skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Bill Gates: How a Geek Changed the World (iPlayer)
"Fiona Bruce presents the definitive profile of Bill Gates as he prepares to step down next week from full-time involvement with Microsoft"

Microsoft 1hr documentary interview with Bill Gates,
Okay, I think there is a misunderstanding. I want a feature equivalent to 'find as you type' in Firefox. Just start typing while the focus point is on the content area of the tab, and the first search result gets highlighted. No need for command+F.

This is really the main reason firefox is my default browser.
Scientists explain why the Large Hadron Collider won't destroy us all
I use both. Safari's still got a better look and feel, I think, so that's my default.
Firefox is a -beast- on the mac. It drags and constantly seems to be using 5% of CPU, doesn't do fonts right, and hangs and lags a lot. So, i use Safari about 80% of the time.

However, it's got a lot of great plugins, so I use it for any questionable stuff and for proxied traffic, etc.
Online Shopping Cart
Techwave.com for the Best E-commerce Solution, e-commerce shopping cart software, e-commerce web site design, E-commerce software packages.
I don't buy the story: it sounds like a fabrication.
Scribd sucks: it's slow to load, slow to scroll, and ugly to boot. It hosts files, yes, but it does so very badly.
There's not much news content here, just a claim. Where's the link to the paper? Where's the summary of the paper? How does one identify it as the selfish gene? I'm not discounting Dawkins here, more that the article has no substance whatsoever.
Yeah but that's the point. :)
The population of fools who think they can get rich quick is related to the incidence of fools who do get rich quick. If no one gets rich spamming Craigslist and everyone instead gets poorer because it's too expensive, then no one will spam Craigslist.

Combine the per-post micropayment with the forfeiture of your account balance one if you are caught spamming and I think this would be an effective deterrent. There will be fools who will still spam. They will just do it elsewhere.

It's like the two guys in the woods confronted by a bear. One ties his running shows and the other asks if he could really outrun the bear. The first guy says: "I don't have to outrun the bear, just you!"
00:27:37 - Fiona Bruce "One of the things that critics say now [2008] is Microsoft is as agressive as a tiny startup fighting for its life" ...Bill Gates "...thats a compliment"
In the case of iTunes, they've chosen not to compete. In the case of Android, they have chosen to compete.
First half-hour too focused on Microsoft/Bill wealth, but Bill is likable about it "in the next year I expect to give away $24BN back to society [i.e. Africa etc]", "money is not important, having a job that is fun ... and you like doing is".
Granted, the large corporation in question may truly have inefficiencies and other problems. But let's be fair: A prototype is not equal to a multi-million dollar corporation. That's like comparing a seed to an orange.
This seems like a gross misunderstanding of Richard Dawkins's argument. The neo-darminist claim is that all genes are inherently selfish. In order for a gene to survive, that gene must have a phenotypic effect that maximizes the survival of the gene. Because natural selection occurs at the level of the gene, altruistic genes disappear from the gene pool. So I don't know what the scientist quoted in the article could possibly mean when he says he has discovered the selfish gene. (I hope it is not necessary to point out on this forum that selfish genes have nothing to do with the selfishness or altruism of an individual organism. Selfish genes can produce altruistic people if that's the phenotypic effect that helps them survive.)
hilarity

Speaking of which,

http://tinyurl.com/4pdeyj
Infographic: How Obama Reinvented Campaign Finance (pdf)
Defiantly.

Digg has coped "OK" because you can just go into the technology/science sections and find what your interested in, but the front page stories and the comments which go a long with them however, make the average Myspace page look sophisticated. I guess that's as good as it gets when you open your universal service to the world, along with the stupid people which occupy it, with all their cheap-gags.

I just hope Hacker News will stay as close to it is now, for years to come! :)
Ask PG: Why redirect all HackerNews submitted PDFs through Scribd?
I just tried to post a PDF infographic (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=223497), but deleted the post twice because the url was redirected through scribd automatically. In one case, using a URL "http://foo.pdf" caused an error in the automatic redirect. The domain for the submitted link is always labeled "scribd.com" even if it's coming from the authors, Xplane.com.

Shouldn't a Scribd interface for PDFs be optional instead of injected into any PDF link? You could use an intermediate page that has a link to original PDF (as submitted) as well as a link to the Scribd interface.
Yes. Especially because Scribd sucks.
I did answer your question, but now you're asking a different one. I have no idea how "important" protein structure prediction will ultimately become; I just know that it's currently pretty useless, and getting worse.

My first comment was that compiler optimization is about a thousand times more useful than protein folding. I stand by that remark. However, at the beginning of my long answer, I mistakenly wrote that protein structure prediction is not important, when I had meant to write that it is not useful: protein folding is an important biological process, but protein structure prediction is not particularly useful, for the reasons I've mentioned.

It's not my place to say which area of research is more important. That's a subjective question, and the answer depends on your value system, your outlook, and your willingness to wait. Obviously, I think that compiler optimization is more useful, because compilers are actually in use today. In 100 years...who knows?

That said, I think you're laboring under the assumption that compiler optimization is a "mature" field, and that it is "solved" (and therefore less important), whereas protein folding is not "solved" (and therefore more important). The thing is, people have been doing protein folding research for at least fifty years -- it is a very mature field, and the low-hanging fruit has been picked. I think that a new researcher is equally likely to make significant gains in either field, but that the potential for practical impact is still much greater in compiler design.
Webkit nightlies have an enhanced Web Inspector that's nearly as good as Firebug.
2005 study on markups in jewerly business (2.5x!)
Except that digg looks beautiful and is a joy to use. I'd like to use the phrase "compared to myspace" because it makes my point clearer in this context but it also cheapens digg. So I'll say "compared to just about anybody."
Life is a balance, if you are going 100% you are going to burn out. So take a little break, don't worry work will be right there for you in the few seconds it takes to enjoy the humor in the site.
He seems to have an obsession with telling people how bad scribd is. Maybe he works on the Adobe Acrobat team?
Strangely, I think a lot of funded startups are more realistic about the challenges involved. It's well documented. We read about flameouts every day.

All of the bootstrapped businesses that get 6 months into their business and realize it's a much longer road just sorta fade away. We don't hear much about 'em, don't read about 'em... But a lot of people have latched onto the (very inspiring) story of 37s and a few other bootstrap stars. Good on 'em.

The volume of people chasing the (more realistic) 37s-style dream is high, but I've been struck by the unreasoned optimism-- not the "we can build something really good" optimism (which is required, I think) but the "we'll be rolling in money within 6 months". Thus the post!

Regarding abridging my post to say "focus on profit earlier" - nope. I don't think I'd go back and go that route, even if I could... But that's probably another post.
He wrote $200MM in revenue in 9 months with "minor" loss of $10MM. Imagine his demands if he really projected $180MM in profits! :)
wow, snore.
Next Gen Code Editor prototype
About a year ago, I saw a screencast for a next gen code editor. Instead of entering code into a text file, you visually manipulated the states of the variables in the IDE. And as the program executed, the visual showed how the states of the variables would change.

I've been searching for that demo and can't find it. The list of keywords returns too many results and it's not in the top 100.

Does any one remember anything like this? I think it was someone's phd thesis.
Photographer Documents Secret Satellites -- All 189 of Them
hahahhahahaa
Safari update fixes "carpet bomb" flaw
Researchers disclose Firefox 3 flaws
BackTrack 3 Final has been released
FF3 expands the page horizontally. FF2 cuts it, so it fits on the page.
Another problem with this is that to view the document you need Flash and if you want to download the PDF version then you need to have an account with scribd and login. I am also wondering what's the reason behind this. It is not like YC has to host the PDF file. If it is to promote scribd (I am not sure whethere it is a YC startup) then that's pretty evil.
George Dyson at the birth of the computer
Scribd is one of the yc-funded startups.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scribd
I was about to say "what's the bid deal? there is a download link etc etc" but then I checked and realized these links go right to a view where the flash pdf viewer occupies the whole page. There's no obvious modification of the URL query string to make it show in the view where there is a download link. So if you see a big mangled attempt at loading flash instead of flash for whatever reasons, there's no other option.

This page has an acceptable view where there is a link to download:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/3292935/THE-LITTLE-MERMAID

But the automatic scribd links don't show it in this view.
It makes me dizzy. I've had a few Molsons, so that can't help, but the flickering make me uneasy.
For me, it is far behind Firebug. I really miss keyboard shortcuts (at least for inspecting XHRs, please) and layout HTML/CSS inspection (not just highlighting elements while browsing tree).
Enjoyable or not, this was on the front page of cnn.com. I don't think anyone needed to come here to see this item.
I find scribd's feature set to be useful, and pdf's to be a pain to deal with. While there are times I like to have a file on my system, 99.7% of the time bookmarking a pdf on scribd in delicious is much more user friendly to me.
tptacek's blog has some good info on this:

http://www.matasano.com/log/1070/updates-on-drew-yaos-terrib...
I happen to prefer it. On every computer I use (all of which run some variant of Linux), Acrobat Reader opens in a pop up window, which is annoying and slow. I generally simply avoid all PDF links for this reason, but Scribd links aren't quite as offensive. I'd certainly always prefer my web to be HTML only (with a few pictures of cats), but if you've got to send me to a PDF, it might as well be one that lives in the browser.

I'm not sure why there's been such a backlash against Scribd lately. It's just something you read, you know? Neither PDF nor Scribd is enjoyable to use...so why complain about Scribd? It makes it more convenient and fast for some of us, and doesn't really impact others very much. Just because you happen to find Acrobat Reader slightly less annoying than Scribd (because I know you can't find reading PDFs enjoyable) doesn't mean you should be able to make the experience here at HN less consistent. I know that PDF links at HN will always be reasonably fast and available on my machines without having a new window open. If you could choose to provide a PDF directly, I would no longer click on PDFs, because I would never know whether I was getting the slow and irritating popup window, or the much less slow and mostly non-irritating Scribd interface.
http://subtextual.org
Firefox 3- it's more stable, Del.icio.us integration is better on it, the awesome bar is awesome, and Greasemonkey works with it.

A lot of Greasemonkey plugins are pretty useless, but GoogleAutoPager is fantastic. It makes it so that Google searches are on an infinite page, as you scroll down the plugin gets the next page of results and slots them in so you never have to click next page

http://lifehacker.com/software/google/download-of-the-day-go...

Also, FF3 has Firebug. Game, set, and match.
I worked on an IDE that only allow refactoring - the demos at least were nice, even if ultimately it didn't go anywhere!

http://dynamicaspects.org/domain-j/demo.asp
As you can see, a majority of the HN-users want some kind of change to the way Scribd is used here (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=175378). At least the choice between the scribd- and the pdf-link.

And there certainly are enough opinions on this subject: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=222520, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=222866 and http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=217682.
I think some part of the Scribd hating of late is that — at least on osx — pdfs are actually pretty enjoyable.

Scribd does a good thing given that they have to operate online through flash, but having pdfs actually be convenient at an OS level trumps that.

I know it's no help for those stuck using Adobe, but it is, from my experience, some part of an explanation.
How many of you would use a digital library?
I mean a true digital library that has non-public works that haven't been expired yet. I've been working out a legal contraption in my mind combined with some locative ideas, and I might have some ideas for working it out. Anyway, this would be an ad supported venture.

I'm not certain how I'd make the media accessible, I definitely don't want a scribd situation, and I want to leave the option of downloading for use on PDAs and other devices.

I guess my question is...should I bother? I came up the idea out of pure frustration in trying to find a Gore Vidal novel I wanted on the internet. Now I'm getting a damn library card tomorrow (today technically).

If you would make use of this, how frequently would you do so?
"Melissa Chang of Pure Incubation recently listed five excellent reasons why a recession was a great time to start a company.

"But you don't have to wait for a recession. There has never been a better time to start a company than now..."

Recessions are bad for companies. Not good. Bad. Being 'forced' to 'be leaner' and such through numerous recessionary inconveniences is like environmental coercion.

There's a reason seedlings germinate when spring is coming.
Though in some cases he may have been in error, I disagree:

http://zapatopi.net/kelvin/quotes/
it should be my choice what i want to do with a pdf. viewing in scribd is one of many things i might want to do. yc shouldn't make that decision for me. scribd should release a browser plugin instead (if they haven't), and leave it up to users
Guys, relax. PG has already told us he's taking the feature out ... should be gone in a few days.

Incidentally, we never wanted iPaper to be implemented how it was on Hacker News. Our recommended implementation is always to give users a choice between iPaper and the original format. We asked PG to change it several times, but he was too busy creating the next 12 Googles, not that I blame him.

JDF
President, Scribd
I still say it's a low class move to laugh at this guys expense.
obviously, tipjoy is not a way to monetize your website :D
But there are like, infinity places to find ridiculous, hilarious stuff on the net, and one hacker news. What we were was precious!
Why is it one of the worst? Why should it “be Firefox with Webkit”?

Who are these mysterious “they”?

In Camino, I use the keyboard to navigate, and my third mouse button opens links in new tabs, with no problems.
is it any less true or applicable now than it was two years ago?
24 out of 30 items on the front page are dead on serious items. That is not enough?
Anyone successfully running the patched version w/o segfaults?
(I'm not really disagreeing with you, but) you have the benefit of hindsight.

Admittedly, I haven't invented any great stuff, but if I were to claim that it'll never be possible for a human being to travel at greater than light speed, am I going to look narrow-minded in n years time? (where n=10, 100, 1000)
Building online communities isn't as simple as it sounds
Numbers on Sustainable Energy
Ahah I see what you mean. It never occurred to me to do that, but it's a cool trick. Firefox does have the edge on Safari in terms of features.

I guess the equivalent in Safari would be to cmd+f, type your word or phrase, press escape, then press enter. A couple extra steps but it does the trick.
On the iPhone I have no problems with PDF, but I can't open scribd at all.
Tyranny of the Power Law (and Why We Should Become Eclectic)
Very much agree with the order of magnitude argument. I never understood all this economic lighting fad: i use economical light bulbs because they save me money, not because they save the planet. Everything I save this way is probably less then one brake of a freight train.

What irritates me more is how much we allow people to push their irrational arguments over us and let them dominate the discussion. I strongly doubt Greenpeace hasn't made the same math, they just don't care. And still they can make someone be afraid to be labeled as pro-nuclear. Why? Why do we allow obvious flawed theories be pushed around until they become common sense?
Subtext is really cool!

If throughout the video presentation you were wondering, like me, if it was mouse-only, the FAQ says:

"Subtext 2 has been designed to be much less mouse-centric than the prior version. Although not yet implemented, it should be possible to do everything from the keyboard."
i think what tomjen was referencing was that java already has anonymous inner classes.
Scavenger Hunt Ideas
Scavenger hunt ideas
I certainly wouldn't have seen it on the front page of cnn.com -- CNN is not something I regularly check online.
There's a very different tone here. The articles used to be focused on building the future. Now it's moving increasingly towards shallow analysis of tech news. It's just less interesting. Nasty, sniping submissions like the OP are the next step. It's only a few more 'till lolcats.
The main issue here is I don't want a compromise in my shower. Not for hygienic reasons, that's a practical matter and can be addressed as such, but because hot baths/showers are a mark of civilization, of the fact that we live in the environment we choose.

The transportation problem at least can be solved. Besides public transportation I think one solution would be to think local more. When hiring somebody I'm factoring in their commute time - it influences a lot of their long term job satisfaction.
That's the one. Thankx!
Come on, Jeremy... I think all (or nearly all) of the Yahoo Pipes developers quit. From what I hear, management refused to support their project beyond the demo/PR stage. Some of them work for Google now.
very irrilevant and moreover, it's fake.The account has been created 24 hours before publishing this crap.
I've studied the ideas around Subtext for a while. It's worth reiterating(if the videos and papers don't make it clear enough) that Subtext is really focused on exploiting the benefits of decision tables by expanding upon them and adding the complete set of constructs in addition to logic.

Decision tables, by the way, _work_. If you haven't tried them, it will only take a brief perusal of Wikipedia to get the concept. Their benefit is that all logic is represented in a single table: if every entry in the table has been filled, all cases are covered. Much easier to read than linear code, much less prone to error.

You can write your own decision table by hand in a spreadsheet program. But above a certain level of complexity(the point where you really, really want correct logic the first time) a complete decision table becomes very time-consuming to write by hand. By design it will still give more correct results than just hacking away, but automated approaches become very appealing. Decision tables were researched for a while in the 60s and early 70s, but were abandoned presumably as the field moved on to more prestigious topics.

Subtext's so-called "schematic table" does much to add the necessary automation - the next step in making it production-worthy would be to port such a system to output code in existing languages.
PDFs are very nice on Gnome too. The default reader is super-fast and PDFs really feel like nicely formatted text files. PDF simply rocks.

Why, oh why, don't they convert everything into PDFs or (better) HTML?!

Scribd is solving a real problem which exists but their approach is the most perverted way imaginable... View your docs... through a FLASH PLUGIN! Even converting them into high-res JPEGs would have been alot better.
Oh, I'm not saying they're right either, but at least they don't sprinkle all this "easy", "simple", and "work less" over everything.
Lolcats were #1 already - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=119807
Sounds sensible, but... how common is it, really? If it isn't, what's the missing ingredient that makes it a difficult transition that many people never seem to accomplish?
I didn't mean for people to focus on "protein folding", that was just an example of something that scientists do that's computationally intensive.

I find myself in my early 30s knowing an awful lot about database applications, but zero domain knowledge. I can go into any field and implement a spec, but I don't understand any of it. Someone wants a graph of this data in their application, I'll give them a great graph, but I look at it and it's just squiggly lines to me. I just feel like I'm missing something.
I'm getting sick of this SV crap... Hello?! Since when recording a moving picture on tape is breaking news? And what does "tight community" and "internet" have to do with it?
Safari seems buggy to me. For example, go to Google Docs, open a document and tell me what key combination jumps to the beginning/end of the line. (The answer seems to be none.) Same for Firefox. Opera is the only browser where this simple "feature" works. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Well I remember learning Python in one day. If I could do the same for biochemistry, it would be fantastic.

Maybe it is only the lack of hands on tutorials that is the problem, though. There are tomes of biochemistry books, but I suspect after reading them you are still not sure what to do.
What people seem to be forgetting is that the US ad market is the biggest by far, and thus the opportunity to make money isn't in the global market.

Ask Peanut Labs (formerly xuqa.com) how much money they made as the biggest social network in Turkey, and why they changed their business model completely...
It's been on my To-Do list for ruby-doc.org for, oh, forever.

One issue is in making sure that as the API changes you can still correctly associate past comments to API where still appropriate.

(The auto-svn c/o is in place at least ...)

Not a fan of automatically merging comments back into the source code though. Better to just have someone sensible update the docs when needed and submit a patch.
Ah, you're right. I was just so excited by the tight investment deadline that I had no time for silly differences like between "expenses" and "losses." And I thought I was being conservative by doubling expenses, too.
The writer constantly talks about the number of inches his screens have, as opposed to their actual resolution.

While his 17" desktop monitor may be too small for him, a laptop with a 17" screen should be enough.
The default for Aquamacs is one buffer per window but theres an easily accessable option ( Options > Show Buffer in new Frame ) that you can toggle to get the behavior you want.
How does using "PC" help the lay audience? Would simply using the word "computer" been confusing?

Now the lay audience goes away with false understanding. Who wins with that?