skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
article is innumerate. the problem with economics is often that it uses words people think they understand in a technical way. this makes people think they're qualified to explain in their own words something they'd never try to explain if it were about mitochondria or quasars.
True, but asking for intellectual consistency in public policy is expecting too much.
Just wondering, how many people here have used Airbnb? I would think a large number of HN people would use it.
Dwarf Fortress definitely deserves a plug - its run by a two brother team and the game is... hard. They currently earn through donations and are able to keep themselves plugging along.

The games ambition is to simulate an entire fantasy world, literally. His recent update was on the lines of:

" Now you can take rock nuts, for instance, mill them into a nut paste, then put them in a screw press to get oil (into a jug) and a press cake. Both of these can be cooked and the oil can also be made into soap. The press cake shouldn't be as yummy, probably, or maybe it should be restricted as animal feed, but currently it is just food. Jugs are currently anything but clay pretty much, and clay is the next step." - (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/index.html)

The game procedurally generates a world, identifies different types of biomes, soil layers, weathers the terrain, flows rivers, amongst other pre-start activities. After that it populates the world with civilizations, and simulates interactions, wars, kidnappings, interactions/fights with monsters/demons, for about a 1050 years before presenting you the world to do what you will.

The game creates a LOT of emergent scenarios and stories, one of the more recent ones was this: http://www.nzfortress.co.nz/forum/showthread.php?t=20768

Its immense fun, but the learning curve is brutal; the starting screens without any graphics pack look like the matrix. Really - http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/screens/dwf5.html

The game is mind-bogglingly complex, and immense fun. Worth taking a look into.

Some other interesting stories which derived from the game-
Boatmurdered - http://lparchive.org/Dwarf-Fortress-Boatmurdered/
Tholtig- http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=42702.msg7905...
Curated thread with links - http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=41896.0
Wrong. Ads are only not annoying when they are fun or entertaining. Also, the diminishing marginal returns are pretty steep.

Let's say you make an ad with a cat burping. It's pretty funny. Everybody laughs the first time they see it. No one will be laughing the 100th time they see it. By the 1000th time they se it, they will change the channel rather than see it again.

Now, people in other countries will hear about it, so they will seek it out because it's allegedly funny, and they haven't seen it yet.

// begin bitter

But it will be hard to find, because for some strange reason people in the US don't think that people in other countries buy products, they believe we all live in mud huts and make all our goods out of mud.

Oh, and let me say, it is a royal pain in the butt making an iMac out of clay and twigs, though wireless is really easy when you don't have any wires to start with. You should see the shiny rock I pretend is my Android phone... such a beautiful touch interface, so smooth and durable!

// end bitter

Anyway, when you do finally track down the ad, it will be on Hulu, and Hulu will block you from seeing it, because seeing the ad and then not buying the product is theft, or piracy, or something like that.

#&%#$% HULU.

// really end bitter this time
The OpenBSD IPsec-Stuxnet connection
Rails vs .NET MVC smackdown
You are watching Fox too much.
In my experience there is a difference between applications that feel 'a bit off' (in that they don't completely honor the platforms interface guidelines but aren't opposed either), and really user-hostile platforms.

In the first, the user interface is fast, stable, and does its job on every platform. The developers didn't have time to make a real native application, but have made sure of usability on every platform. Widget kits like QT allow to get very close to native look&feel. In this case, the usefulness of the software can make up for the non-nativeness.

On the other hand, really horrifying user-hostile platforms also exist. I've frequently experienced these in "enterprise software". Makers of such products seem to think that user experience doesn't matter at all. The interfaces, feel bulky and slow and generic, sometimes based on 80s screen scraping, and live in a world of their own, ignoring any user friendliness guideline since the same era. Not even starting about the web-applications that only support IE6... This is not the uncanny valley, this is stuff straight out of nightmares.
Filters, AST manipulation/introspection
In theory, I agree. In practice, even targeted ads such as google or facebook ads rarely hit the mark. I've clicked maybe one in the past year.
The most important for me is better syntax. This is what haml should have been and I fully expect it to replace haml after it gets ported into other languages. After writing with both, it was an easy choice honestly.

It's also got a couple extra features, but haml could match it.

Read more here: http://tjholowaychuk.com/post/759178288/jade-haml-killer-for...
I agree about sass.

Haml is Much easier to diff/ merge
Ads can be made less annoying by targeting them well. But the major problem is that annoying advertisement and spam works. Even though a bulk of them fall on deaf ears, the benefit, that a small percentage of them initiates a sale, more than compensates for the costs. That, followed by the other property that ads can persuade people to buy things that they dont really need, makes it unlikely that annoying ads are not going to go away soon. Companies will continue to have an incentive to show ads to people who don't really need that stuff or have interest in that stuff.

Effectively, the target becomes not that population who will not be annoyed, but the population that can be persuaded to buy with a profitably high probability. The operating point will largely be dictated by the cost of delivery and probability of conversion. Competition sort of guarantees that the former is driven lower and lower.

So far, the loophole has been that the advertisers are not charged an annoyance fee that is over and above the delivery cost. But as treelovinhippie suggests once they start getting charged, things will change.
Yes, I've never seen them admit to it, but I think lead gen has to be part of their business plan. Mint predicted (and got) about $30/user per year from lead gen. If banksimple can be the trusted first place people go to for financial advice and products (mortgage, retirement planning, etc), they should have no problem getting extra revenue on top of the usual bank checking and savings revenue that goes to their partner.
“Sir, calm down, please. No, I’m not looking at your searches,” the man said in a mocking whine. “That would be unconstitutional. We see only the ads that show up when you read your mail and do your searching. I have a brochure explaining it. I’ll give it to you when we’re through here.”

http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-09-17-n72.html
I don't think any sane reading of the GPL would imply that it "taints" a host platform (via its libraries), whereas the inverse, non-GPL code linking against GPL libraries, certainly can be argued. Maybe that's something that they don't want to go to court to prove though.
Those have to be some of the most confusing controls I've ever used. A shoot button which changes depending on direction of travel.
Link to yourself so when they steal and publish, you get a link.
I'd think it's pretty high as well.

Personally, I can't see the appeal apart from price. I'd take a hotel every time.

Am I the only one worried about rape/murder/theft with something like this as well? Maybe I am :/
Facebook unpopular in Japan
-1 already eh? [..]

You really oughta know that you should wait a bit for stuff to get overaged over a few hours.
Why would a for-profit business not serve its customers?

Your criticism applies to public schools far more strongly than it does to private schools.

Public schools focus on pleasing their investor - the government - at the expense of their "customer" the student.
It is not. I did it a few weeks ago, the result is a zip file containing HTML pages, actually very handy for archiving and consulting. I was surprised how easy and useful it was. It allowed me to remember of old conversation and events. So you should argument a bit on the "impossible", because from my point of view this is wrong.
We definitely used to use wikipedia in law school while in class to compliment professors' lectures; it was pretty common practice, not to mention its invaluable help in studying for exams. Although certainly not citable as any primary, secondary, or even tertiary authority, it's definitely a valid starting point to say the least.

And hey: it's the only encyclopedia in the world that has been at least somewhat translated into Klingon :) That's gotta count for something :)
Best tools for late night startup hackers
So.. poor performance is due to the same reasons that poor performance is usually do to.

Why is it wrong that Univ of Pheonix is giving these students a chance?
Literature Term Papers—the Life and Writings of Homer
Careful research and accurate information is required to write a literature term paper on the life and writings of Homer. As writing this type of term paper might be a tough task, this article will provide you with the proper outline of how to write an interesting term paper on Homer.
I haven't yet. I suppose I probably should at some point though. I assume there's no limit to how many times you can download your data?
Well, that's because it might just be sarcastic criticism. As a joke, it is obvious. That does not mean that it is obvious that this was a joke. Which is exactly why we should do without them. It removes exactly the pointless discussion it has led to.
I agree with the above but on the other hand, if I was searching for places to stay in a city and found out that an old friend of mine was on Airbnb for that city, I would jump at the chance. I haven't used Airbnb but I would really push an initiative to feature friends on the site via FB connect.
The Fire... Within
Friends don't generally charge each other money to stay at their place though, right?

Or maybe that's a difference between close friends and acquaintances--and many people have a lot of acquaintances for Facebook friends, so I can see it working out.
Can't remove batteries from iPhones. It's part of the conspiracy!
Uh, do they all use jailbroken iPhone versions? A standard Android upgrade is easy and great. Rooting your phone and replacing with a custom ROM isn't at "Mom" skill level, just like jailbreaking an iPhone isn't "mom" skill either.
Seems like the article is just setting up a strawman. You can't send bulk email, so you can't initiate contact at all, so you can't set up an industry event? Seems unlikely -- the result does not follow from the preconditions.

Basically, a world without unsolicited advertising would be one where you type "widgets" into Google and get a list of companies that make widgets. A lot of people do this even in the world with advertising.

Similarly, how do you know that Target exists down the street? Not from ads you see while reading The Atlantic... you know it exists because you can see it with your eyes.

So anyway, this argument is not very good. A world without spam and banner ads would be just fine. I'm already living in it.
Opera, of course, was at the forefront of Web Standards, even way back then.

(Hakon Lie is the CTO of Opera Software.)
Back of the envelope calculation: 800k nights booked * $100/night * their 10% cut = $8M in revenue last year. Impressive.
Note: Substitute the http://www.eit.com/ at the beginning of the URLs with http://1997.webhistory.org/ to see the actual messages.
I like..

http://themeforest.net

..also links to all their other offerings, can sometimes make the ordeal of having to get something coded/designed much easier. That link is for WordPress themes, but the family of sites like codecanyon etc have a wonderful selection of templates, videos, flash code, snippets, etc - something for everyone!
I'm excited about BankSimple.

Credit Unions have restrictions on who can become a member. Also, I used to be a member of a Credit Union bank through work and while their fees might have been lower, their web ui wasn't any better than, say, Wells Fargo's.

I also have ING Direct account because they have much better savings rates then Wells Fargo. However, again, their web ui leaves a lot to be desired.

If not anything else, currently a bank-like service can differentiate itself simply via a fast web site with a top-notch design. From the UI previews I've seen so far, BankSimple is doing the web UI much better than the banks I'm familiar with.
Darkness on the Edge of the Universe
That's an extremely unlikely average price. Most likely you are looking at less than half that.
Thanks, you're right that almost all the products I can remember buying I have been actively looking for, or I've learned about from word of mouth, forums or news sites.

I wasn't trying to argue that advertising is necessary, I was open to either opinion. I genuinely wanted to know how to approach businesses without causing annoyance, while still staying competitive.

Best answer to that I got was "write articles". Also I started considering putting an ad on some industry magazine more seriously now, since some people said that such advertising is not annoying, because people are actively looking for this information. When I remember reading magazines related to my own interests, I do recall reading the ads too and being interested in them (Wired magazine crossed the line though).
Except that many who get into it, gets their friends into it and their families into it (since it's such a great family game). I think you underestimate the appeal of a sandbox game like this. It's got all the casual gaming characteristics and enough depth for hard-core gamers. It's really quite impressive that way.
Where in Facebook allows you to do that?
It's not a paywall, merely a regwall.
Javascript isn't going to stop me from crawling a site if I want the content. Browser automation is simply too good.
I've tried multiple times. There's yet to be an acceptable place where/when I'm going.
I don't mean to be snarky but how is rape/murder/theft threat different than your daily life? Someone is going to go overboard and sucker people vs randomly kidnap someone at a Wendys?
Can you partition it? Have one portion of the data available to all and sundry, then have another more valuable part hidden behind a captcha'd login?

I know this won't prevent anyone else from being able to match your Google ranking on the free content, but it should mean that you can maintain your position as the "default place to go" for it, which should come with attached PageRank goodness. It also means you can institute per-account rate limits, rather than IP-based ones, which might help.
Airbnb is a perfect example where technology created a new market, disrupts existing markets while doing really well financially and maintaining strong growth.
I hope they stay independent as the founder said and not sell to a big co. which will probably kill the spirit immediately, and ground the product sometime later down the road.
Maybe not a 1st degree friend but a friend of a friend or something like this.

A feature that finds out the "shortest chain" friend that rents out an apartment in your destination city would be interesting. But you need a social graph for that.
This guy sure seems to have a talent for coincidences

With a limited number of people and places involved in a scene, such 'coincidences' are inevitable. It'd be more surprising if no such connection could be found. Any evidence is lacking.
> So really?! Holocaust? You really want to get into this? holocaust happened or not is one thing,

Are you trying to suggest that you're a holocaust denier too?
Wow, really? First of all, 37signals DID step out of their comfort zone by using Erlang rather than Ruby for their backend to handle sending chat messages out to clients. Secondly, I was under the impression that BankSimple was essentially using Ruby on Rails for their front end, and Scala and other JVM-based languages on the backend. Finally, how is Ruby at all related to the Adobe AIR client in question?
Personally I think that it is unnecessarily agrandising language. That AI has since improved independently of Minsky does not really have anything to do with it.

Also it can be a fine line between having civil discussion and becoming an echo chamber where vigorous disagreement does not occur. Not that my original reply was the finest example of disagreement to grace this site.
Anyone know how this compares to ITK? Or why NASA didn't use or customize ITK?
We found a great room in a Riad in Fes, Morocco using Airbnb. It was one of the most memorably places we stayed in that country, and the housekeeper there served incredibly good food.
How I stopped worrying and loved the backdoor
good guys don't release viruses into the wild, period.

Didn't one of the guys from Y Combinator once release a virus into the wild?
Why is Iran developing long-range missiles with the capability of carrying nuclear warheads in parallel to its nuclear program?

Iran has been involved in multiple wars by proxy for a while now, it is unlikely an opportunity to arm itself with nukes will arise and they will not take it.
Airbnb worked great for a condo in Hawaii over Christmas. It failed multiple times in NYC, though.
www.techwildcatters.com does more enterprise projects and not consumer.
Advertising is intrusive if the target would rather not see it. The only place where advertising belongs is in searches online because you are by definition looking for it.

But that will never happen.
Stuxnet: forcing Israel haters everywhere to come sulking out of the woodwork.
"... meanwhile in calgary... wasting no time netsec was secretly funnelling "security fixes" through mr.t that he was committing "stealth" into openbsd tree. (this i only knew years later when i was telling mr.t over a beer about the funny people i met on a west-coast trip (see later)). "stealth" means that purpose of the diffs was not disclosed in the commit messages or the private openbsd development forums except with a few "trusted" developers. ..." ~ http://mickey.lucifier.net/b4ckd00r.html

what you say is understandable, but there appeared to be a lot of subterfuge going on.
Hardly amazing that a computer with access to billions of pages of information can out-trivia humans.

I suppose the story here is supposed to be the natural language processing, but really the space which is covered by Jeopardy questions is pretty confined. Color me unimpressed.
AirBNB worked well for me in NYC.
Hmm...

That's a good question.

I'd first ask what is advertising a direct response to? And what was eliminating advertising a direct response to?

For the former, I believe the first ad was placed in like the 1700s. Wait... I'll Google it... the first newspaper ad was placed in 1704 by a seller in Oyster Bay who wanted a buyer for their estate. (Thanks to AdAge for that one: http://adage.com/century/timeline/index.html)

So, I'd say that advertising is a form of getting the word out about something, when you know that someone might need it, but you're not exactly who specifically.

Then eliminating advertising would be getting rid of it because too many people were trying to get the word out, so much so that the channels for even knowing what was relevant to the receiver were saturated beyond belief.

I'd say get rid of the profit incentive, not the advertising. If there's no profit incentive for advertising, but instead direct communal bartering gain, then fewer people would advertise. The adverts you would see would be direct needs targeted to direct people who needed that stuff.

This reminds me of Craig's List. I used to love Craig's List because it was so much about community, and people sharing their needs and or looking to fill others' needs. However, when the traffic grew, the profit incentive grew, now Craig's List is over saturated. Way, way over saturated. That's why I'm now a member of Quentin's Friends. I pay $15 bucks a quarter for access to a community of people where there's minimal profit incentive driven advertising and posting, and more communal driven exchanges.
I tried when I went to NY a couple months ago. I contacted like 6 people and they all bailed on me ("bailed" in the sense that they had their apt listed as available on the day I wanted to go, but then couldn't offer it to me). It was a week before I wanted to go. I ended up paying for a hotel that was substantially more expensive, but it was definitely available.

I'd imagine this is part AirBnb's core problem. How do you reliably manage the flakiness of both travelers and sellers? How far in advance do you have to start scheduling your trip if you want to use AirBnb? Am I absolutely guaranteed a place to stay even if I pay?
If chinese, Indians and Koreans do well is it only because white people haven't enough resources to keep them down too?
The new iPad 2 will quadruple resolution but no Retina display
And I am at, what I think is, the current 20GB maximum. Weeeee :)
Can't see how I would use that space though. It is too little space too keep my music, video or photos, and too much to store anything else.
to me, it's just more proof amazon will be working with telco to lock-in android devices to their market, exclusively.
What is the benefit of this style of templating engine compared to for example pure (http://beebole.com/pure/) where you write your html in html, keeping it free from logic and keeping it in a way anyone with html skills can understand?
Set no-cache meta tag so scrapers can't use Google cache.

Check out bad-behavior: http://bad-behavior.ioerror.us/

Otherwise:

Use a honey-pot to catch browsers that don't obey robots.txt. Send yourself an email for every new IP address so you can catch any false positives.

Redirect requests with no user agent specified to your honey-pot URL.

Same for known bad/useless user agents: wget, curl, Bing, etc.

Validate supposed good crawler agents via reverse IP lookup - cache bad IP addresses - redirect to honey-pot URL

Filter remainder based on request rate over a given period (use a DB to cache requests). More than 1 request per second for 20 seconds = bot, more than 200 requests per day = bot : redirect to honey-pot URL

I've been doing this for a site with around 150K URLs for the past 4 years. Have about a 600 URLs blocked and around 35 user-agents.
Just as a counterpoint, I often find out about new things through advertising, on sites where the advertising is good. For example, I've found several tools that I use via Stack Overflow ads. They're a great example of targeted advertising that really delivers value to me, because it actually helps me discover tools that I need that I wouldn't have otherwise known existed.
Well, the tegra2, which is the reference platform for Honeycomb, has vp8 support in hardware. Texas Instruments announced full support for vp8 in all their future DSPs and media processors and Imagination Technologies, the people who make the GPUs on the iPhone have committed to vp8 support in their next generation GPUs. It is very likely that for the iPhone6, apple will be able to add webm support at little extra cost to itself, and no patent threat, since they are already MPEG-LA licensees. Same goes for all the other manufacturers- they are already MPEG-LA licensees and safe from the vast majority of patent threats. Other than that, I would love to see a patent troll try and go after TI or Nvidia.
Judge Delays Ruling on PlayStation Hack
Nitpick here, but he didn't start working at Opera until 1999.
I'm not. Actually I have little information about holocaust, how it happened, when happened, where happened etc.