skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Original paper (not blogspam, if you feel okay calling some of NPR that): http://content.thirdway.org/publications/335/Third_Way_Idea_...

This is a brilliant idea, and in the spirit of a democratic republic, I'd say. I'm paying taxes; it'd be nice to know what exactly I'm paying for.

I'm also for listing all the expenses; down to the ones that end up costing you a millicent.

Perhaps yet more feasible would be setting up a real tax website, with real information, and accessible tax records for all. On this website you could also find your receipt. If only…
But when they’re being naughty an “I’ll buy you ice cream if you’re good” approach doesn’t work and isn’t warranted. I much simpler, “if I have to come over there and separate you two, you’re going to lose your lego set for a week” yields better results. Not with a yell. Certainly never with violence. But with heat.

I didn't parent that way at all. I see no reason why my parenting style wouldn't work equally well as a management style. My sons are 20 and 23 and are fanatically loyal to me, even when I am sick and under stress and wigging out on them like some kind of lunatic. I don't punish. Discipline and punishment are not the same thing and the fact that the word "discipline" has come to be a euphemism for punishment is just commentary on how rampantly common it is to punish kids rather then teach them how and why to do things. Did I take things away from them sometimes? Yes. But only to remove the problem, not as a form of punishment. And I did not threaten. Threats are a weak stance and they breed disrespect and fear, neither of which is anything I want from anyone generally, let alone my kids.
What? And give up show business?!
Well, they probably could have done the same job by grouping. If they combined combat operations with military personnel, for example, that would bump it up to third-largest.

Leaving out specific items is an obvious way to work an agenda into it, but manipulating the groupings could do the same thing, and more subtly at that. With a little gerrymandering, the receipt could say pretty much anything.
I can't, of course, speak to your issue directly but the chrome/webkit debugger usually shows these errors in the console?
When they first opened the site to non-college students, it was distinguished from myspace by being private by default as opposed to myspace's public by default. This is why I joined.

Since then, they are increasingly making things public by default, and exposing your actions publicly if your friends are not also vigilant about privacy.

Further, I saw Mark Zuckerberg speak publicly and he managed to convince me that he was not someone I could consider trustworthy.

Add it all up, and the only facebook presence I will have is the minimum required corporate one to integrate facebook features in products.
Related question: is there a "gold standard" parsing library for html, like webkit is becoming the standard DOM engine?
This has worked well for us at http://feastery.com. No issues with the quality of the invitees.
Well, actually it's Thirdway.org, who've been plugging this idea for a few years now, but since it's somewhat progressive too, your point may stand. My sense was that Thirdway was deliberately trying to avoid being overly inflammatory: they don't, for instance, specify the amount of military aid to Colombia to fight the drug war, or the amount to Pakistan to fight terrorists, or to Israel to fight whoever Israel ends up fighting next.
Google, Apple, other tech rivals back big Microsoft patent appeal
Here's my story... Growing up I was always very active. I spent a lot of time outdoors and really enjoyed it. I was planning on becoming a paramedic. I'd grown up with computers and our family had the internet from about 1995.

At the age of 17 (I'm 24 now) two things began to happen, I started to play with design and HTML and I also developed a continuous headache... it started one day and I haven't had a moment without it since.

So how has the internet changed my life? Since I could no longer be active and couldn't pursue becoming a paramedic I spent more and more time designing websites and very quickly friends started paying me to create websites for them and I realised that I could do it for a living.

Now I've spent over five years working in the industry and have worked with people all over the world. I have worked for myself and for a number of creative agencies. I'm currently employed full-time and work in an office, but I'm not sure how much longer I can do that (bright fluorescent lights and the routine can be difficult at times) and so I'm either going to start looking for a startup/work from home job or go back to freelancing. All of this has been made possible because of the internet and I will continue to be able to work full-time because of it.
Irish Woes Get Worse
Echo by PVT Solar - How It Works
First, don't think about it as "throwing away" a year of work. Think about it as a comparatively modest annual tuition fee at the most effective learning institution you will ever have the privilege of attending, a.k.a. the School of Hard Knocks. Which is to say, some of the most valuable education you will ever get... provided you don't repeat the same experience.

As to the friendship, don't worry about it. As long as you act in a fair, principled, and (importantly) clear-headed and non-impulsive manner, a (true) friendship can easily survive an experience like this. They may even thank you (much later) for having seen the harsh light of reality far sooner than they did.

If in fact they're a true friend. If they're not.. it can certainly feel very painful at first, when a supposed friend "de-friends" you, or acts in a destructive manner such that you feel forced to separate yourself from them.

But what it comes down to is that true friends just won't do this to you, or put you through dilemmas like this (not intentionally, or in any vindictive way, at least).

As to those turn out to be not such true friends, you were bound to find this out eventually (albeit perhaps through less cathartic means). Think of it as not a loss, but an opening, a chance to regenerate and find newer and even better friends, and have much better experiences.

Lastly: one thing I learned from having gone through an experience like this is that when going into business with "friends" we tend to let our defenses down, and expose ourselves to far greater financial (or emotional) harm than we do in regular business contexts, wherein even when we end up dealing with people really are basically out to screw us, we at least know how to cut our losses and not let it damage us so much, psychologically. While your "friends" can actually end up damaging you much, much more even though you're supposedly all on the same, happy team.

It's kind of a simple thing, really... but knowing this going into your next "friend"-based opportunity might help make for a much safer (and less soul-wrenching) ride.
Hobo 1.3 for Rails 3 pre-release
Of course it's a problem. It's a terribly onerous problem for developers. But the thing is that they don't have any problem getting developers to deal with it because there's really no alternative. And businesses hiring web developers are demanding Facebook integration as much as ever. Sure, if they fixed the problems then developers might be more enthusiastic, but you haven't shown that that will improve Facebook's bottom line. They have no shortage of apps, users, or growth, so the onus is on you to support your argument.

Saying that you think they have reached 500 million users inspite of their engineering approach is far from a common-sense argument. It's clear that Facebook ran technical circles around MySpace. And it's clear that they have launched new features at a breakneck pace throughout their history that have fueled growth at every turn.

I personally will avoid working with Facebook as much as I can, but will that hurt them? Not in the current business climate.
If this works, someone should productize this: a "launching soon" widget that anyone can use.
Be sure to also check "(How to Write a ((Better) Lisp) Interpreter (in Python))": http://norvig.com/lispy2.html
I've always liked the idea of a receipt to be given to Canadians at the end of every year telling them what healthcare benefits they got and how much they cost.

It seemed like it would make people grateful that they had that service, but it also might make the people who pay disproportionately more than they use angry (and the nature of insurance is that most people put in more than they get)
Its not necessarily If I'm happy with my job but that burning desire to start a company doesn't go away. I just wonder if there are other sane people that would make that leap. :) To be an entrepreneur you face that decision at some point if you currently have a high paying job, I think its a good point that Jessica makes in her post that you can't really start a startup unless you focus on it. It can't really be that side thing...
I think the bias in the table actually goes the other way. By breaking down, and omitting parts of, military spending, they make it look relatively minor compared to SS, Medicare, and Medicaid. They have also chosen to display SS intakes, not outflows, which is a $400B difference.
my experience was almost identically the same. I wonder if we are just a small, passionate minority or if we are among the first of millions to leave in the coming months and years...
An introduction to eventmachine, and how to avoid callback spaghetti
I am not sure why Jessica's post is in this discussion. She is pretty young, and I am not sure she has had a real job + startup experience to say what she is saying. While I agree that to do build a successful startup, that has to be your number one focus, and having a job will be really distracting. But, you can do some prototyping/idea vetting, while you are working full time, and quit only when you think you have something substantial, and already have a solid plan.

If you are in a dilema, go ahead ad do it. The real question if, if you are in your 20s or 30s, and don't have a mortgage/kids or a green card application going on, why are you working on a big corp?

1. Save money, have at least one year to two years of savings.

2. Leave your job in good terms. Tell your manager and co-workers "I taking a break from corporate world this year, doing some traveling, and some little project. I hope I will see you guys again in the future, and would love to work again."

3. Start your startup.

4. In one year, here are your options:

a) Startup went well,

b) Startup failed, you wasted 30-40k (no biggie):
a.1) Tell your company / ex managers you would want to work there again. If you left with a good terms, you should be able to come in.
a.2) Find a job somewhere else, and show your product (A lot of companies like people that can show a finished product, even though it wasn't commercially successful.

In one year, you will learn a lot more, and be a lot more marketable to other companies, (if you have something decent to show). The only risk your are taking is 30-40k (depending on how low your living expenses are), + whatever your are missing as a salary. Keep in mind, that if you can sawllow a lot of risk, you should totally do it. Once you get married with kids, it will be really really hard to do it (almost impossible).

My point is: if you are 1) really good at building products from scratch. 2) You can take risks/have a low risk profile 3) Have at least 40-60k saved.
Why in the heck are you NOT trying to start something, or join something. Big corp job will always be there (if you are good, off course).

----

Ps1. Do quit a job, and build another stupid niche thing (you see many 'startups' that are just building a feature, and not a bussines). You can use the time at your company to test the market, verify your product-idea (or even build a prototype), before quitting.

PS2. If you don't have at least 50-70k savings after 5 years of working as an engineer, you really should look at your spending habits. Start saving now.
What was surprising was seeing the marketing take the form of the Centers for Disease Control offering health advice.
The dock connector, started back in the days when the iPod was firewire* and since the iPod charged over firewire on Macs but firewire ports on PCs were often unpowered, Apple needed to provide a way for one iPod model to be plugged into both windows and mac machines. This was also before Apple gave up on firewire and went USB only. Further people have enough confusion hooking things up, so giving them a failproof solution is pretty ideal. People really do have trouble confusing video and audio RCA jacks, for instance. This single port has allowed Apple to transition thru dozens of product and models over almost a decade without having any compatibility confusion or hassle, and no special $20 adapters, etc. Compare this to the situation we've seen in the last decade with video ports-- and they only do one thing, yet there have been a half dozen different "Standards".

What is most interesting here is the default presumption that Apple is doing this for proprietary "monopolistic" reasons.

*though the first ipod had an actual firewire port, a later model which was intended for windows as well had the dock connector which supported both firewire and USB and Apple shipped different cables for mac and windows iPod users.
it sux to live in croatia :(
The A/V connection seems to be a valid reason, but...

Ever used a Ford with MS Sync? I rented a Focus with this on vacation last summer, and it works quite well - a surprisingly innovative and compatibile product for Microsoft.

It hooks up to your iPod/iPhone with the standard USB cable, and can play audio, so it has to stream it over the USB connection somehow, or it rewires the port, which seems unlikely to me, as you'd run out of pins (stereo audio, power, control, ground = 5 pins minimum).

I really wonder how this is accomplished, as it can play back protected AAC music, which must be decoded on the phone, so it isn't just using the device as mass storage...
I love this site! Reading the comments here has taught me more about image compression in 45 minutes than I've learned from reading random articles on the web for the last few years...
I don't know about a parsing library, but the HTML5 spec defines how parsers for it should behave, so at least at some point in the not-too-distant future, it shouldn't matter too much. I think Chrome/Safari already implement it (or at least are fairly close) and Firefox has its own implementation coming in Firefox 4.

If you're looking for one to do HTML scraping, I think it really depends on the language you're using, and I don't think there's a single gold standard.
There have been cancellations -- we will email teams on the waitlist but your best bet to play is to come well before the start time of the first round and let us know you want to stand in for any no-shows.
Google invents new image format WebP
Thank you for sharing. The Internet is like our era's 'New World'. So much opportunity for anyone bold enough to 'figure it out.'
Amazon starts selling stuff through Facebook
Funny, my local county government lists where all the taxes go. It's amusing (or enraging, I guess) to see we still pay for a Tuberculosis sanitarium.
We do get annual statements from the SSA. The benefit amounts listed on mine are not insubstantial. (Whether you believe those numbers of the long term is a different question...)
It's definitely a great idea, given that members of both major political parties are absolutely loathe to touch the biggest sources of government expenditure: old person benefits (social security + medicare), and the military. Medical services for the poor (medicaid) are comparatively minor, but you wouldn't know it, given how much emphasis the Republicans place on the question of the "welfare state".

With greater public knowledge, perhaps we'd finally be able to move past the irrational demonization of expenses that don't matter (but win cheap political points), and focus our attention on the actual problems.
Qbar replaces Ads in Google with relevant Quora Q+A's
For the "I'd bet that a small group of dedicated engineers could come up with an compatible extension to IPv4" I quote the [1]:

"There is no such thing as an IP protocol with extended addressing that is on-the-wire compatible with IPv4."

[1]: http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/nsp/ipv6/25293
Update: Here's some very basic file comparisons. Special thanks to Erik Anderson of http://divineerror.deviantart.com for the lossless images.

In the folder is the original image, the compressed version of the image in both jpg and webp, and a enhanced difference map between the compressed version and the lossless image.

http://jjcm.org:8081/webp

Basic analysis shows that right now webp has better preservation of luminance, but at the expense of hue/color. I'll have a blog post up in a bit with a myriad of file tests, difference maps, percentage differences, and hue offsets in a bit.
This is amazing. I find it incredible that only .100 billion is going towards "Financial Crimes and Enforcement" given the huge amount of fraud and outright criminal activity that has occurred in our banking sector. This is actually down 10% from last year.

Regardless of your political views, left or right, this shows you what the priorities of our government are.

After the S&L crisis in the 80s, over 1000 banksters and fraudsters were convicted and imprisoned. Why is it that none have been convicted and imprisoned now?
And this is what I was about to post, but instead of 20-30%, make it 51%. Allow taxpayers to decide where (the broad categories the receipt listed are a perfect starting point) their tax dollars are going. The remaining 49% can be discretionary, let the government decide where that goes: fill in the gaps for items needed, but that no one wants to pay for.

Such a policy would give people a sense of power over the money they're paying. I, for one, would begrudge less the paying of taxes if the monies went to programs important to me.
Ease of use is subjective. I dont think writing a mapreduce job needs to be more complex than writing an equivalent SQL query. What really matters is elegance, flexibility and power.

My personal experince is that the MongoDB model seems to win in most cases. Especially when it comes to flexibility and ad-hoc querying. Having a real language (javascript) and a flexible schema tend to make most business problems easier to express.
There's Amaya (http://www.w3.org/Amaya/), the browser that the W3C uses for experimentation.

I'm confused by your question, though; are you implying that webkit is a standard DOM engine, or asking? Webkit isn't a standard, it's merely broadly used. And a standard DOM parser and a standard HTML parser would be one and the same.
I think it's very common to require a license for any job that involves touching other people: barber, massage therapist, cosmetologist.

In Oregon, you need a food handler's permit to work in a restaurant. I wouldn't call that a barrier to entry.
I like the quote that a powerful language should fit a page of code:

"I asserted that you could define the "most powerful language in the world" in "a page of code." I had orignally made the boast because McCarthy's self-describing LISP interpreter was written in itself. It was about "a page", and as far as power goes, LISP was the whole nine-yards for functional languages." --- Alan Kay in http://gagne.homedns.org/~tgagne/contrib/EarlyHistoryST.html
How Analog Rituals Can Amp Your Productivity
I still think it's funny because most of these "Super Angels" don't invest their own money. They are Micro VC's if you want to call them anything different.
The Jpeg shown is of a higher fidelity than the WebP image; look around the top edge of the red quadrilateral. In the Jpeg image, the edge is sharp, in the WebP image it looks a bit like the coloured sprinkles you might put on ice-cream. It would be better to show two versions of an image, having the same file size, so that we can look for any difference in quality.

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8618-30685_3-20018146.html?communityId=...
The more Google does, the less I trust them.
Tricknik, try actually responding in good faith to something I say - this involves not defensively putting words in my mouth - and I might bother.
Yes, I just left a 6 figure income in July to do just that :)

I don't think the decision has anything to do with your income. If one isn't willing to risk a small part of their life without that safety blanket of a steady paycheck, they're probobably not cut out to be an entrepreneur. And if one is cut out to be an entrepreneur, no paycheck working for someone else will ever be sufficient.
I wouldn't take that as a Flickr competition. Flickr is more about delivering photo experience to the masses, a great platform for promoting and discovering pictures about a certaing subject, etc. Facebook is more about sharing with your social cirle. Currently there isn't any tool able to compete with Flickr in terms of exploring content.
I suspect that the improvement is not good enough that this image format would be adopted, when jpeg is already established.
No Net Neutrality: Congress Adjourns Without Passing Legislation
> But I firmly believe that giving an employee time to reflect on what went wrong & why is important. And they need distance to achieve this.

I agree with you on this but I see a distinction between being 'cold and distant' vs 'not chummy'. The latter seems appropriate but the former seems counter productive (at least it would be with me).

My impression is that you mean the latter but I can see how the original post might be read as meaning the former.
It's too bad because it could take one more step and do something slightly cooler.

I just do counting in MapReduce, but it was to use Expectation-Maximization on mixtures of Gaussians to cluster a data set of 16 million documents. Although computing the Guassian's isn't really trivial, all you do at the end is sum up and normalize.

It's very cool and isn't much more than counting (replace the map step). In fact the paper I took it from (and the whole Mahout on Hadoup thing) is a bunch of machine learning algorithms that are just big summations at the reduce step.
If you look at the pdf from the think tank which came up with it, you'll see that one of their arguments for doing it this way is that "An educated taxpayer is a progressive's best customer", leaving no doubt what their political agenda is.

Somewhat disingenuous from a think tank called the "Third Way", which was originally intended to imply centrism. Still, it's a general law of NPR reporting that a left-wing think tank is called a "think tank" and a right-wing think tank is called a "right-wing think tank".
Upvoted just for the title. :-)
My reading has achieved unprecedented levels of unverifiable productivity

I have a terrible memory for arbitrary facts, but great for things I understand (thus, I seek the reasons behind the facts.)

Then I could then work it out from first principles, so I didn't need to remember it - a kind of data compression. But it's also true that understanding things is exciting and engaging for me, and therefore memorable. And in practice, I don't consciously work things out from first principles anyway; I just know them. They have become part of me, not as facts, but as part of the way I think.
New Café in the City Comes With VC Hook Up
I was impressed by Mint http://www.linuxmint.com/