, HN is going to the dogs, it's not as good as it used to be, it's all because of the new users, and so on and so on. It's been like that since I joined two and a half years ago.
Does anyone else think that the surge in sales of the Road to Serfdom stemmed from the viral youtube rap battle? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk
The Klingon Dictionary is very good at explaining grammatical concepts. It made me interested in how language worked. After reading it I was able to understand a French grammar book and go from getting an E in my French GCSE mock exam to a B in the final a couple of months later. I went on to get a degree in French (which I never used but that's beside the point).
Sure - I know how it works and that it's useful. Still - it breaks the no-surprise rule for me...

You could always have stacking functions with both .where and .combine_where, so that:

User.where(:name => "david").limit(20).where("age > 29")

gives you (with second where starting new level of query):

SELECT * FROM (SELECT * FROM user WHERE name = 'david' LIMIT 20) WHERE age > 29

and this (combine_where folding into the same expression):

User.where(:name => "david").limit(20).combine_where("age > 29")

gives you:

SELECT * FROM user WHERE name = 'david' AND age > 29 LIMIT 20

Just like you don't expect `map()[range].map()` or whatever the equivalent in Ruby is, to combine the map calls and move the range to the end.
From JS-Kit to ejabberd - Russia's many contributions to the Erlang community
Digg freezes manual story submissions as user anger mounts
Actually the link checker only checks vs. links that are currently loaded into memory.
This is about right.

When I've seen my SO in female-dominated workplaces, the constant strain of "collaboration" is exhausting. However, "collaboration" in this sense is usually playing a competitive popularity contest, and in the archetypal case this was achieved by bad mouthing people behind their backs. If you were able to talk to every girl individually, you'd eventually build a picture which painted everyone loathing everyone else. That wasn't true, but that's how they bonded ("You're my favorite in this office, I don't like everyone else" being said to multiple people). In my small sample size (< 4), this seems to be how a lot of female-dominated workplaces are.

I think the difference might be that the bell never rings for females, the popularity game they are playing is constant and exhausting. Men are able to see each individual flash point as an individual battle, and that it's usually a battle of ideologies rather than active dislike. Actively disliking someone is tiring; I can't keep it up for longer than a couple of weeks. The ability for guys to hug the opponent and share a beer is drastically underestimated, in my opinion. We don't often talk about positive traits of males in workplaces, but I think that is definitely one of them.
I find this type of corporate cluelessness fascinating. When a product like this is released, it feels as though the company ignored everything; the market, the competing products and the customers. How does this happen? Is it Dell's lacklustre R&D funding? Poor leadership? Is the team who developed this product made up of soccer moms who don't know anything about smartphones? All of the above?
I can confirm that this works if the URL is exactly identical - it happened to me and I was quite pleased.
I think the most useful definition (since beer terms are so vague anyhow), is something like "beer made at a low primary fermentation temperature followed by a long, even colder secondary fermentation, aka 'lagering'".

Limiting yourself to barley, wheat, and hops like modern German law does is too much prescription and not enough description.
Reloading Ruby Code
I'm pleased to see that I am officially allowed to complain that HNN is getting to be just like Reddit.
I clicked it and haven't gotten my note yet... By "spam", I think you're saying they can put something into my news feed, right? If this opted me into email communication or even facebook messages, I might be alarmed. Related: I generally trust things that I "like" to behave in a polite way... And know that if they don't they are going to quickly eat a social media backlash.

I can see some nice ways this could be used-- for example-- I "like" Bingo Card Creator and you say, "Thanks Tony! I see you just bought your copy of BCC a few days ago. Holler if I can help!"

I agree that this is an odd/dumb thing for FB to do, but I'm not sure it's that scary.
Agreed: TARP and the related interventions of that period were designed to prevent a cascading failure of the world's financial system, which we know is very bad: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creditanstalt.
Fair points, I could nitpick at those too but I can see where you're coming from. I guess I just see his actions as more "reactive" rather than "intervention". If the economy's falling apart, and the government's intertwined with it, then you're going to see some increased activity from the government.. I tend to differentiate between whether the person's running around sticking their thumb in various holes in the dike (Hoover) or rebuilding the whole dike (FDR).

Subjective measurement, though, so YMMV.
Some projects involve a lot more infrastructure work than coding. Typical example (my current project): setting up a resque/redis queue monitored by god/monit with a simple sinatra front-end (that is less than 100 lines long).

A large part of estimating errors comes from forgetting an area that requires work (eg: in code, deployment, documentation, staging/feedback/iterating...).
I agree, it's a fairly constant theme. But...

1) It's been a while, so worth the reminder; and
2) It's actually a submission from someone whose been here a while. The last several were from people with < 200 day memberships.

So: worth a little bit of +1 action, but I certainly hope it doesn't 'stay at the top for a while' as someone else said. Hoarding one of the 'above the fold' slots would be a bummer.
Skype's current business model is very interoperable. I have a traditional phone line right next to me which interoperates with Skype really well, and so do a billion other people.

By contrast, VoIP has never worked (until Skype came along, and even now all non-Skype VoIP services are generally technical and business failures).
I suppose that's possible, but we were trying to steer away from either extreme -- it wasn't as though we replaced her Barbies with GI Joes, we just bought Legos instead. We tried to ensure that all her toes were educational, even if it wasn't the focus of the toy (i.e., we didn't try to eliminate 'fun'.)

That said, we weren't doing anything in particular to keep her away from commercials, or limiting social interactions from her peers or anything, so there really wasn't much of a 'control' group whatsoever.
I suppose all IT companies should be registered as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partnership
I've heard the following rule about writing (math -- other fields may be different): Take your best estimate, double it, and then increase the units. For example, two days becomes four weeks, one week becomes two months, etc.
apparently, there's more. Looks like there's a peasants' revolt going on, with numerous people posting and upvoting links to reddit on digg, today...
I spent 29 years in solitary confinement | Robert King
You could certainly do that, though the interface between statically JIT'd code and trace JIT'd code would get hairy. Plus, as I said above, there's simply not a whole lot of trace specialization going on in the first place, since Brainfuck lacks dynamic dispatch.
I just walked through a simple sort routine and that is very cool. Thanks!
I'm not sure why one would choose lectures narrated by a single guy without expertise in any of the topics over real lectures given by world-class faculty and researchers.

Berkeley, MIT, Yale and other top universities in the past decade have made hundreds of courses available in audio and video form. I've been hooked on Berkeley courses for a few years now, actually wishing sometimes that my commute were longer.
You're saying that Skype should take a year or two off, rewrite all their software, and come back, safe in the knowledge they'll now be able to interoperate with a bunch of broken VoIP services that have no users.

I can't see the killer business plan yet, sorry.
Do you have any sample layout images to try uploading?
I think the reality is more that it goes in cycles, and it does seem to be at one of its low points currently. A reminder of the guidelines seems in order.
David Reimer[1] showed pretty convincingly that there are a lot of hard-wired traits in the genes. Is it 100% of the difference? Of course not. Is it at least 50%? I think the evidence points to that being the case.

Personally, I was always surprised at the difference in play between my boys and girls, even at VERY early ages. You can see the differences at under a year old, even if you are attempting to balance for societal pressures. I've spoken to enough parents who have experienced the same thing to firmly believe it is more than anecdotal.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer
TDD has nothing to do with testing.
Oh, interesting. I was thinking of "privacy" in terms of not letting their personal information get out; but there's certainly that issue, too!
People aren't stupid. They can distinguish between Froyo and Cupcake.

It's even got a clear analogue in the XP/Vista/7 debacle.

Or for those who lived through it, Cupcake is the Windows 3.11 to Froyo's Windows XP, or something like that. People do in fact get that there are different versions of software. If you're aiming at people who don't... they aren't going to know an iPhone from a Nexus One anyway.
Based on the normal distribution of worker skills

The what?

Imagine a world in which people could be hired for $2 per hour (where that's all their skills were worth).

This reminds me of Metropolis. Is a world where a large portion of people work full time, producing just $2/h, really preferable? That's got class society written all over it.
This comes with the territory of having an open-source OS.

I don't like what Dell is doing but they are damaging their own brand more than they are damaging Android.

But before we get too hung up on having the latest version of Android running on our phones, let us put things in perspective.

I do care a lot about having the latest version of Android. But I'm like you guys, we're plugged in to the tech scene. We love our apps, the coolest and latest UI, etc.

But for the rest of the country, a survey of my friends suggest that most of them do not care.

My roommate just bought a Palm Pre. There are very few apps in the market. But guess what, my roommate is very happy with his phone. He said it's the best phone he's ever had.

I was happy with my Android phone even when my G1 was on 1.5. I'm glad that I upgraded to a Nexus One and I'm now on 2.2 but I never felt that 1.5 was a piece of crap.

My observation with the tech community is that we think we are mainstream. We're not. I don't know many fellow geeks that play Farmville but you know what, it's got 100+ million users.

So before we start raising hell about having different versions of Android out there, we should consider that maybe the mainstream users do not really care.
As a student at UCLA I can say that I have learned more from a handful of Khan's Calculus and Linear Algebra video tutorials than I have from several quarters worth of math courses at school.

Clearly there is controversy in this statement. Conservatives insist that receiving a "quality education" at the university level should cost $40k+ a hear. A man that shatters this notion by providing free videos superior to many university courses cannot do so without creating an uproar from the old-fashioned.

In any case, Khan has done a great service to this world. I hope this publicity will help his videos reach the corners of the world.
Depends on how you score it. A big (% wise, bigger than that of Atlas Shrugged) sales increase preceded the video, e.g.: http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/soaring-sales-for-road-to-ser... suggests by about a year.

On the other hand, hitting #1 on Amazon in the middle of this year...: http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/hayeks-road-to-serfdom-1-on-a...
Wow, after seeing this info I would have to go with the one that has the expandable memory slot and allows an open format. I refuse to get locked into buying from one company in a closed format.

So if you buy a kindle ebook on amazon.com can you only read it with a kindle or kindle app? I am really enjoying Calibre on my netbook (calibre-ebook.com)
I don't see what labor laws would be violated

The easiest one to violate is accidentally turning your contractor into an employee, and if that happens, may God have mercy on your soul, because the local tax agency will not.
Small Business Confidence Plummets
I think Adams makes a couple of mistakes in his post.

1) He implies that practice is something to be less proud of than inherent ability to play pool. Life is all about making decisions to practice/pursue/play certain things over another.

The other thing is that few people have the willpower/dediction/stamina to devote time to activities that truly challenge them. Sure, I can play chopsticks on a piano, but beyond that I couldn't sit still. Yet, I don't hear a great musician and think, "They just practiced more than I did."

That's why certain activities are viewed with more respect. For example, being great at Modern Warfare 2 is not something that will win you much praise. People don't view it as taking much willpower to play a video game for hours on end. It's kind of like the default state of most people. But people will likely praise you for being great at math.

2) He also seems to think that inherent ability plays no role (I presume that 5% luck, is luck in the instance of the game, not luck being gifted at it). While practice is important. I suspect there is probably large variance in the initial condition of various people for various activities.

The only thing you can probably be confident of is that with good practice you will improve. But no guarantee that if you do more hours of practice than another person that you will be better.

Tracking something like this in class I suspect is more likely to actually teach kids that practice isn't sufficient. In fifth grade I spent many of hours trying to breakdance, and I never could do a headspin that friends of mine could do almost out the womb. I think I'd only be more discouraged to see how much time I wasted on it. Although looking back, it was worth it, and it strengthened my upper body for other activities. I just can't head spin for some reason.
Your reply dodges the point raised by the article. They do a taste test and the beers have different flavours. Then they repeart the taste test blind and the beers taste the same. The article suggests that the taste comes from the advertising. I suggest that it wasn't about taste to begin with. Why do you think that stripping the labels off the bottles made the flavour go away?
This really doesn't seem like a big deal. You can click the 'X' next to the spam to end it forever. If a certain publisher is getting removed frequently, Facebook could block them from posting to anyone's news feed. I doubt this functionality will negatively affect many people unless Facebook fails to police it properly.
Men drive 276 miles extra a year due to being lost
Women drive 256 miles extra a year due to being lost

The difference is referred to as statistically significant. Doesn't seem that significant to me...

Doesn't everyone have a satnav these days anyway?
I suppose part of it is that they target a very different audience. He addresses subjects at high-school level: something that any reasonably educated person should be competent enough to do.
I always liked the following method: double the estimate and then go to the next larger time unit. So, one hour is two days, 4 days is eight weeks, etc.
Thanks a lot, I will go with 3.0
UI/UX design firms in Boston
What are good UI/UX firms you have worked with in the Boston area?
Hey wait a minute, I thought Chrome was supposed to have a popup blocker
I still have about 3 weeks left before I can make that complaint.

Luckily though, HN seems to be holding steady, and it has a long way to go before it becomes Reddit. HN is like having a conversation in your living room at a cocktail party with a lot of smart people in attendance. Reddit is like having a conversation at a sports bar with a bunch of random drunk assholes.
Kind of agree; also, I'm just not as possessive of my Facebook feed as I am of my mail spool. I really don't feel like I own my feed. Also, Facebook acts against its own interests if they allow random sites to pollute the feed.
Completely true. Men and women are equally competitive. The difference is that men compete explicitly and in packs (e.g. team sports) and women compete implicitly and within the group (any Hollywood high-school movie).
What are some startup ideas that persistently fail?
>> Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation.

What if I make snide comments in face-to-face conversation?
I'm curious (please don't take this combatively, it's not meant that way) where you've seen value in measuring lines of code. What is the context that makes the measurement valuable?

I ask because in the many years I've developed software or managed the development of software, I've never found it a useful metric to study because there are too many variables that impact it. However, if I'm missing something there, I'd like to know.
1. You can afford to cut the second sentence in the first paragraph. Like so.

"Take control of an F-22 fighter jet as you hurtle down a narrow, winding canyon. Using the accelerometer, dodge obstacles and avoid the ever-narrower canyon walls."

As opposed to:

"Take control of an F-22 fighter jet as you hurtle down a narrow, winding canyon. You have good cover down in the canton's depths, but your enemies with their missiles are in hot pursuit, hoping you fly too high and give them a clear shot. Using the accelerometer, dodge obstacles and avoid the ever-narrower canyon walls"

You can trim the paragraph down without losing all that much.

On the second paragraph, I'd take out the jargon and make the first sentence simpler. The second sentence is pretty good, and does a good job of closing the description.

2. The color scheme's layout is a bit unclear, because of a lack of alignment and visual guides. The #CCD color is a little soft, and doesn't have enough contrast with the black to be clear. I'd like it if it was just black and white for the color choice. I understand the call-to-action button should be prominent, but there are other ways to highlight a call-to-action than the gray button with white colored font.

I'd lose the beveled type with drop shadow over an embossed rounded rectangle though. The logos could use a little work, that whole header could some work, I'm not gonna lie.

3. The video could look better if you hosted it from within your site, and used more and varied shots to make it more exciting than gameplay over song". Think of how videogame commercials are usually put together. Especially the ones produced for your target market.

I haven't played the game yet, but congratulations on releasing it! Best of luck and I hope to see a sequel!
Khan is an Electrical Engineer from MIT with an MBA from Harvard. His ability to teach far outperforms the majority of university professors.

Try watching some of his videos.
That was (sort of) my point. If you build something fairly trivial and not defensible on its own, "talent acquisition" is a rather good outcome.
You can hardware accelerate CSS animations with translate3d() http://mir.aculo.us/2010/08/05/html5-buzzwords-in-action/
I'm sorry to hear that this behavior was a surprise to you- Perhaps FB could do a better job at making it clear what this does, but to me this was always the expected (and desired!) behavior.

The Facebook "Like" button is akin to "Follow" on Twitter. It subscribes you to their feed.
That's the whole POINT of the like button. The "Tell your friends" is ancillary; It's akin to twitter telling your feed "Colin is now following .... CocaCola"

It's a VERY useful feature, and the name makes sense to me; If you Like AntelopeFurniture.com, and they have a new sale running or something, you'd want to hear about it. You already said you like them ;)

With that understanding in mind ("Facebook:like == Twitter:Follow"), it starts to become clear that seeing their posts isn't spam- It's the entire point!
> Practice doesn't make perfect. It only get you 80% there and the remaining 20% is from a combination of sweat-equity and talent.

Is there a difference between practice and sweat-equity?
True, but it also paints it in a bad light. (i.e. "There was this old guy in the corner that didn't want to believe our new and cool ideas, but we just ignored him.")
I'm not quite sure why I had to upload an image. I took a screenshot of this page and uploaded it, but it seems as though if I was given a blank page I could have designed the same layout.
I have to agree that most of the women bosses I've had were much better than the men.

And they do get some career traction, what I wanted to say is that they have some kind of glass ceiling at the CEO / President level.

Since I'm praising them, I guess it's okay to use real names :) . The women bosses that were excellent were:

Matilde Milicevic ( http://uy.linkedin.com/pub/matilde-milicevic/6/12/905 ), currently chief of operations at Equifax Uruguay

and Noela Próspero, currently chief of operations at Urudata Software
http://gen1.recreclabs.com
I came over to the comments just to see who would make this remark. ;)
> So before we start raising hell about having different versions of Android out there, we should consider that maybe the mainstream users do not really care.

The problem is that it exacerbates the fragmentation situation for developers, or at least that's how I read it.
Oh, man, this was horrible. The music was good (love Arcade Fire), but the video was neither artistically entertaining nor technologically impressive. More to the point, I absolutely despise the fact that an application asking for personal information and attempting to use it in an intimate fashion (based on a global privacy invasion) was produced by the world's largest, least personal advertising company. I was just cringing the entire time...
I hope that it will be widely accepted, or at least deeply incorporated. Also certificates from khan academy, from some day, would be very nice.
Fallacies About Web Privacy
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