skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I do not think that they intended such broad interpretations, any more than I think they anticipated industrial society. In regards to ERISA, it would be appropriate for us to also consider the intentions of those who passed the XVI amendment between ~1909 and 1913, which established the constitutionality of income tax, Congressional power to collect same (and set up agencies such as the IRS to this end), etc., and who had ample time to consider the relationship between this amendment and the rest of the Constitution by debating what sort of practical consequences might ensue.

While I don't always agree with the way the Supreme Court decides matters (and it has seen fit to reverse itself on more than one occasion), I like the system of using the court as the appropriate forum to try such questions, and of electing legislators and executives to develop or implement new rules where the existing ones turn out to be flawed. If you feel you have spotted a glaring flaw in the Court's reasoning, I urge you to write it up and circulate it as widely as possible.
Thanks for the refund Noah. This deal didn't work for me, because there were a few too many surprises after I purchased (I should have read the descriptions more thoroughly) and too many broken sites (you were too popular). The entering the credit card details of the free trials was the final straw, and I realised I was spending far too long with this. I'd still consider it in the future, but with a little more consideration. I look forward to seeing what comes next for AppSumo.
but it's easier ;) ... just one click away which works better for lots of ppl which will translate to new customers for ur app and as an added value it's tax free in most states
A friend of mine put together a function [1] that will let you use ShoutKey directly from the cli:

shout () { curl -s "http://shoutkey.com/new?url=$1 | sed -n 's/\<h1\>/\&/p' | sed 's/<[^>]*>//g;/</N;//b' ;}

[1] http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/6720/create-an-ea...
Correct title: "Corporate Censorship Kills Creative Innovation"
As-is, Instapaper isn't a bookmarking service, though. Its a reading service. It strips away the unnecessary crap and formats text nicely, so you can focus on reading.
The #python IRC channel has a "NO LOL" policy. That channel is one of the most helpful channels on Freenode.

The article makes a great case for why humor on the web can be bad for the web. But I was disappointed that it stopped there. It didn't go into how to stop it at all.

Humor is important but only when carefully practiced in the most tasteful way. The humor-user must provide undeniably useful content sprinkled with humor for it to be positive.
Love how they advise strongly against reviewing whatever this is with your own lawyer saying "getting [your] own attorney is much more risky and exposed."

Usually when someone you don't know tells you you shouldn't talk to your own attorney, it means you should talk to your own attorney.
That was very informative, thank you. Is $100/hr typical for the US? Maybe I've been undercharging at $55...
The difference is that while it's relatively easy for you to make a decision and then act upon it, in a democratic country it's quite rare for the population to be so unified that the government of the day engages in completely unilateral actions

Did you miss the whole "Let's go on a desert adventure and finish what dad started" that happened a few years back?

Well this is quite close to what we have now.

No offense, but if you actually think this you are completely ignorant of world affairs in general, but specifically international trade. Things to Google: Softwood Lumber, Corn Industry subsidies, Farm subsidies, OPEC.

I could go on...
I think "douchebag manager."
I think the real issue is when urls are longer than 80 characters and your mail client butchers it into pieces with a newline.
... email me if you're interested.
Rule of 72

Divide 72 by the periodic interest rate to find the number of periods to
double the money.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_72
Diaspora implemented on CouchDB
Many people seem to be mistaking Instapaper for bookmarking. I get "why should I use historious over Instapaper?" a lot, even though one is a "to read" list and the other is a bookmarking service.

Ironically, I also get "why should I pay for historious when Instapaper is free?" a lot as well. Looks like I'll be getting that less often now...
IIRC, 'back in the day' when I was on OSX I remember that the behavior for Apple statusbar apps was different than if you went about it in the kosher, Apple-approved fashion.

It might have been the option-click-drag re-arranging or the option-click-drag-to-desktop to remove from the statusbar (or both of those). Maybe those have since become part of the standard API though.
Use my startup: whatsupedia.com (Twitter + wikipedia for niche interests)
Inflation is a useful tactic to make RPG style games addictive.

I worked with someone who built a popular facebook RPG game, and part of what made it popular was that as you became an established player the amount earned per day rose exponentially. As the game became more and more popular the virtual economy started to hyperinflate almost out of control, and the established players started hitting the MySQL integer limits. The author never expected that would ever be possible, but the exponential rate of inflation plus the exponential rate of new players joining created a giant pyramid scheme.
Is this an ipad?
I need an ipad.
I think you're underestimating Tom Mitchell. They're also using similar techniques to decode neuroimaging signals of semantics.

http://videolectures.net/youtube_tom_mitchell_bmcs/

The brain has wants and needs built into the associations. Words for foods automatically invoke their taste in brain activity. And while negation is problematic, we believe in all sorts of stuff that can't be negated through logic or experience. Humans have to accept they're wrong in the same ways computers do, as another fact.

Putting together an average cortical activation network and weighting that network by web-derived facts is non-trivial. But to do so would enable a more flawed, and so accurate, estimate of human intelligence. Semantics feels like the 21st century problem. But I'm biased.

Push me today and I'll agree. Embodiment is a powerful learning tool. Whether we can ever replicate the sum total of those felt experiences, perhaps through robotics, may just be the question in search of an answer. I'm just not sure we'll recognize when it's here. Google fits the definition of magic and now it's downright ordinary.
Well, yes. I'm boggled that anyone would downvote this point.
Ask HN: Do things like WakeMate really work?
WakeMate lets you wake up at the optimal time in your sleep cycle (https://secure.wakemate.com/).

Seems like an odd question, but as I am just about to buy one of these things: Do they really work? I mean: Yes, I know the theory behind it, but: Is anyone here who uses this thing (or something similar) and is really convinced of it?
And how does it feel waking up without these things if you got used to using it?
Was it being used as a negative term in the hospitality industry? If so, that's an interesting difference in apparent outlooks, since it's almost always meant as a compliment in programming.
Um, before you go on a crusade you might want to re-think the consequences: Freedom of religious expression guarantees the right to no have a religion.

As in it's just as illegal to only hire Christians than it is to not hire one.
I don't know what's typical but the best way to see if you're charging too little is to put in some bids for $60, then $65, and so on and see what happens.

I have worked for a guy that was able to increase his prices nearly 25% (for new customers at least, he understandably didn't want to raise rates for the longtime customers who got him started) just by slowly raising his bids until he found what enough people would pay.

Disclaimer: This was for a construction company that got new customers by word-of-mouth YMMV
So they used the real, which was fake, to make the money that was real fake, so they could make real money out of the fake real.

Dr. Seuss would be proud.
Instead of following Skyline drive, another (safer?) option is to go up Page Mill, cross over Skyline, where Page Mill turns into Alpine Road, and then down through the Douglas-fir and redwoods towards the ocean. Once you get on the other side of Skyline, there is very little traffic and the views are tremendous. On the way you'll pass by the Heritage Grove, one of very few remaining groves of old growth redwoods in our area. Stop for ice cream in Loma Mar, or if you don't mind the crowds, head to Pescadero and Duarte's for some artichoke soup and a slice of pie.
I'm sorry, I meant to say what the windows task bar turned into. The developers probably meant well.
NodeJS: Capturing Packets in JavaScript
Thanks everyone for the conversation today. Through discussions I came upon this article for anyone looking to customize your fan page - http://mashable.com/2010/02/22/build-facebook-landing-page/ - also, I realized we have our website url as the like option versus our facebook page url which would connect our website and facebook communities.
One other search tip - I use Duck Duck Go's bang command to search HN using !hn <search terms>. It takes you to searchyc.com, but is more handy if you are already using DDG.
Or, I know! How about we stop using positions of economic authority as a cudgel to get them to wear their hair in certain ways?
Nice idea, maybe we could make a list of more domains to block:

Your ideas:
* facbook.com
* twitter.com
* youtube.com

Mine:
* stackexchange.com (yes!)
* amazon.com (am I the only one using this so often?)
* nytimes.com

It really seems like a nice idea to see how much we got used to these things when only a few years ago we didn't even knew we might need it :D
CSS3 Cheatsheet
That depends on the website. When I posted http://insiderstalk.com on HN it was in the top-10 for like 2 days, received a lot of cool comments, but barely any coverage even on twitter.
How to Catch a Sock Puppet
During the hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic, grocers dealt with this by changing the organization of their stores. Instead of grouping like-kind items together, they grouped like-priced items, then they would just bump the prices for each aisle.
Well x=1. Let me know if x++.
I wish there was something better than offlineimap. It is tends to work horribly for me when run in an automated fashion:

* It doesn't tend to deal well when it is in the middle of a sync and the laptop is put to sleep.

* It recently put me into some weird password prompt hell where neither C-c nor C-\ would quit out if it and it just kept asking for my password, no matter how many times it failed.

* It randomly will die in the middle of the sync with a stack-trace complaining about not being able to call some function or attribute on "None".

* It will randomly decide to hang in the middle of a sync and just run up the CPU for hours on end before I wonder why all my fans are running full blast...

That said, it at least keeps the directories in a stable state throughout all of those errors, but it would be helluva nice if its error messages weren't python stacktraces... Maybe all of my errors have to do with syncing IMAP<->Maildir instead of IMAP<->IMAP? Who knows.

I'm currently saying 'screw it' and moving to a fetchmail/procmail setup.
Wikipedia article says it all for sure - wasn't sure if I'd get bashed for linking it or not.

I know I'm going off-topic - but it's a sensitive point with me, because most people who rail out against fractional reserve banking don't actually understand it. (That said, I'm not arguing for or against it, just for understanding before arguging at all).

People call it a "catch" or a "scam" - but I"d counter that just because the banking system isn't a big vault full of peoples money like they thought it was doesn't make it a scam - how banking works hasn't been a secret, and nobody lied about it - it's just an assumption people make, and are often shocked when they learn how fractional-reserve banking really works. The general populace's ignorance of how money works doesn't make fractional reserve banking a scam.

The law generally says the bank has to pay you. A run on the bank due to panic WILL bankrupt the bank - nobody pretends otherwise... the fact of the matter is most people won't do that, and won't take their money out of the bank, and the system as designed allows the banks to take on some risk in order to make the money flow and keep things moving.

And there are banks out there in the world that have huge reserve requirements (50% +), and even some that don't lend out your money, and don't pay interest - they also charge you a reasonably hefty fee for keeping your money safe.

Imagine the fallout if banks suddenly had 100% reserve requirements. No more loans, for business or otherwise. Everyone would be charged hefty fees to keep their money in the bank, and no interest at all on their deposits (not that there's much to speak of nowadays anyway). Nobody would go for that.
For me, it would ultimately have to come down to the quality and caliber of the news within the app. I'd kill for high quality, diverse, informative, and mildly entertaining news. All the extra features are just thing that are built around the sweet spot of great news. At best, they're icing on the cake; in an absolute worst case senario then may distract- but its how they're developed, so it may not be an issue.

I use Fluent News and Time apps many times daily, and it's not about the bells and whistles. I just want plain old good news agglomerated from many sources. If you can do that better (more stores, higher quality stories), $1.99 is a steal. If it's just the same service with better packaging, it's probably not worth the money.

But, I do log onto my free news apps many times daily. That's ad exposure that someone would pay greatly for.
Personally, I'd be happy to see less gratuitous Silverlight usage in web apps. I think using it for anything you can accomplish with HTML/CSS/JavaScript is a mistake; modern-day Java applets and ActiveX controls.

I wrote about that a while back, and got a surprisingly positive reaction overall: http://encosia.com/2009/09/14/is-silverlight-the-new-webform...

On the other hand, Silverlight is the development model for Windows Phone 7. That alone ensures its survival for the foreseeable future.

Silverlight does excel when it comes to video too. Things like adaptive streaming, DRM[1], hardware acceleration, and fullscreen playback are things HTML5 falls pretty short on. For that matter, HD Silverlight video tends to run significantly smoother than Flash video on my machines. I've never seen any other streaming video that matches some of the full-HD adaptive streams like the Olympics and NFL have delivered with Silverlight.

So, I don't think it's reasonable to expect or hope that Silverlight is canceled. I just wish people would stop over-using it for things like LoB apps.

[1] Which, good or bad, is a requirement for most premium online video.
I fully agree.
I've gotten so much use out of my instapaper/kindle integration that it's mind-boggling.

If I recall correctly, they do have an option where they'll send instapaper to your kindle account every day. However, the free kindle account doesn't support automatic delivery, so you have to pay amazon their delivery fee.

I'm outside the states, so the $2 per instapaper or whatever it is just isn't worth it to me. At the end of every day I just download all the files I've collected to my kindle with the USB cable, and read on the train ride home.
Whenever I see a low donation / price like this, I think of Shoemoney's post about Amazon Wish Lists. His basic argument is that you should provide a way for people to give you a wide range of money. I'm sure that some people will gladly pay Marco $3/quarter but there might be a couple people that might gladly buy him a new $100+ gadget.

http://www.shoemoney.com/2008/12/23/income-from-donations-am...
It's more interactive than 'switching channels' because you can't submit forms with your TV. Also, you get to set the schedule, not the tv station. Compared to TV, the Internet (as it is now, or was in 1995) is interactive. Just because the 'future' is even more interactive is besides the point.
Huh. I've never had these problems (on a Macbook Pro); the only problem I have is that if you run it from a terminal window it fucks up the tty and you have to close the session. But it goes great guns from cron and I've never had it lose or misplace a mail, reading from IMAP and writing to Maildir. I know, anecdotes aren't evidence; but I'm just happy I don't have to use the godawful fetchmail/procmail combo.
You can still get debug serial working if you set it to 2400 baud.
I liked this essay specifically because it wasn't about San Francisco. Living on the east coast and never having been to California, I've heard a lot about San Francisco but not a lot about the valley itself. Mostly, my impression is that the valley is Stanford plus suburban sprawl and a lot of tech companies. This was an interesting perspective.
More on that magic 165 University address http://milo.com/blog/lucky-165-university-ave/
Ask HN: What if PHP is the only thing you know?
I'm good enough with PHP to be able to write code professionally, but I don't know Python, I don't know Ruby, I don't know C++, I don't know Java, I don't know ASP.

If I ever wanted to leave my job, how limited are my prospects, knowing only PHP?

Or, to frame the question another way: What kind of possibilities -- in terms of opportunity and salary -- would be opened up if I were to commit to learning one other programming language ... and which should I learn?
Not totally odd considering Brazil started out as an Empire (after independence).
CLEAR is great except you cannot stream Netflix
There is some contradiction in this thread, on the one hand the whole world population is deemed to be incapable of rising up against a 'bad' world government and on the other all it takes is one charismatic guy to round up 'some armed men'.
I think this would be more valuable if it integrated:

* Syntax highlighting

* Saving

* HTML Entities

* Code completion

* Clean up or 'tidy' function to format the code

* The ability to modify the <head> attribute (if it's possible)
An extra level of indirection?

Reminded me of the quote: "All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection"
Most of the comcast cable modems I've had in the past years let you see the mac address if you navigate to 192.168.100.1 without any password, so xss that loaded that page would work.
At 205 karma, I can see the arrows for downvoting now. The flag for comments had been available before, but like eogas, I didn't know how to access them.
You need to do some traveling.

Try to get to a bigger city that may have startup related meet-ups and/or conferences in a discipline you're interested in. When you go to an event take advantage of every minute of your time to get business cards. You can take advantage of these to keep up some good conversations when you're back home. Maybe you'll discover someone that actually lives relatively close to you.

Locally, try to organize a meet-up. You may be surprised.
Good story, reminds me of a favorite quotation: The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. — Albert Bartlett
FastSpring is happy to work with firms based in any country the US can do business with, including of course India.
Well I feel like a dumbass. I always thought the linode signin page looked like the default drupal signin form.

:/ I would like one rock to put my head under.
An Introduction to Outside-in Development
Hm. Seems like these Russkies are using some kind of "secret sauce" crawler/parser? And it does check "in stock" info on-the-fly? Plus stores are not even involved in the process of aggregating the inventory?
I just listened to this story on the radio and I distinctly heard them say "about $2 a month later". This could just be a transcription error, as it was produced for radio first.
> Imagine the fallout if banks suddenly had 100% reserve requirements. No more loans, for business or otherwise. Everyone would be charged hefty fees to keep their money in the bank, and no interest at all on their deposits (not that there's much to speak of nowadays anyway). Nobody would go for that.

Good comment and I'm upvoting you, but you're actually describing classical banking. Under classical banking, there's two different kinds of banks - "deposit banks" that you pay fees to hold your money for you which you can get whenever, and "loan banks" where you can only collect your money at certain times that pay interest (it works similarly to a bond).

We're in a system that's mixed - a "savings and loan banking" system. The problem is that your money is both loaned out, and you can collect it at any time. When too many people do this, it's a bank run, and the bank goes bankrupt leading to lots of problems and turmoil.

To make this system work, you need a central reserve bank and fiat currency that can be printed. Unfortunately, this inevitably gets abused by some unfrugal government sooner or later, leading to the country's financial system going through hell and back. Historically, every fiat currency has eventually gone down to zero value.

I think classical banking could work in the modern era - separating out into savings banks and loan banks. Interest rates would go up, and there'd be less speculative buying. It'd smooth the boom/bust cycle, at the expense of some growth during booms. I think it could work, but yeah, it'd be very different than things are now.
Show HN: Portrit - Your Facebook As Photos
Check out my blog post on the features and functionality of Portrit: http://blog.portrit.com/what-is-portrit

Today I am pre-announcing Portrit. Portrit is your Facebook as photos. Take Facebook, distill it to the simplest parts and put the focus on photos and you got Portrit.

I started making Portrit four months ago when I realized that Facebook's photo service really sucks. Photos on Facebook are tucked away behind many clicks from the home page. Once you do get to them you are greeted by a photo viewer that is dated to say the least. I knew there was a better way of viewing photos so that's when I started on Portrit.

Portrit is a persistent state web app that uses a single page. Around 95% of the code base runs as client side JavaScript. I am using LocalStorage and SessionStorage to cache all Facebook queries to make it fly.

I will be opening up a public beta in the next few days and of course HN will be the first place to get Beta keys.

Here is the landing page where you can signup for the beta: http://portrit.com
Thank you so much for the coverage, Brad.

Link: http://thenextweb.com/apps/2010/10/05/any-new-books-is-a-kil...
The article doesn't tell lies, but it certainly spices up a lot the story. Some points to clarify:

* The "finance minister who knew nothing about economics" was actually a very respected sociologist, a senator and a very intelligent and skilled politician. He later became known as president Fernando Henrique Cardoso. I.M.O. one of the best 3 presidents this country had.

* What Edmar Bacha, Pedro Malan and others did was to break inflation's inertia/momentum. A lot of people already knew it was necessary; but no one else knew how to do it.

* The article doesn't comment on the strict and cautious monetary policy implemented by Fernando Cardoso. It was as much important as the "fake money" trick.

* Big inflation was a huge tax on the poorest people. Because they were poor, they didn't have the knowledge and means to protect against rising prices. It is because inflation ended that they began consuming more and the country increased their internal markets.

[Edit]Wikipedia has a more comprehensive explanation about what we call here Plano Real : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plano_real [/Edit]