skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Fixed. A similar problem occurs across status and priority - not as major but still a little funny. (sorry for the double post but I didn't realise this till after).
I can imagine logging onto a server to see something like this: http://www.orderofevents.com/MineCraft/KinectInfo_files/imag...
I think the web app-building crowd here is divided into two groups of hackers: Those who are in it to build businesses and those who just want to create apps that people use.

Everybody likes money, but there's a big group of people out there that only want people to use their apps and are not in it for the money.
Yes, but ... we are on YC site and at least twice a year we hear about cool companies appearing out of the blue with crazy idea and some of them get acquired or start bringing profits.

So, the 'cool' factor will continue to have its benefits and is a good method to actually get going initially.
If that's cheating 99% of the businesses out there are cheating. It's called competition and it's healthy. Ideas are not protected in any way shape or form and if you copy an existing idea and adapt it to a new market then that's just fine.
Exactly. My post is meant for people who actually want to make money. Making apps for skill enhancement, fun and enjoyment is perfectly good. But expecting to make money from such apps and calling them startups is not OK.
If epistemological state means anything at all it means (the possibility of) being able to hold a certain belief or acquire certain knowledge. It is as meaningful or as meaningless as using the phrase "ethical state" or the phrase "aesthetical state" and I stand by that claim.

If EY had meant: human nature, with all its cognitive biases and imperfections of memory and perception and limited thinking speed and imagination and so forth, makes it very unlikely that you will ever really be in the situation of having to choose between definitely-for-certain killing one person and definitely-for-certain letting one die, with definitely-for-certain no other options. then maybe he should have spelled all that out, don't you think?

I reassert that very little new was said in this article and what was said was wrapped in a ton of verbiage.

He says (and I paraphrase) - take this hypothetical utilitarian dilemma, then imagine this being that is qualitatively different from you or me. I imagine the being would respond thus owing to its special ability but as I am not worthy of a micron of its circuity I would have to choose otherwise as I do not have this special-ness. And he goes on to say, this so happens to turn out to coincide with the old maxim "the end doesn't justify the means" but I'm not saying that this is an intrinsic law or anything and I certainly wouldn't constrain our robotic overlords to it, they may very well judge it right to sacrifice one person now to save many later and I'd go along with that.

He might be saying: It is unlikely that you will ever be in such a situation and, empirically, situations at all like that are very rare. as you suggest but then again that does not seem to jibe with what he actually says: think the universe is sufficiently unkind that we can justly be forced to consider situations of this sort. and: But any human legal system does embody some answer to the question "How many innocent people can we put in jail to get the guilty ones?", even if the number isn't written down.

What is AIUI by the way? And I know I say future perfect hypothetical self at times and perfected other being at times but it doesn't alter what I'm saying - you'll grant that a superintelligence could theoretically maybe possibly fold all the remaining meat-machines into itself (don't you?), at least that appears to be one claim of singularity-types. Oh, I also find most of the singularity arguments compelling just in case you think I'm against super AIs or anything.
David Stockman is back
BlackBerry PlayBook has no native email, calendar, contacts, tasks, and BBM
> 14. "Better" is the enemy of "good".

Alludes to Voltaire's Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien. Google Translate: http://translate.google.com/translate_t?q=Le%20mieux%20est%2.... http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Voltaire (many thought-provoking quotes)

> 30. Engineers always wind up designing the vehicle to look like
the initial artist's concept.

I find it really helps to have a picture in my mind of what I'm building.

> 34. Do what you can, where you are, with what you have.

Relevant for me this day, as it includes acknowledging my own inabilities, lack of knowledge, low-quality of prototype code etc, then accepting that that's how it is right now, and acting instead of hand-wringing.
For what it's worth, I meant to say:

"For what it's worth, the government is trying to phase out the more abusive workplace situations that are noted in the article."

I have no idea how that got auto-corrected into "fruit".

(For those curious, the specific acts they want to change are the rules for keeping a store open at night with only one employee.)
Forgot to also add: good job so far, but clean it up so it works with cabal/hackage :)
Uh, but the Wikipedia article on the topic has the relevant information in this case.
Ask HN: Freelancing and social phobia
Hello HN, I'm an international student living in Auckland, New Zealand and studying Computer Science at Auckland University of Technology.

Since I live in the city, my living expenses are quite high. I do freelancing to help cover living costs but I barely scrape by on that. I have a love hate relationship when it comes to freelancing. It can be a decent source of income and the more interesting the job/client, the more I learn in my given field. Unfortunately I'm not very good with people.

I've battled with depression for a good portion of my life. Being around a large crowd of people makes me panicky. I worked a retail job once and would suffer panic attacks when having to deal with difficult customers. I suffer from a similar problem with freelancing. It doesn't matter whether I'm communicating solely through emails and phone calls, dealing with clients, particularly difficult ones, leaves me panicky and kills any productivity I have for the rest of the day.

I don't know how long I can continue working this way. Is there any tricks to the freelancing trade that can help me? I'm looking for advice from anyone who has dealt with similar issues while trying to ek out a living as a fulltime student and freelancer?
Why do you think this is true? For every trade, there is someone on each side. The market as a whole does not care if you make bad trading decisions. Someone else makes up for it.
46% Say Free Shipping Increases Profits
Amazon mechanical turk is pretty decent for this.
Delivery channel = A way to reach the market.

For example, maybe you have ideas for products in half a dozen industries, but in one of those industries you happen to have a good friend who works in it (and thus has contacts there) and know the editor of one of the industry trade magazines. Those are both delivery channels into that industry. Compared to another niche where you have no contacts, it is much better to build a startup for that niche where you have some way to reach the market.

This may be already implied in your mind, but a lot of people wouldn't get it from reading your article. They'd start listing out industries and then picking one of them. I'm suggesting: list out your deliver channels first, and go from there (as a kind of step 0 in your process).

For example, Stack Overflow had two excellent delivery channels to reach programmer communities around the world (Joel and Jeff's blogs). It's fair to say that those two channels "made" stack-overflow.
Quite shocking the moment I realized that ASTs in Lisp are just lists of lists, and that the closure property allows you to build up complex ASTs astonishingly fast.
I think a large amount of our monetary inequality is down to the way we've allowed our markets to become warped.

The numerous examples of CEOs who kill their company but still make out like a bandit. The traders who're supposedly part of price discovery mechanisms but who actually just seem to keep blowing bubbles. The musicians who're granted a government monopoly to sell something we already have too much of (pop music). These are alot of the top 10% and mostly they're doing so well because our capitalist systems are broken.

Even when you get to what you might think of as 'real' work. Advertising is generally not informative but emotive - thus these jobs mostly exist to distort markets. Lobbyists are in the same line of work but using government edict to achieve the same distortions.

Yes the EMH demonstrates that markets are efficient at distributing resources, but it assumes products are fungible, actors are rational and have perfect information.

Vast swaths of our economy are about stopping products being fungible (branding, copyright, patents, lobbying) and limiting how rational actors are (marketing, branding).
This is absolutely true.

The problem with a market driven approach is that it's hard to convince people to get in to 'glorified bookkeeping' or other stuff like that. Industry applications typically are not sexy but they're a fantastic way to make money because businesses don't have a problem to pay for things that will save them money, time or both.

If you're in it for the money go for b2b any time over b2c, b2c is sexy, everybody will write about you if you score but the fact is you most likely won't.
Study: Autism risk rises in babies born soon after sibling
I believe DHH coined the name for those: Lottery tickets.

http://www.justin.tv/hackertv/b/259414909
Well, the embassy section is the most developed part of the entire site as it is the oldest. Most of the date is kept up-to-date in terms of contact information for the embassies and we have a widget that provides visa information for free.

The widget will also take you to a service that will help fill out your visa application and deliver it. Their fees depend on the service you require.

I also constantly email all the embassies/consulates in the database for updated information because, and many people don't know this, embassies/consulates in smaller countries are usually the house where the ambassador lives. So when they change (and they often do), so does all the contact info.
Just because it's free doesn't mean people will use it. If you just want to create apps that people use you might still get disappointed, unless you enjoy the process of building or scratch your own itch.
I'm wondering if any conclusions should be drawn from the disinterest in microdata.

On one level it's to be expected - most interest in HTML5 is coming from front-end people whilst microdata is of most interest to 'back-end' types (and SEO bods).

However one shouldn't forget Cory Doctorow's metacrap thesis: http://www.well.com/~doctorow/metacrap.htm
True, but when you search for keywords on Embassies, you directly compete with .gov sites that will always outrank you.

My idea behind the embassy section was to ensure that contact information was available when the sites go under, as they usually do, or cloak their information to not be bothered. Believe it or not, I actually made that database of 8000+ myself.

So, I have a great section that is useful, but hard to market. I rank least in embassy keywords even though my data is more up-to-date than other older sites.

I created an adwords campaign and managed to get $0.08 a click on my keywords with an average of 3 min/user to the embassy section, so I know it is useful. But organics are very, very low.

Plus, I don't want to violate the site with a bunch of adsense nonsense and the widget, which provides very little $$/lead has had 946 clicks in 6 months with 0 conversion
Yes, I think if you are considering multiple industries that make money you will automatically gravitate towards the most "practical" one where you have more familiarity. That said, in my opinion in any industry creating a delivery channel is not incredibly difficult but it does give you an unfair advantage while starting out.
Top Jobs for 2011
(Lots of ((Irritating, Spurious) (Parentheses)))
Hah! Clearly you do not use cperl-mode.
They are measuring speed in an unfair way.

According to the article, Pyramid pushes a lot of work to C code. But then they measure relative performance by how much output the Python profiler has. However anything done in C is invisible to the Python profiler. That means that time is being spent and work is being done that they are not measuring.

The result is probably pretty fast. But I strongly doubt it is faster by the factor that their numbers claim.
If only there were already a good word for a technical project that one does for fun.

Maybe a four-letter word? Rhyming with "sack"? ;)
Is it immoral to open a pizza restaurant in your city after travelling to Italy/New York/Buenos Aires/anywhere else?

At least until we have good automatic translation, human languages are the new locations. If nobody else is serving your locality, setting up shop there is not only ethical, but virtuous. You are serving the underserved.
As you make changes to the main site, just keep in mind how that same URL will render on mobile devices, and make changes accordingly. There are many 'full' sites I use on an iPhone because it's still easy to consume info, even though it's not a dedicated 'mobile' version.
Burn thy ships
Yep, agree with your recommendation of B2B. Going B2B instantly simplifies a lot of issues that startups face because (as you say) businesses are usually inclined to pay money for services even if it is in $100-$1000/mo range. Consumers, on the other hand, will cringe at the sight of paying $5.

99 cents apps, thanks so much for setting expectations of consumers that everything on the web should be free or sub $1 range.
Tại sao nguoi tieu dung viet tin quang cao nhieu hon?
"...Đa số mọi người tin rằng người nổi tiếng đồng nghĩa với người giàu có nên chỉ sử dụng những sản phẩm tốt nhất, có uy tín nhất - mặc dù niềm tin này hoàn toàn mang tính chất cảm tính...".Công ty Nielsen vừa công bố một kết quả nghiên cứu thị trường: Việt Nam đứng thứ 8 trong top 10 quốc gia tin vào quảng cáo nhất. Trong đó, độ tin cậy của người dân dành cho quảng cáo truyền miệng là 79%; ti vi: 73%; báo in: 72%. Câu hỏi được đặt ra là tại sao đa số người Việt lại dựa vào quảng cáo để quyết định việc tiêu dùng?
That's awesome. Your embassies page is quite good.

You could make it even easier to navigate by adding a map.

Instead of listing by embassies in a particular country, you should list by embassies of a country. To give you an example, if I'm thinking of going to France, I'm looking for the French embassy's website, not where I am applying from. That second bit of info is also needed, but you could ask that in the second filtering stage or by guessing the user's location.
I'm guessing the server communication is normally through SSL? If so then this might be a good time to do some protocol analysis before the opportunity disappears. There are a bunch of log dumping options in there.
Heh, yeah :) Never read Atlas Shrugged, the part of me that thirsts for completist knowledge says yes but the part of me that has an aversion to burning books says no.
Brilliant idea, love it. Thanks!
Have you considered hosting your embassy section on another domain name with the keywords? It will take some time, but you could probably rank with some organic SEO for phrases like "how to apply for visa to france from london" by blogging.

See http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/01/24/startup-seo/
By map you mean a generic map with clickable countries to take you to the embassies of that country? I'll consider it. I'll have to see how size would play into the visible area of the page.

I have tackled the embassies in vs embassies of on the listing and quite frankly, I don't have enough points of reference to make a call. There is a nifty search box on the right that allows you to filter though
How do you identify yourself if there are no IDs? How do you identify illegal immigrants?

I have a national identity document, and I fail to see the problem with it.
I guess I'm primarily externally induced by the advertising and technical curiosity. Either which are very difficult to cut out with YouTube, and the media.

The pleasure side of having these gadgets/toys out-weight the pain of not accomplishing much with my apps. I guess I must find more leverage on the accomplishment side.
JobScore requires details such as an address and a US landline number. This is fairly unnecessary and also annoying if, like me, you have neither. Even selecting a country is problematic.
Does shower temperature affect brain speed and weight?
That's a great idea, thanks. I'm looking forward to having some spare time to concentrate on the marketing side, so when I do I'll make this a priority.
Transactions, account creation are SSL. Everything else is just plain old HTTP. You can just put it through Wireshark and see near everything going on.
The security gadget that bankers want squelched
The wrong number was actually me fixing another bug that had shown up. You just refreshed in the wrong 3 second window.
Picture of the Day: What CES Does to a Human
Ideally, you want a "cool" webapp that can provide an entry into a viable market. The "cool" part gets you noticed among early adopters, who talk you up until you get noticed in the marketplace. Because there is some cost in getting into those marketplaces - you have to set up booths at trade shows, or get PR in industry specific publications. "Coolness" can reduce those expenses or help you get partnerships or funding.
Warn HN: be careful which photos do you open today on Facebook 
I was just linked to a "Lundbladh" page when I tried to check a all innocent looking photo of a friend. I can not even go back to Facebook now. Or to be more accurate I always end up in that strange page in Polish or something.

I am reporting that because the album and the photo looked all naturally embedded to Facebook. No strange apps
The header name also works.
No-one is talking about finding the global maxima. We are simply discussing ways to avoid local maxima. "Better" not "Best"...
CES 2011 – from a Pixel Qi perspective
I have no proof that it is his blog, but I have also no reason to believe it isn't. And yes, it's a nice car!
WiMax update set for go-ahead this year
I think the vast majority is in a third group in the middle: those who say they just want to create apps that people use, but harbour secret hopes of turning it into a huge business some day.
The Method of Installing Nagios: An Important Choice
What do you mean it's "not OK"? Trying to building something new that people use and love is a perfectly acceptable path to building a startup. pg had a great post on this topic: http://paulgraham.com/organic.html

So you have an approach to building products that works for you. Great. But scoffing at people who actually want to build the new amazing things that have a real impact on the world is what I call "not OK".

After someone trailblazes the idea and builds something that gets traction, then we can expect legions of "you guys" who just want to monkey their idea and take a piece of the pie.
CUFP 2010 videos now available
I think we can all agree that your point was not well supported. By the way, how much do you get paid for participating in HN? Your average karma is 4.4; by the community's judgement, you put some good work into commenting.
http://www.paulgraham.com/copy.html
This actually brings up a third alternative... start with the industries, as you suggest, but then, as part of your hypothesis-resolution (see http://swombat.com/2011/1/7/how-to-evaluate-and-implement-st...), try to create delivery channels into those industries that you like.

Then follow the one where you best succeed into building delivery channels.

Best of both worlds?
Why Dropbox is more popular than other tools with similar functionality
Google Visualization API & R
Oh yes, it is better to prepare yourself to the dead-end desk job in a country that has fallen out of touch of the developing world, or in other words, has stagnated.

Jobs of the future will not be lawyering or doing corporate programming in England. They will be in solving real-world problems anywhere. And traveling can at least give some perspective for that.

Anything else is sticking your head into the sand and believing that the economical domination of the West will be eternal.
I think you mis-understood my point. If you are making something new that people use and love, that's a beautiful thing to do. In fact, open source movement wouldn't exist without it. However, if you want to make money by hoping your new app catches on by itself, that is not OK in my opinion.
We're too quick to use "mental illness" as an explanation for violence.
you know what 99c apps have done?

They've got people paying for software. Normal people. People who have probably never paid for software in their life, save for Office (probably bundled with their PC), and a few XBox games

They've got used to paying 99c for apps, then they've slowly adjusted their price expectations up to the $5-10 range for iPad apps, and the advent of the Mac Store looks like helping ease prices people are willing to pay even higher. Pixelmator has sold more than a few copies at $30. Cheap for what it is, but people are buying it. Apple have trained people to pay for software
Ask HN: Tell me about your failed startup.
Inspired by this post - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2086218 - which mentions the fact people only focus on success stories which are actually the minority.

I think it would be good to hear some personal stories of startup failure so we can all learn from them.

What went wrong?
What did you learn for next time and can pass on?

How did you recover and what are you doing now?
Having failed once, would you try again?
1986 Privacy Law is outrun by the Web
I was born in Finland in 1980. My childhood was seemingly the polar opposite of this so-called "Chinese mom" model.

I never had a guided hobby or one that would have been forced upon me, except for one time when I was six years old. (My parents enrolled me in a children's ballet class. Presumably they thought that it would be good for my body consciousness, or something. After six months I asked them if I had to do it. They said "no", so I quit, and that was that.)

Instead I was encouraged to come up with my own activities. I always felt that my parents had great expectations of me, but at the same time they were careful to never actively formulate those expectations into action points. That gave me a sense of responsibility: I knew I was just a child, but at the same time I had been entrusted the serious responsibility of deciding what I should do with my life. Should it include modern art or maybe egyptology? The best way to figure that out was to read books about it. If my parents didn't have a suitable book, I could always walk a few blocks to the library. My friends' lives had a similar degree of liberty. I don't remember us ever minding homework; it was something you could take care of in 15 minutes -- or the next morning at school, if you were feeling lucky.

Probably the general atmosphere in Finland in the 1980s played a role in making my childhood such a happy one. In retrospect, those were the "halcyon days" when the Finnish social democracy was complemented by an upstart liberalization drive that pulled the country out of the Brezhnevian gloom and stagnation of the '70s. The fun didn't last long: in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed and pulled Finland into a recession, as the Finnish economy had become too reliant on ridiculously profitable exports to the bankrupt Soviet empire. The social(ist) ambience never really recovered.
You might end up with a classifier that considers some memes and topics (tech,games) that originate from reddit as high quality and youtube centric stuff as low quality (mainstream media, music, etc)