skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>Google would've been pretty useless if you had to pay before seeing the results.

Debatable. If Google really did provide superior search results people would probably be willing to pay for it.

At this point, I would consider paying for good search results. Google right now is more of a search for people who pay for a lot of SEO rather than a more objective form of search.

Google Premium, for a small fee, could remove the ads and go further to eliminate SEO content.

IMO this is going to be the future for many software companies. There will be the mass market version which relies on ad support and there will be the premium product which is paid for directly and provides a superior result.

It has already begun in many sectors. Free stuff catches on quickly but in the long run, quality costs money, and there WILL be a place for quality.
Ask HN: Were you saved by a teacher?
In thinking about a recent comment I made ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2059752 ), i was wondering how many of us have been given second chances by teachers.

It seems to me, being entrepreneurial or a hacker requires dealing with a massive amount of daily failure. Yet, the school system is very poor at enabling this (which is probably why we can't teach entrepreneurial/hacking).

So, I'm wondering how many of us were saved by a fair or progressive teacher (as opposed to a crazy pedantic person)?
a) The author is Russian, and his article translated. He probably doesn't speak or read English.

b) The linked article predates Jason Santa Maria's article.

c) The linked article is still interesting, even if a and b weren't true.
It could be because G. Austin is a fairly common first initial and last name. I'm pwelch@gmail.com and every damn P. Welch in the world thinks they have my email address.
If you don't have the required visas for entry to the destination country the destination country will charge the origin country the cost of sending you back. Apart from the cost it's just a lot less hassle all round if a passport problem is discovered before you actually travel.
We are hiring web 2.0 product managers with experience in B2C fashion business and crack UI/UX designers. My email is knandyal at stylewok dot calm.
Free is a fad.

(We should differentiate free in this sense from actual "Free Software" which is a completely different ballgame than what we're discussing here.)

Having your customers pay you directly for a service is the natural state of most business arrangements for very good reasons - the big one being the lack of any conflicts of interest which erode product quality.

The software industry is still a baby and the online services industry is a newborn.

As the industry matures quality will matter more and this will lead to customers paying directly for software entirely to get access to a higher quality product.

It has already begun with Apple, both hardware and software.

Free is the dominate fad right now but it won't last forever.
This is true, but it does take certain qualities in the slides, such as not re-stating what is being said word for word, and including relevant & enlightening graphics that show what the speaker cannot say.

Of course, you could argue knowing how to make such a slideshow is part of being a good speaker, because it is all about creating a slideshow to support, augment, improve & fill the holes in your talk.
The Sun Quentin buildings enclose a long, crescent-shaped central courtyard.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/-miko-/1001185172/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fallenpegasus/2979890601/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/j3ss1c/2395178005/

Here is a series of shots showing the new interior. Looks like the nice private offices are history, in favor of open-plan.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicksieger/3312863160/

If you continue searching, you can cut out some clutter by using Sun's identifier for the two Menlo Park campuses: "MPK".
Let's not mince words. Gruber wasn't insisting that no human being would ever line up for an Android phone.
The (current) top answer, by Michael Wolfe, is certainly a good one, but it's just begging for additional comment. So:

> No, shut up. People don't use that crap. They just want a folder. A folder that syncs.

That's what I want. And I have indeed been using Dropbox for some time. But it has been my experience that the great majority of people out there really don't understand folders. So I have to wonder ....

> Not a single person on Earth wakes up in the morning worried about deriving more value from their Windows Live login.

Indeed. And this principle is much more widely applicable. So while people at Company X spend their days thinking, "How can we show customers how they can derive more value from their relationship with us?" not one single customer is thinking, "How can I derive more value from my relationship with Company X?"

> why not leverage the full power of the web? With HTML 5 you can drag and drop files, you can build intergalactic dashboards of stats showing how much storage you are using, you can publish your files as RSS feeds and tweets, and you can add your company logo!

Dropbox actually does a big chunk of that.

> Most of the world doesn't sit in front of their browser all day.

Not sure about that one. It's literally true, of course. Most of the people in the world use computers only a little or not at all. But those of us who do use them a lot, seem to spend a great deal of time using web browsers.
It sounds like he deserved a C+ or perhaps a B-, which would have been fair and wouldn't have done any serious damage.
How do you define "personal irresponsibility"? How do you measure it?

You don't define personal irresponsibility, you change the word to one with less emotional baggage, that means something extremely close, that's easily measured.

High discount rate.
A correction: as far as I recall the author studied in US at some point of time.
Alas, another beautiful theory ruined by ugly fact.
A ton of TED conferences are great examples of good slide presentations. Most of the "slides" are images without text. His article itself had images. If I was listening to that article orally, I'd appreciate the two different PowerPoint icons on a slide, but nothing else.
Don't you think it's a bit over the top to call the lack of a feature on a free service blatantly anti-consumer?

Microsoft's online services division loses $100M-$200M each quarter.

Google retains the data indefinitely because it's in their best interests not because of their dedication to the user. Why else would they retain even what the user deletes?
Does this seem to anyone else like a trivial potshot intended entirely to convince us that Techcrunch isn't AOL's lapdog?
Learn a more expressive language! ;)
For context purposes:

"I was referring to how Google should respond to content farms. Historically, Google has been willing to take manual action on webspam. With the rest of search quality and ranking, Google tries to use algorithms as much as we can. So the distinction of whether something is spam vs. low-quality is an important one within Google." - Matt_Cutts

Here's a good example, coming from eHow:

http://www.ehow.com/how_5908881_tie-shoe-lace.html
http://www.ehow.com/how_5416121_tie-shoelace.html
http://www.ehow.com/how_2076874_tie-shoelaces.html

I know you are probably asked to respond about specific spam cases constantly, so don't take this as me demanding an answer for this specific instance. However, eHow is clearly leveraging their domain authority here to scrounge up the traffic for each different long tail variation of the term "How to Tie Your Shoelaces".

The reason they're targeting each of these phrases with a different page of content is because of the data Google gives them (and all of us) about who is searching for what and how many times per month, coupled with the fact that they have a mega powerful domain which, when a new page of content is added to it that uses an exact keyword in its title, that page will rank top 5 in Google almost every time.

Therefore, the data that they're using to come up with these keywords to feed their gaggle of writers is the related keyphrases data provided by your keyword tool. Algorithmically, this should be easily detectable, as you guys have the list of related keyword data that they're using in the first place.

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8...
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8...
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8...

Why then, are they in the top 5 for each of these keywords? Are 3+ different guides on how to tie shoe laces really necessary? Shouldn't 1 page be ranking for all 3+ of these tight variations? Shouldn't dozens of related pages of content targeting minute keyword variations be something relatively easy to detect?

Seeing multiple Adsense units on these obviously SEO-fueled pages I've linked to leads me to believe there's at least a little bit of truth to what you quoted me saying.
I don't think history matters, I think what you are going to do matters. Before I gave him the A, I asked myself:

How well does he know it?

Does he have the tools to know it?

I concluded that he would do well if he had confidence in himself, so I gave him the grade I thought would do him best. Now he has a math degree.

Students grades as predictors of life is too much pressure and forces an unhealthy fear of failure.
One of the reasons the searchwiki approach was a good idea. Not everyone has the same opinion, what one person found helpful another found low quality content.
Aishwarya Rai & Abhishek Bachchan Latest Photos, Wallpapers, Pics & Images
Cloud Computing Video: What Children Think about Cloud Computing
Path of Go (game)
Oh, hadn't realized that it wouldn't be obvious :-)
Cool, I used to live in Kyoto before moving to Shanghai...

Your email is not in your profile (the email field is kept private, you need to add your email to your about section...)

Squiggly sign means @.. Just want to prevent spammers from harvesting my email...
and a way to get the word out there that AOL is hiring and they aren't dead...

I still think they are dead....
I don't understand these people (nor people who line up for an iPhone). I wouldn't line up like that even if they were distributing admission tickets to 'heaven'.
Facebook In 20 Minutes: 2.7M Photos, 10.2M Comments, 4.6M Messages
It was america that taught people in India/China to drive inefficient Hummers and It was america that taught India/China to buy one car per family member. There are many trends like the Iphone rush which is teaching people in India/China to be materialistic even though it is harming their environment. These trends were set by america. Americans cannot stop anyone from buying anything now.
Interesting. So why does he get someone else to translate his articles? Maybe he's not that confident with his English skills.
Not trying to provoke you or anything, but as I am somebody who has not given this topic much thought I would be curious to hear of your concrete examples and arguments about bad policies?

I am somebody who can't see himself as contributing to wikipedia, but some changes might make me reconsider. What would you like to see changed?
Sure!

It's the New Year, and Dayta is great for tracking specific goals = New Year resolutions.

I also want to get it in front of as many eyeballs as possible.

Hence, free!
Source Link:

http://www.facebook.com/notes/democracy-uk-on-facebook/a-sna...
I got $1.00. They need not have bothered.
An Indian village amidst Change
Defen is correct, you're using a different referent of "excess". Taubes means excess of maintenance (which may vary), not excess from ideal. No one is disputing that if a 300 lb person ate what a 180 lb person needs, he would probably loose weight. Taubes refers to this low-cal diet as a starvation diet, but his book has more to say about its problems and limitations. His point is that staying within 20 cals of maintenance by counting is nearly impossible, so counting isn't what is responsible for weight control, otherwise everyone would be wildly far from ideal weight.
QR-social network services that have received more attention than Quirk
Hey, I am not setting any goalposts here. Also, using people-lining-up-at-stores as a metric is useful only as a measure of passion/lust you feel for the device/brand. Does not serve any other purpose, IMHO.

I am an Android user with a Galaxy GTI9000 and pretty happy with it. So it is not like I am batting for Apple either.

To summarize: Apple has a passionate user base, Android may not have an user base that is passionate to the same extent. In any case, long lines outside stores don't amount to much - the Palm Pre is a good pointer in that direction.
A high-carb meal would spike insulin which leads to fat storage. The cycle only lasts a few hours, so even if there is a limit per cycle, you wouldn't want to have 3 cycles instead of one.
Show HN: Index Ping - Get an email when your new website is indexed by Google.
Aaaawww, true love.
Very true, I was just wishing it was otherwise. Both are fine platforms and miles away from the horror show mobile devices used to be half-a-decade ago.
Discussion is over? Well, I guess it ended before the last two comments, since...

tl;dr You didn't answer my arguments based on your reference -- and avoided the same point Chomsky did.

I should also add...

I wrote: "(That Chomsky statement doesn't help explain the total fixation on Israel by all the other left wingers with similar opinions in e.g. Western Europe... Where outright demonization of Israel is more or less standard.)"

The answer: further, your "all other left wingers" and "demonization of israel" is extreme hyperbole.

That was a non sequitor to what I wrote, since I obviously talked about the many left extremists with similar opinions and that they demonize Israel -- not claiming all left wing extremists agree (But I have seen few disagree.)

I don't think that was a mistake, since you failed to answer my arguments -- and wrote childish insults and fantasies about my opinions. That is not only a lack of arguments, it is a lack of integrity. Or bad trolling, from what looks like a troll account.
2010: Cyberpunk World
It's 7 words and you think the last 5 are not important enough to be criticized?
But you still can install code as packages/files?!

That would be all you need for e.g. Emacs.

Edit: I checked, the rule is a bit unclear but the discussion seemed to be just about downloaded content. Emacs is possible. For a phone, which should be able to handle visa card info etc, I guess this is reasonable.
We're hiring graduates already and have 3 graduates in our team.

We don't have a formal graduate trainee program, but are enthusiastic about hiring people passionate about programming and problem solving first and foremost.

If you are able to show that you've creatively put some work under your belt with things you're interested in, this will more than make up for lack of experience and show us how you approach a product.

The general advice given on here; to try and create a mobile phone app or a website to demonstrate your interests and skills... this is still the best thing you can be doing with your time before your study is totally done.

We're largely of the view that work and study doesn't define the individual and so we're keen to see what you've done to show us the essence of you.
I think there is more than this: e.g. it's easier to procrastinate when you're tired and this theory doesn't account for it.

I wonder if RescueTime data contain really important insights on productivity. They should try to mine them, probably Netflix-prize style would work well.
The rise and fall of the Penis Pill inventor
I think we do mostly agree, but I think compliance is a very different factor for each individual. Looking back through different fads and various swings in nutritional orthodoxy, many people have succeeded in building strong, lean bodies whether they believed in eggs, tofu, wheat grass, or protein shakes. That's a fact that simply disappears and is forgotten when we focus on aggregate results from mostly non-compliant subjects. I am pleased and heartened by the conclusion of the study Taube criticizes: "It appears that substantial differences in proportions of dietary macronutrients play only a modest role in weight loss success, and that success is possible on any of these diets provided there is adequate adherence. Getting individuals to adhere to whatever diet they choose to follow deserves more emphasis." That is excellent common sense.
Yep, the growth rate is really fast, 2011 will be a good year facebook
He runs the biggest design studio in Russia, so I suppose he does not have that much time to translate his entire website into English.
Yes, you can store PITFILE anywhere, but:

1) There is single PITFILE that contains all tasks (which means that it would be source of conflicts in all task-related commits).

2) PITFILE contains tasks for all your projects instead of the current one, which means that it isn't really good candidate for storing inside your project's repository. This could be worked-around by exporting PITFILE every now and then, but it's far from perfect.

If you wan to make it useful then I would propose:

1) Store tasks inside git repository (maybe special refs/tasks/* tree? Like for tags or notes: refs/tags/* , refs/notes/*).

2) Store each task in separate file, that is: .git/refs/tasks/001, .git/refs/tasks/002, etc.
Coder Insomnia
I think his suggestion is that the Apple experience is so much better that it is worth forming emotional attachment with the company, and that this is something Android will never be able to provide.
However, all of this brings up the issue of functionality in comparison design. I'm sure there were websites at the time that had spent money and time on a good design, but those aren't the ones that succeeded. The ones that ended up becoming the internet giants of 2011 were the ones with hideous interfaces and childish logos, but evidently with great functionality. Does that mean that all the time we are spending on design is useless, or that design itself is useful and has become a bigger factor in what makes a website successful today?

I fully agree with you there. If your product has potential, design is not a key factor. Design becomes a key factor when your product characteristics are similar, if not equal, with competitors. That's the main reason we are seeing a surge of design in web/UI lately: higher competition and lack of innovation.

This also reaffirms my theory that getting there first, when it comes to features, has much higher impact than long design phases (that can eventually be postponed).
Yeah, I was saved by a teacher. It's been pretty amazing actually because we ended up becoming good friends and co-founders!
I often spend far more on a home-cooked dinner than eating out, due to finding amazing ingredients I want to try, such as an expensive imported cheese that goes well with an artisan chutney and then you need a good wine with that.. I wouldn't try these foods outside of an expensive restaurant, which I only go to rarely in anycase. The best cuts of fish or red meat will put you back a little also, though it's worth it certainly when you have guests, for the flavour quality.
But certainly, I would say it's less expensive to eat well at home.
I think it would be more interesting and fair if he hand-wrote the assembly code as well as the LLVM code. Those labels are unnecessarily intimidating and I'm sure a human could make the code structure much more clear.
yep true, dropbox is a superb product...!
His point is that one of the major health problems in the US and elsewhere is blamed (almost universally by the media, government, medical and weight loss industries) on an idea which is simply wrong and is misleading people to even worse health. A detailed argument can't be made through tweets.
I'm not sure the original goalpost was at "nowhere in the world will even one single line be formed of people wanting to buy an Android phone".

I think it was at "people won't line up for an Android phone", which is a more general statement, which is still true. He's talking about things that tend to happen, not claiming that it will never EVER EVER EVER happen even ONCE.
All in all, they seemed to have addressed it a lot better than I would have expected for a large company.
I thought the same thing has happened to me a while back before I noticed that it was syncing up with Apple Mail by default had the option to delete the mail from the server checked.
Nobody's putting words into Gruber's mouth, he said "there will never be an Android phone that people line up for like they did for Windows 95". Taking it down a notch from there he meant "there will never be an Android phone that people feel extremely passionate about".

He's wrong on both counts already.
I'm indicting the linkage between the "Apple experience" and launch day lines. I don't think the launch day lines are made up of the people who really want the iPhone experience versus the iPhone brand image.
I think there's a sampling bias here. There are plenty of more profitable products out there, and there always has been - but we're not aware of them because they don't have millions of people using them.
Sharing privately with a trainer or nutritionist can be supplemently awesome. As well as getting tip of the day texted back based on the results. Well done.
In some cases, there is a legitimate worry about a market being 'winner take all', in which cases the positive network externalities will force even unwilling people onto a platform.
Precisely. It's all about value per user. If you have a low value per user app then you need a much larger user base to turn a profit, so free/freemium/advertising based revenue is best because it's the easiest way to grow. On the other hand, if you have a very valuable app then you don't need many users and you can afford to charge for it. More so, you can afford to avoid giving away your app to people who don't pay you. Consequently, you may be making a tidy profit but far less people will have used your app or even know about it.
I'm always having to stop and check that I'm pressing the right function key (volume control, play/pause), particularly if I'm watching a movie in the dark
http://flightlite.com - live flight tracker with Google Earth integration.
This one small idea completely changed my life a few years ago. I always keep a list containing my next actions. If I find myself procrastinating, I don't even have to think, I just glance at the list and do whatever is on top.
Show HN: Sorry for any inconvenience (from Skype)
To our valued customers:

As 2010 draws to a close, I would like to take a moment to thank each of you for your patience, understanding, and support during Skype’s recent outage.

We know how important your Skype conversations are to you and we take any disruption to our service very seriously. We are pleased to confirm that Skype is back to normal allowing you to connect with friends, co-workers, family and loved ones.

As a valued customer of Skype, we would like to offer you a sincere apology and offer you our gratitude with a credit voucher worth a call of more than 30 minutes to a landline in some of our most popular countries, such as USA, UK, Germany, China, Japan. Or spend it however you like on Skype.

To redeem your voucher:

1. Go to skype.com/go/voucher
2. Enter your Skype username and password
3. Enter your unique voucher code and click redeem

Voucher code xxxxxxxxxx

Thank you for allowing us at Skype to be a part of your life. May your holidays and the New Year be a time of joy, peace, and health for you and your family.

If you require any additional information please visit http://blogs.skype.com/en/2010/12/.

Kind regards,

Tony Bates
CEO
Skype
You can use google calendar to send you an SMS message at a specific date/time, assuming you're willing to trust that level of functionality of your phone.
Which Android phone is people extremely passionate about?
It may well be that Skynet comes from some obscure piece of hardware used to analyze the stock market.

On the plus side, the sub-millisecond lag arms race is a great boon for IT.