skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
20-mins delayed stock quotes are a comodity right now, and pretty cheap. it is the real-time quotes, (the one that every investor needs), that have been expensive.

There is also Level II quotes, with wich you can see trades going on in real time, but these are even more expensive, and brokers will only give them to active trader.

The whole system, is rigged in such a way, that if you are a casual investor, you have a lot less information on what's going on, then people that have these tools available. What Yahoo is doing, is actually pretty game changing, and makes a comodity something that was only available at a premium.
>I understand that there are limits and finite resources. If you're asking where to get the money from how about a little less on weapons development and a little more on medical research.

Sounds great. Only one problem: money is an illusion. The issue isn't money, it is supply of medical care as measured in units of doctor-hours.

The only way you can get doctor-hours for person X is to take them from person Y. Doctors already work far more than full time and are unlikey to work more. Getting more doctors will be tough, since medical schools are all full.

The issue is that medical care is a very scarce commodity. And you can't legislate scarcity away. Any proposed solution that doesn't create new doctor-hours (or find a substitute good for doctor-hours, such as nurse-hours) is a fraud.
You're right, and that is the behavior in Ruby 1.9.

I posted the example I did so that those unfamiliar with Ruby would see that the parent was a contrived example to use upto in that context. Sure it's awkward b/c it's not the intended semantics of the upto method, hence the ambiguity.

Maybe an ideal language would not introduce that sort of ambiguity... I personally slightly perfer the 1.9 syntax.
The all time best "tutorial" style book for learning introductory statistics is "Fundamentals of Applied Probability Theory" by Alvin Drake. Unfortunately it is out of print and used copies are hard to come by. It looks like you can get PDFs from MIT:

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and-Compute...

I have a math degree but didn't study any statistics. I used this book to teach myself. There may be more comprehensive books but this one is the best for learning the basics on your own.
Fair enough. I'm curious, what specific changes removed the simple minimalism of ol' reddit?

We were very careful to not add elements superfluously. For instance, the [browse] button had long been a scourge of mine. It was almost never clicked on and hid a great sort option (controversy) that was woefully underused as a result. Adding [controversial] to the horiz nav made a great feature (unique to reddit) more accessible and removed a crappy one (the browse button).

That's just one example, but it's my favorite, because I really hated the browse button :)
The Miracle Fruit, a Tease for the Taste Buds
If you want to save lives, you are wasting your time with medicine.

http://hanson.gmu.edu/CutMed.htm

To save lives and improve the quality of life, you'd be better off providing EVERY American with access to a gym.

I whole heartedly disagree. Why then do you suppose that people who live in the Third World (where I grew up) tend to die younger and die of easily curable/preventable diseases? Is it because they got more exercise working in the sugar cane fields swinging a machete for 16 hours?

I've read other studies that show that if you exercise 1-2 hours, 3 times a week, you end up living 5-7 years longer, but then, the extra 5-7 years that you live, you've spent in the gym exercising.

The article you quoted has a fundamental flaw in that it assumes that we can simply reduce an ICU stay at the end of life by 1-2 days. When a person is in the ICU, it's not quite so clear that a person is only going to live 1-2 days and then die. People want their family in ICU, because they want that person to have any and every chance at living.

Certainly he raises some good points about cost effective health care. No on would disagree that a bunch of low cost primary health clinics are going to be a much cheaper way to treat people than an ER or ICU. But, dismissing ER or ICU treatment as unnecessary is absurd.
Marty,

Government is not a tool, neither is "the market". People solve problems by creating organizations to address specific needs. If something comes from the government, you get one try (like doing an experiment with one petri dish). If the government does not offer a top-down approach, then often many people will try (so you get many petri dishes and a better experiment).

The same argument can be used in favor of healthcare policy at the state level rather than at the Federal level.

The idea that the Federal government offers the ideal approach to solving broad problems is fraught with a fundamental misunderstanding of science and the idea of any policy being at its core an experiment.

Sadly, those who advocate a single attempt at a solution are very far from thinking of the optimal solution as the result of experimental trial and error. In fact, they go so far as to claim that "free" healthcare (whatever that means) is a "right".

The market is not the savior, it's the scientific method!
I think Google is targeting people like you (who don't want to deal with sys admin issues) with their Google App Engine offering.
Help Firefox Set a World Record
What about:

- Free glasses for those who don't have 20/20 vision.

- Why not give free glasses for those who don't have 20/30 vision?

- What about free contact lenses?

- Wait, why not make daily disposables a right?

- While we're at it, what about nutritional counseling?

- Or what about a Federally funded delivery service for fresh organic produce?

My point is that if you are willing to define a "right" then you also have the burden of having to define "healthcare". What if person A would rather spend $10K of personal income on a motorcycle or home theater, but person B would rather spend it on extra long doctor visits? What if person C would settle for inferior healthcare b/c she practices some form of alternative medicine?

Bottom line is that if you are thinking of it as right and wrong then you haven't thought about the ramifications of the issue very deeply.
Here Comes Everybody
The paper [pdf]: http://web.mit.edu/hauser/www/Papers/Hauser_Urban_Liberali_B...
Nintendo is really cool in my book, if only for all the great hacker ideas they have spawned with the wii controllers.
Are you saying that people in the US don't get vaccinated already with or without "health insurance"?

BTW, the reason that someone can't sell a $20/month insurance policy that gets you the kind of basics you're talking about is b/c it's illegal. By law health insurance plans have to abide by all kinds of rules, one of which is that they must insure against the possibility that you develop a drug problem and all kinds of improbable things. The end result is that even the cheapest health insurance is quite expensive.

The problem is that government is already regulating the private market significantly. Add to that the tax loophole that lets employer-provided plan fees be taken from pre-tax income, and you have a set of incentives that have resulted in the mess we're in.

Also, top notch care at a level that was very elite in 1990 is now significantly cheaper than it was in 1990. The problem is that the average person wants cutting edge 2007 medicine, which is a lot more expensive.

Think about it this way, the more effective healthcare is, the more people will spend on it (not less). As procedures have a higher chance of succeeding, more people will decide to get them (who in the past would have gone to hospice).
"you ridiculous MBA-having suit-wearing dumber-than-a-monkey Friends-episode-reject J-Crew-catalog muppetfuckers.... you scum-gobbling weasel-brained magic-eight-ball-flipping clueless fucking nimrods."

Funniest thing I've read all week.
any link to the open source software package?
Slashdot was the first I know of.
Ahh, well in that case you've got all sorts of new problems.

If it's structured so that the fund owns the share and the 100 people own the fund then you have the problem that there's all sorts of regulations saying that only "accredited investors" (ie. very rich people) can invest in venture capital funds.

Or if it's structured so that the 100 people own small shares directly, you're setting the company up for all sorts of troubles in the future. In particular, a lot of later-stage VCs and/or potential acquirers won't like it if there's a hundred tiny shareholders floating around -- too much potential trouble involved.

That said, there might be a way to do it, and I'm not a lawyer, etc.
It's not about us, ask yourself? Listen to your inner-voice? If nothing helps then as they say "Fast, easy and good. Pick two." :)
We should note that this kind of data isn’t going to be useful for security purposes - the US Customs office has invested in a $15 Billion tracking system that (hopefully) leaves this one in the dust.

Wouldn't put too much faith in that...
"The issue isn't money, it is supply of medical care as measured in units of doctor-hours"

Except it isn't. The cost of the supplies necessary for treatment (drugs, medical equipment) is at least as big of an issue.

Also, wages for doctors are trending downwards thanks to HMO's. I'm not saying that's an inherently bad thing, but it's definitely not what you would expect if doctor-hours were the scarcest resource in the system.
College students' online behavior mimics people on TV 'reality' shows
are reality TV shows be a good place to advertise social networking sites?
Would be more cool if leaning rotated instead of just moving left or right.
Not for free, from my research. I clicked a link at the bottom of a stock quote, and got this.

http://billing.finance.yahoo.com/realtime_quotes/signup?.src...
I second your request. I couldn't find one in the paper, and the one in the article is useless.
Reminds me of the debate between Static and Dynamic typing. I think this is an argument for optional static typing as in Strongtalk.
Teen figures out how to decompose plastic bags in 3 months
Widgetbox Releases New In-Widget Promotion Unit
sounds good, but they are based on free data. If it works out for them, someone will jump it and offer it for free. Even though there is not much reason...
sadly, I agree with you.
"if the release of the ''virus'' prompts measures like a tightening of computer security, the country's economy could be harmed, rather than helped"

How far we have fallen.
Wernher von Braun: A 20th-Century Faust
How are "super-carbon-harbouring-trees" any more dangerous than "super-flesh-growing-bovines"?

Remember that transportation is less than 1/5th of the US's use of petroleum. Since petroleum will be getting more and more scarce, something has to become the new chemical feedstock. Plants are an obvious choice.
If the stories about used car lots full of SUVs are true, there are already economic incentives at play.
>Why then do you suppose that people who live in the Third World (where I grew up) tend to die younger and die of easily curable/preventable diseases?

The vast majority of those diseases are prevented in the developed world by non-medical means. A doctor didn't prevent me from dying of malaria, DDT eliminated malaria in the US before I was born. Doctors didn't cure my cholera, other people flushing preventing me from being exposed to it. The NY/NJ water utilities prevented me from being exposed to water-born diseases and my refrigerator/consistent food supply protected me from spoiled food.

>The article you quoted has a fundamental flaw in that it assumes that we can simply reduce an ICU stay at the end of life by 1-2 days. When a person is in the ICU, it's not quite so clear that a person is only going to live 1-2 days and then die. People want their family in ICU, because they want that person to have any and every chance at living.

True, which is why the ICU study alone isn't conclusive.

However, the RAND health insurance experiment (discussed in the article) doesn't have that flaw. Randomly chosen people consumed different levels of health care, and few statistically significant differences were observed.
ECMAScript 4 to Classic Javascript translator
The stock market would have to be privately run, and the company running it would set rules for all listed companies ( such as stock purchased by investors is preferred, employee shares cannot be sold until certain milestones are hit, etc). There would be a cost of compliance with these rules, but I bet it would be more efficient for the startups than raising money through the existing Angel/VC route. Some of the compliance could be automatic, such as reporting software that integrated with Salesforce or Google Analytics.
"If something comes from the government, you get one try"

I tend to be skeptical of "progressive" political thinking, but must admit I was impressed by a quote I just heard in a documentary about Franklin Roosevelt. When someone asked of one of his policies, "Well, what if it doesn't work?" FDR's response was "Well, then we'll need to try something else."

I don't hear that from either left or right. The only correct answer for a politician today is whatever their ideology dictates. Obama comes closest to escaping this box, occasionally, but even he has to pander to his base at times, I think.

More so than any one particular gaffe, I think that Bush's biggest shortcoming has been his total unwillingness to "try something else."
A fast electric roadster for less than half the price of a Tesla
Actually, there are special SEC regulations for stock markets for private companies. There are some extra restrictions on them* but they are there. Look up Goldman Sachs trading platform for unregistered securities.

* To my (sparse) knowledge, the major restrictions are that only 400 owners max for any 1 company and all investors have to be institutional investors with minimum assets of over $100 million. Still, the traded companies have far lower regulatory requirements.
The problem I see is in needing a few clicks before you can guess the user's cognitive style. I would assume users visit the most important pages first, so by the time you can guess at their cognitive style they've probably gone as far as they'll go. (And I think it'd disruptive to change the content of pages they've already visited.)

Maybe browsers themselves could determine users' cognitive style over time and send that info when you visit a site.
This is how I see it: The startup scene is like a big mall where one quarter have shops selling stuff that people are looking for, and the other 3/4 are borrowing money to buy lottery tickets. Every now and then, one of them will win the lottery, driving the others into an even greater frenzy.

And people like Arrington and Graham are on the sidelines with megaphones cheering on the lottery ticket buyers because, it turns out, they are earning a 6% cut on ticket sales.
Nothing to be sad about. This 'feature' is not specific to the US government.
S3 is not a CDN, but it is a cheap way to deliver static content. Do you care more about performance or price?
http://mitsloan.mit.edu/vc/do-main.php
While I do agree with you, I'd like to point out that Google is based on free data too.
I like the post - loved the presentation as well - the longest presentation that I have ever sat through on the web.

I realize his arguments are sort of drummed up for effect, but I thought the analogy between VC and patronage was weak. Its true they were both systems whereby rich people would pay talented poorer people to make things for them, but the further connection - the reason for the payments and the building, doesn't hold up. Do VC's really want to build companies to feel good about themselves, or to show off, or to look better? Only if those companies make money. Pets.com was a stupid idea and if anything the VCs that invested in it have probably never lived it down. Not too successful as a vanity project. Also, the VCs aren't investing their own money, so they are responsible to do more than look good, while those whose actual cash is invested (angel's aside) aren't well known - nor do they appear to seek out reknown.

Anyway - I figure this wasn't a legal case he was pleading, just my .02
I think going directly from shared hosting to EC2 is a bad idea unless you're an experienced sysadmin. Try shared -> (managed) VPS -> dedicated server -> EC2.
Doctors are kept artificially short in supply by the US medical school system. This is very, very fixable.
I agree. It could be a false perception, but it seems there used to be a far greater amount of start-up reviews. What was a great way to discover new and interesting products/services seems to have changed into editorial on the valley, technology issues, and financials.

I liked this when it started, as it was a little bit of the "behind the scenes" of the products/services I liked learning about. I think it has since gotten a bit out of hand.
Talk to a lawyer; don't act on YC comments. For instance, Google for Brad Feld explaining that nonaccredited investors (including friends and family) can rescind their investments at any time.

Brad also comments on large companies having issues with holdings by nonaccredited investors. I have direct experience with this: I executed options in a startup in the mid-90s and was able to negotiate a significant premium on my stock holding when the startup's acquirer refused to allow nonaccredited stockholders.

This just seems like something not to fuck around with.
Mac OS X 10.5.3: sync Google Contacts with Address Book
I'm pretty sure I did stick to the facts and opinions derived from them. Vista was purchased at a rate eclipsing any other OS in history. It's being called a disaster due to corporate and consumer inertia, which would be factors even if it were the greatest OS ever built.

It's stable, and a lot of people like it. It's not Microsoft's finest moment by any means.

Do you really think that the press is not overly favorable toward Apple due to Steve Jobs's long history of giving priority access to people who consistently write good reviews for their products? Even a lot of Apple fans agree with me that fanboys are numerous and annoying, and that their ethic is sneaking into the media.

And quite a few people take me seriously it seems. I get a pretty large number of pageviews for a private blog, and tens of upvotes when most are posted here.
How about option #3: look for an Erlang job and apply for it.
D6 Highlights: Jeff Bezos
Yang, Decker Talk Yahoo At D6 - Yang: "I like Google"
This is useful mostly because it debunks some of the incorrect and unfounded speculation about the topic.
ComScore Buys M:Metrics For $44 Million to Measure the Mobile Web
I agree with your problem, Changing the site after a few clicks means the user will wonder if they are on the same site...

- alternatively they could only make the changes for returning users based on their previous visit..
I am pretty amazed that PG said what he has always been saying since 20 years ago. Thanks to New York Times to open their archive. I was then in the other side on Earth. I remember then my friends and I were so impressed by what RTM did then. (Taiwan then had not yet been hooked up into Internet, we only had a BITNET in my university reserved for CS and graduate school faculty and students, and I was a sophomore in Physics dept with two VT200 to VAX with 9600 baud line, and to us some guy could write such a cool program in a naughty sense was like GOD.) I never had a chance to read this article in New York Times in print then. I was too lazy to walk into our library to read the archive. It is really funny 20 years later to read this piece. And it also reminds me how many things have changed since Internet becomes a commodity in first world.

-- edit--

Now I need to imagine what will happen if 3 billion people in the world connected with Internet in next 10 years.
casual investor

Have to be pretty darn casual. Sign up for ameritrade and you have real time quotes automatically. (I forget the minimum account, but it's probably a thousand or two.) I had a good month of 30+ trades a few years ago and they gave me level II quotes for ever after.
I like the new drop down unit. It is non invasive an seems to have the potential to provide relevant content that i would be interested in. I look forward to seeing the updates coming!
i dont know why people over here are giving an impression that its difficult or not that possible - i think it is 100% possible - if Angels can do it and VCs can do it and Seed funding people can do it then why not you ...

according to pg's essay http://www.paulgraham.com/startupfunding.html - there are 3 phase of funding - Seed, Angel and then VC. YC model comes under pre-seed funding phase (am i right?), nevertheless what is interesting is that there is a GAP between all these phases. It would be nice if someone fills one of these gap... they might be called as micro-seed or micro-angel or micro-vc or pre-angel or pre-vc etc... but there is definitely this gap to be taken care of by some smart investor(s). Just recently I was talking about this to one of my friend and he did showed little bit of interest, so i'm sure you will also find few investors. If nothing works then just find couple of partners and get in to pre-seed funding, though you should have some talent to pick brilliant ideas/people/companies to invest in... sometime its like looking for needle in a haystack (but not impossible). Good Luck.

EDIT: read pg's essay which i'm sure will motivate you : http://www.paulgraham.com/googles.html : you just need to create a business model that makes win-win game for all.
yeah, they just announced that the 3mil requests was over, and they are going to something closer to MT and saying 'compute units' (I was at over 6.5mil requests last month).

They don't do good clustering or good scaling, They are a good solution for small-time resellers, and that's about it.

Small time resellers that would have small sites and need multiple platforms (php 4,5 IIS 6,7, mysql/mssql).

even then, like I said, downtime is a serious issue.
I am frustrated because I have typed up 6 comments that I promptly erased because I don't know if I would be violating an NDA I signed. Great article though!

Thinking on this I will probably think twice before ever signing another NDA, it is extremely frustrating not to be able to talk on such and interesting subject.
I'm a small investor and i get free real time streaming data for Euronext Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris from my broker. It also shows the outstanding orders in the order book. It's fun to watch but if you observe closely it is very obvious that trading (instead of investing) is a game for the big boys who use intricate financial models and a massive amount of computing power. It's like competing directly with Google.
Windows 7 multi-touch demo isn't enough to save Microsoft's OS
Until Microsoft stops featuring resource hogging gimmicks, and starts giving its users real, compelling reasons to look forward to Windows 7, enthusiasm will continue to slide for an OS fast-tracked to save Microsoft from the last one.
VC Activity reflects slower economy
Dup. See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=202509
You say how the article is flamebaiting, yet the last line of your comment was extremely flammable. To answer your question, if it was honest: I am a hacker and I use Vista daily. I am sure I'm not alone.
Well, I sometimes live (summer, mostly) in mid-Connecticut (Westbrook) at our old house there, and I've been called a hacker; not sure how ambitious...
Everything I've read here has some validity. Some additional questions:

If you're already not happy at BIC, how do you know you'll be happy in a new department in the same company?

Also, how do you know the technical level of the "technical" team you'd be working with? Have you spoken to a few people on that team? Sometimes the alpha geeks in an organization turn out to be less impressive than you thought.

And what kind of timeline are you looking at? How long would you stay in either position? Months? Years?