skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
20 seconds of search engine gets me:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Taleb#Finance_career

Perhaps you should invest the extra 19 seconds between typing "AFAIK" and actually, you know, Knowing.

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"founder of Empirica Capital, after which Taleb retired from trading and became a full-time author and scholar in 2004.[33] Taleb is currently Principal/Senior Scientific Adviser at Universa Investments in Santa Monica, California, a tail protection firm owned and managed by former Empirica partner Mark Spitznagel.

Taleb reportedly made a multi-million dollar fortune during the financial crisis that began in 2007, a development which he attributed to the failure of statistical methods in finance.[34]

Universa is a fund which is based on the "black swan" idea and to which Taleb is a principal adviser. Separate funds belonging to Universa made returns of 65% to 115% in October 2008.[20][35] In the wake of the economic crisis that started in 2008, Taleb has become an activist for a "black swan robust society""
===
> 6% of visitors used some version of Internet Explorer. [...] Microsoft has completely lost the web development community.

This is something we all know but it's interesting to read another tidbit supporting that conclusion nonetheless. Not only do web developers avoid using Internet Explorer, we've been traumatized enough by IE that we actively evangelize against it.
Also note that their first quarter actually starts in may?
Somewhat related: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/nov/05/business/la-fi-lazar...

Basically, AT&T was accused of false offerings and a class action suit followed. AT&T, in turn, claimed that people using their services agreed to waive their right to a class action suit and go to arbitration arranged by AT&T.

Of course, that screws the average consumer and lowers the risk to companies such as AT&T, Verizon should they get caught making dubious claims.
Rchowe, I agree with your criticism actually. The ribbon UI is really the only thing that's standard other than the parts of the experience enforced by the Aero engine itself.

One of the things I like about making WP7 apps are the Metro UI guidelines - it makes it a lot easier to build great looking applications when you have to follow conventions in order to publish.
I'd agree with those, but add one more that they still (just about) have: Security.

The encryption and policies you can enforce on a corporate blackberry are far ahead of what you can do with iPhone or Android, and this means that the more paranoid companies are comfortable handing them out.

Even this is being eroded as the competitors get "good enough" encryption/remote wipe though.
This is a story of a true hustler - and I mean that in a good way.

This guy got out there and hustled for a job. He hustled his way into Netscape by persistently calling and eventually "hacking" his way into contact with a well connected business person.

Then when he was employed at Google, he went out there and hustled dollars that made them actually get some turnover.

It's a story we don't hear very often. It's a story about the people that make the money rather than the people that make the technology.

In a world where so much of the technology sector seems to be predicated on the idea that you build something cool, get users and sort the "money stuff" out later, it's easy to forget that, at some point, someone's gotta get out there and actually make some god damned money.

Having attempted to sell various technological services of my own for the past 4 years, I can whole-heartedly say that in my experience, building the technology is the easy part.

Being able to monetise it is a magical gift!

I'd also like to add that I find it pretty far fetched to refer to this success as "luck". Being a good salesman, being a good hustler, is all about being there. That's why CRM systems are such a vital sales tool - you need to make sure that every few months you call your prospects, and if you don't sell to them then you make an appointment to call back in 3 months and so on.

Whether you're selling vacuum cleaners or selling your own services as an employee or contractor, you can't refer to every successful sales as "luck" - it's success based on persistent action. If anything you'd have to refer to people who hustle well and don't succeed as being unlucky, rather than the other way around.
Could someone provide a TL;DR for this? Frankly, even the conclusion is pretty obtuse.
Facebook initially offered a more socially exclusive version of MySpace (i.e. college students). By doing so they were able to tap into established social networks - e.g. campus organizations such as clubs, fraternities and sororities as well as the general sense of community created by the US college system through inter-collegiate athletics.
Rights are characters of the individual, even if the individual lives in a social context. So those 10 have as much rights as those 100. Sacrificing the few for the sake of the many means you yourself are never justifiably safe, you can always be in the minority.
To write about Roubini's misses and not mention:

1. quantitative easing [which had the effect of propping up the stock market], and

2. the creation of a backdoor funding initiative to subsidize the investment banks on the backs of all USD savers, by pretending they are regular banks, allowing them to borrow at the nonsensical rate of 0% (or nearly that) [allowing banks to make billions per year nearly risk-free, thus keeping them from going under]

betrays either the article writer's dishonesty, or lack of knowledge on the subject.
Differences in speed, mainly, explains the average performance of a "player".
> Bluehost asks for people to fax them a copy of an ID/Passport to get shell access (stupid, considering they have your VISA).

It's not stupid. They have A VISA. They want to know that it's your VISA, because people can (and do) use fraudulent cards for hosting.

I'm surprised that they wait until you want shell access to do this. A number of hosting companies do this in different ways, usually before you're even given services. Rackspace Cloud, for example, calls you to verify your identity (last I heard, anyway).
That's true. I didn't notice that. Thanks!!
Installing Cherokee With PHP5 And MySQL Support On Fedora 14
I heard something like that exists for emailing while waking, I thought it a hilarious idea.

To be honest, though, I think a phone should just not be used while driving.
This demo also has a C# middle layer that implements a REST web service and an ORM; it's not just datastore + client-side javascript app (like CouchApp).
Will you be releasing the source code?
Looking Into the Future: Amy Chua’s Parenting Style
And what do you base this claim on?
In 1995, the US gov silenced the largest ever study of cocaine use.
What fantasy land do you live in, and can I join you?

Yes, if you're networking your way to a job (the best way to do it), you might be able to do this. I've done it several times successfully, but it is NOT the norm for outside applicants. Through normal, everyday, channels HR gets first crack at it.
Certainly there are some groups that are more negative than others. You may not have been exposed to it yet, but politics there can be terrible. Either politics between groups (often working on similar/competitive technology) or within groups, where people jockey for stack rank. MS "grades on a curve" so there's always a winner and loser, regardless of how great your team is. This sets up a very bad intra-team dynamic and it's been one of my principle complaints about MS since I left over 10 years ago.
Francis Ford Coppola: On Risk, Money, Craft & Collaboration
I thought 'unconstitutional' was defined by pundits, politicians and commenters who didn't like the latest policy du jour by Guy In Charge?
this is why I love HN, all the suggestions have been actually constructive and nobody is suggesting 4channy nonsense
I'm slightly more amused: I have a 3G in my pocket whose headphone jack has literally caved in on itself from overwear (from a big 1/4" -> 1/8" adapter dongle that bore into it over time) and now needs to be held tilted to one side for sound to work—and yet I still consider this to be a pretty damn nice piece of technology: I mean, the (unprotected) screen still doesn't even have any scratches!
I believe the Ruby community is very pro-Perl. I enjoyed Perl myself and Ruby seems to have a lot of the same soul to it.

I usually say Ruby is everything I loved about Perl with none of what I disliked/hated.
The trouble is who has both ownership over and is able to exercise control over your identity data? I do like your idea of using licensing as a possible mechanism.

It's one thing to say the government will host the ID data for free, for every American. (Or at least every American they deem worthy of a proof-of-online-identity certificate.)

But possession is often viewed as 9/10ths of the law. Calling it "my" data is misleading if they really mean "data about me."

Would I like to have a permanent, personal and authenticated key value store to in conjunction in some interpersonal or person-machine transactions? Absolutely.

But I don't see how having a government issued identity solves the problem of how my browsing data might be misused elsewhere.

It would seem that it only adds more personally-identifiable metadata that could be intercepted, tracked, or stolen along the way.

How would such an ID system enable the creation and enforcement of a do-not-track list? That sounds appealing, but how does my identity being tracked stop me from being tracked?
Algorithms take control of Wall Street
The Future Of MIDI Music – In 1986
Being able to solve someone's problem (including my own). Walking around in San Francisco.
Learn Haskell Workshop & Haskell Hackathon
I agree with this whole-heartedly. My sentiments exactly.
Ask HN: Source of machine parsable product catalogs?
Hi, I would like to experiment with product space exploration ideas. Current state of affairs(I mean, for example check Amazon page for Compact Cameras, link in footnotes) is pretty dissatisfying. Interface like this is build for people who know what they are looking for. What if one don't know much about cameras? It won't learn here what is the price range, which features are important, which products are similar to each other, etc.

I need data to experiment with. Can you suggest any machine parsable databases of product(any products not only cameras, of course) specifications?

1. http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Cameras-Photo/b/ref=amb_link_352847582_18?ie=UTF8&node=330405011&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=gp-left-3&pf_rd_r=1B0R149NHNKN3FQT4FFV&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1282914402&pf_rd_i=502394
The article starts with a grand puprose namely "In which the truth about lisp is revealed, and some alternatives are enumerated."

But it ends up being one big collection of headlines and popular opinions people have about the language. This has to be the worst article on Lisp I have ever read.

Why would anyone without any amount of research choose to write on a subject?

I have to ask this : How can XSLT be a substitute for Lisp?
I spent the last 2 or 3 years, wondering what made people successful.

I've since read about all the popele who I find successful. Here's the conclusion I've come to.

1. They ship things.

2. They work on something everyday.

If you do those two things you will be successful.
I've used perl for over 15 years and ruby for over 5.

I prefer ruby just because, I tend to be able to read and understand other people's ruby code easier than other people's perl code.

Maybe that is something about the language, maybe it is something about the people who use each, maybe it is something about their cultures or something about me.
In the end it doesn't matter much to me.
I'm really glad that in Australia we have a strong government consumer rights body, being the ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commmission).

Several years ago they banned the use of the word "unlimited" on ADSL (or any Internet) accounts unless it truly was no unlimited. If the account had "fair use" limits, traffic shaping or overage fees.

The result? You buy the quota you want. Outside of Australia people seem to dislike the idea of quotas but the result is practices like surreptitious shaping. Quotas really are fairer and (IMHO) have the best end result.

As for Verizon, I have a DroidX and live in NYC. My iPhone is useless in a lot of places. My Droid isn't. I can't help but think the net result of the Verizon iPhone will be that my DroidX will become equally useless.
Can you advise what your use-case is on Verizon's network? Are you a heavy Bittorent user?, a big video calling user?, or just a power user that relies on Verizon's network? etc?

I'd like to establish what the "line in the sand" means from a use case perspective.
http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=Science,science,R...

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=Freedom,+freedom,...

In the 50s, 60s, 70s children have dreamed of becoming astronauts, programmers, engineers, scientists. But nowadays the cool jobs are in sports, TV, finance.

I'd bet around 1776 the majority of ppl in the colonies were willing to take care of themselves. Today the power of federal government cannot be ignored by anyone, so it's part of every big problem/solution.

IMHO we'll see some global changes in the next years. The best place to live would be the one, where your chances of survival are the highest.
To a great extent I think it's just the "no surprises" aspect of having unlimited bandwidth as well as the not having to pay the cost of your time in monitoring, worrying am I using too much and all that.

I only recently did the math with my phone and figured out that I could save a chunk every month by downgrading from the unlimited plan and actually using the WiFi in my house.
As a foreigner, I've always wondered why in the US, there were so many opponents of adding fluoride to drinking water, but I never heard anyone oppose adding chlorine, which not only is an arguably harmful substance, but also makes the water taste horribly.
I read it as a tongue-in-cheek riff on many widespread/oft-quoted Lisp memes.
Care to explain your reasoning ?

I thought this post was all about how Lisp meets that definition.
This premise is faulty. The programmers are the same, it is simply what sells well and what qualities are emphasized that are different on each platform.
Ruby owes much of its popularity to Ruby on Rails. I don't think Ruby would be as popular (or "hip") if it hadn't been for Rails.

Ruby on Rails also appeared around the time webapp development was gaining a lot of momentum, so that might be a part of the reason.

I myself don't find Ruby superior, for me Ruby (on Rails) and Perl solve problems in different domains.
Ruby is great for web development. Perl is great for system administration and scripting, and it's preinstalled on most Unix-like systems (although Python has replaced Perl for the most part in my case).
What are you going to school for?

PhDs open up a lot of jobs that you wouldn't be able to get in with only a Masters, but they don't typically pay that much more (most my background is with Physicists)

I do know lots of people who go for a Masters in order to make more money.
That's the nature of the game; loss on the razors (consoles), profit on the blades (game licenses).

Microsoft ate a huge amount of cash to push Sony into a game they thought Sony wouldn't win: they invested heavily in the Xbox being a software hub that connected with media over the Internet. I would argue they were pretty much successful.

The belief is that 360 launched with HD-DVD not because Microsoft didn't think Blu-Ray was a worse bet, but because Microsoft wanted to delay HD physical media long enough for digital distribution to take hold. They made a huge loss on marketing and manufacturing a losing piece of hardware, but like I said, it probably worked.

So, by the games Microsoft was playing, I would say they view Xbox as a major success.

They are now making a profit [1], but the cyclical nature of console lifespans means money is now going to have to get sunk into R&D then the marketing of a new console, which will push profits down in about 2-3 years. I'd also expect the WP7 push to eat up revenue as well.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-microsoft-op...
With the light changing it's difficult to see the trees growing. I'd like to see this video again, but at the same time each day.
Bubble sort :)
FCF = Revenue - Apple's commission - website hosting costs.

Thought is to price the app in the $5-10 per month range and target busy sales people to start. It's both a productivity tool as well as a safety thing (and can be expensed to the company).

I doubt it's much, but if we push our marketing there's a potential to generate $10-20K in FCF...
Every resume I've published in the past 5 years says "a current resume is available at ...." with a link to my site which hasn't changed. Furthermore, I have an extremely uncommon name - there's 2 of me in the world, and I'm the only one who comes up when you google me. If people can't be that bothered to follow directions or make an attempt to see if they even have current info on me, that's lazy.

OTOH, I have a notice to recruiters at the top of my resume page with specific instructions. I've had recruiters call me and make note that they'd read the information and had some questions about my availability. That happened twice in 2010 - I gave them extra attention and went out of my way to try to help them find a good fit for the position. Simple courtesy goes a long way.
Your Code is Not Self Documenting
Sorry the Engadget piece is full of FUD and light on details. I was at the event and covered it for Wired.com.

This initiative is coming out of NIST inside the Commerce department, with smart folks there who know this 1) a tough problem, 2) needs to be an open standard and 3) that the feds role here is best as being the ones who convene the people in the room.

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/01/obama-strategy-for-on...

There's got to be a better way to prove you are real and legit, than giving some company the right to pull a sub-one dollar sum of money from your bank account and then confirming that to them online.

OpenID is fine, so far as it has gone, but right now it looks like Facebook is winning the war for identity and authentication. Having the feds behind an open standard hardly means you are getting the Real ID of the internet.

You've got a few choices of who's going to do this in the future. The feds, your bank, Facebook, PayPal or your mobile phone carrier. Personally, I'd prefer an open system where I have my choice of 10 providers all using open standards, than having to rely on multiple closed systems like giant bank or Facebook or Paypal.
fn@ altgate.com. You can also learn more about me from my blog http://altgate.com/.
>>As private industry and a world society I hope we can take care of this ourselves before it gets so out of control Congress tries to figure out how to do it and we end up with some horrible mess of a “National ID and Digital Identity Act” that looks at it only from the perspective of the USA and makes it very difficult for non-US citizens to do anything online (as most of the major Internet properties are US based) creating a whole new barrier for 3rd world citizens to overcome.

Major internet properties are international - Facebook, Paypal, Skype, Google, Microsoft's, Groupon, etc. Most countries have the technical talent to create clones of successful US startups. The problem is local governments will be able to control those local forums and social networks. So killing online freedom in US will kill it worldwide.
How to Improve Conversions in One Simple Fix.
I tried both for a while when I was getting into programming, and one huge thing that has always bothered me about Perl is the strange behavior with changing sigils. Here's what I mean:

$foo is a scalar

@foo is an array

$foo[0] is the first element of @foo, instead of @foo[0]

As far as I know, Larry Wall's rationale as a linguist was that in English, one would say "this apple" and "these apples", but "this third apple" instead of "these third apple". The problem is that code isn't a human language, and obeying these rules doesn't make sense and puts additional cognitive strain on the programmer. Basically, having different syntax quirks for scalars, arrays, hashes, and file handles makes code unnecessarily weird, especially when combining them for things like multi-dimensional arrays.
Other people aside.. I prefer ruby because I tend to understand my own code easier when coming back to it. Every time I try working with Perl, I have to "relearn" the language
Thanks for taking the time reply in such detail. Now I'm even more curious about the topic!
Palin Staffer Insists Crosshair Graphic Wasn't About Guns
Obviously the "one man" in your opening sentence. Duh!
What you are seeing is probably more sibling rivalry (or plain old fanboyism) than genuine hatred.

From the Ruby FAQ:

"If you like Perl, you will like Ruby and be right at home with its syntax. If you like Smalltalk, you will like Ruby and be right at home with its semantics. If you like Python, you may or may not be put off by the huge difference in design philosophy between Python and Ruby/Perl."

http://www.rootr.net/rubyfaq-2.html
Anti-perl speak? I must have missed it. I'm not sure why someone would hold a poor opinion of perl, unless it were simply personal taste. To say you don't like a language is not the same as saying a language is bad. I don't like to program in ASP.NET C#, but I don't think it's a bad framework/language.

Perl is kind of the "C of scripting languages". It's been around for a very long time (late-eighties/early-nineties). The fact that modern languages, like Ruby, borrow from a language that was invented in the late-eighties says a lot about that language.
How to Steal Any Movie You Want on the Web
Actually, I do this often - I often think about why something is bothering me or why a particular incident hurt me or offended me. Maybe because I'm pretty introspective, I literally don't know how to put off things that bother me because they are ever present in my mind.

And I do assume that it's fixable because, at one point, I was not bothered or unhappy or depressed. So I assume that whatever it is that's upsetting me, I can find out the cause, fix it, and return to being ok.
> but that app seems pretty cool.

Well, a typical Mac developer wouldn't touch that with a 100-mile pole...
Unfortunately no, I'm thinking of developing it further into a full-blown comment classifier for forums/etc.
Ah, true. Isn't there a warmup request to the instance first, though, that takes care of the import latency? The CPU usage penalty might be worth the tradeoff for some people.
there are two ways to build the tallest building; build it higher, or destroy the buildings around you
More masterful examples of Lisp trolling:

http://web.archive.org/web/20070706135935/brucio.blogspot.co...

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Wyx0KPrm0gg/TGiGXfrwdRI/AAAAAAAAAN...
I have long thought like this. I think the key similarity isn't in the particulars, it's that both are self driven, creative works, and in most cases, no one else will care what you're doing until you succeed.
> Interfaces designed for experts tend not to hide important information and high performance features.

That you want "not to hide important information and high performance features" does not imply the interface has to be poorly designed. A well designed interface can accomplish both.

Most interfaces "designed for experts" are poorly designed crap --and make the work of the "experts" needlessly hard. That some swear by them is mostly "Stockholm Syndrome" (or it gives them a false sense of accomplishment to use something so badly designed, er, I mean "designed for experts".
Nearly 75% of iPhones are in use outside the US
"Perl is often a stereotyped as unreadable, but it's largely up to the writers of the code itself to make it _that_ illegible; it's not a consequence of the language."

Well, one argument is that the language (and community) should encourage good/readable/maintainable code.