skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This blog post would be a very poor and inefficient page view generator -- putting up pictures of cats would be a lot easier than writing and documenting my side project! :-) I just wanted to share the process I went through; I hope it helps some people.
Yeah, it's a neat idea. It has now become 100x easier to submit source patches than changes to Wikipedia!
Down below I posted a study below backing up my point but I will re-post it here in case you haven't seen it.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v439/n7075/abs/nature04...
Ask HN: NDAs, a warning sign?
I've been approached by someone interested in working together on one of their startup ideas. We haven't discussed it yet, so I have no sense of my actual interest. However, in the past they've required that interested collaborators sign an NDA before discussing the idea – despite it seemingly being something they haven't done anything towards implementing.

I know that Paul Graham has stated "The market price [of a mere idea] is less than the inconvenience of signing an NDA," but that was in regards to the misstep of asking potential investors to sign an NDA before talking with them. What about asking potential collaborators to sign an NDA? Is this a warning sign? I know there are a lot of variables (how well do you know the person, etc) but is this generally something that should inspire caution and potentially refusal?
Backupify Backupified 136 Million Tweets, 713 Million Emails In 2010
why is the product not important to painting the overall picture? I read it for a few lines and when I couldn't decipher what you were talking about exactly, i just close the window. The value lies in explaining the concept clearly and not by a link bait title and a blog post that talks vaguely about something.
What you're basically saying is, don't build stuff until you need it. I agree with that. Unfortunately, without knowing at least what the business is, it's really hard to understand WHY your process worked the way it did. Personally, I found the article intriguing, but quickly lost interest when I saw that it was basically a rehash of standard advice. Providing a bit more information about the business behind it might have given it a bit more soul and made it sound less like an empty content piece.
I guess you've never heard of supplemental spending, black operations and whatnot. Defense spending isn't solely the defense department. We spend a great deal of money on intelligence services.

My response was solely to the quoted number of $70 billion or so. $80 billion is not a lot. It appears the number quoted was in 1984 dollars or something like that. Even then it still isn't a lot given that the defense budget then was around $300 billion.

I prefer spending money on education, health, peaceful purposes but not everyone agrees. The point I made though, still stands. It's a not a lot of money and it isn't as if we couldn't do it.
Are you sure? When I login I seem to see 5-10 posts from a list of 100 people (well, admittedly less since I've ignored so many). I you were my friend, how could you know _you_ were in that 5-10 posts that _I_ see -- you don't know how many other friends I have, and how much _they_ have posted.
It would be a problem if Android 2.x APIs were deficient in basic features like iOS 3.x were when it came to multitasking. That isn't the case. Android API additions are mostly tied to new hardware - NFC/Multiple Cameras/Tablets etc as opposed to pure software improvements like added multitasking.

Not many developers need to target latest AOSP release - that's my point. Almost all apps can target 2.1 and benefit from under the hood improvements in 2.3 like faster VM. Few apps that rely on 2.3 specific features like NFC/SIP/Multiple cameras also rely on hardware features being available - so software features are a moot point there and then the problem is not unique to Android.

iPhone 5 comes with new NFC and iOS 5 - developers have the same problem - they have to wait for enough people to upgrade to iPhone 5 and iOS5 and if they target iOS4 they lose the iOS 5 features. How many apps will be impacted - not many. Same thing.
I couldn't help but notice the timing too. Steve steps out just as Apple is about to post phenomenal earnings: smart moves on Apple's part I think.
To be fair, any product = product + brand. It's just that in the case of Apple, their branding counts for a whole heck of a lot.
Great info, but in the back of my mind I'm thinking that this sort of leak really puts the pressure on Samsung and is highly advantageous to the carriers.
Half plus one is most.
"These statements aren’t just true about the product — sure, they might have a crufty old VB6 app and you have the new Node.js hotness. They are equally true about the customer acquisition process. You’re competing with their business, not with their product, so you could possibly either focus your innovation on customer acquisition or, more likely, use innovation on both customer acquisition and product in a mutually supportive manner."

This is very true. You often have a more innovative product but the established competitor has a business. It makes sense to acknowledge this fact and work on it.
I do not get it.
... but there aren't many ordering problems with one button.

Daring Fireball has some good discussion on this; he thinks that the rumors of removing the Home Button are false (due to difficulty of discoverability and one handed-use).

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/01/12/gestures-home-bu...
Agreed - even I upgraded my Galaxy S (Vibrant) to Gingerbread Clone (eb-productions) and have better battery life and an amazingly accurate battery life widget.
It's better to look Year on Year (except for the iPad)

Sure, but in this case the input in question is the renewed competition courtesy of Android. The natural question everyone will have is how that impacts the iPhone.

For reference, for the same quarter over quarter of 2009, iPhone sales increased 68%.

Iphones are nearing the mid point of the yearly cycle, and I'd expect them to be relatively flatish until summertime

I wouldn't expect this at all. While we might get a sense that everyone is like us, most consumers aren't planning their purchase around Apple's update cycle. They decide they want a smartphone so they go and buy one. We all know that the smartphone market is exploding, and there is a huge untapped reserve of potential customers, so the numbers now are generally big.

Regardless, the iPad and iPod more than make it up. While everone was talking about the 300,000 Android devices activated per day, over this quarter the combined iOS devices hit a simple division rate of almost 360,000 per day. That is amazing.
dupe: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2117563
Ah, but we did live through it in the '80s with the satanic abuse hoax, and we didn't learn anything. In fact, the people involved in pushing the hoax were rewarded with higher office. See http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870428120457500... for a good writeup of the case.
Colin, thanks for the explanation. I suggest an additional change to your pre-release process: all code must be peer reviewed. This is by far the most effective quality control measure you can implement, much more so than unit testing or "double-checking". I wouldn't trust any mission-critical production code that hasn't been peer-reviewed, much less crypto code.
Marijn,

Re: "Master basic programming techniques"

Would you recommend your book as a first programming book for designers that want to learn to code? We have a few employees that come from a print design background that are wanting to learn JS to move into web work, and I'd buy a half a dozen copies if this is an appropriate intro for them. Otherwise, I'll just buy one copy and solicit recommendations for a book to teach programming using JS. [I normally recommend Python and Scheme books to learn programming, but that seems like a long way around for people that only want/need to learn JS.]

Love your CL work, BTW.
CSS 101: Introduction to Css
Apple COO Tim Cook Dismisses Android Tablets As “Bizarre”
Node.js and the WebSocket protocol
> like they should behave a particular way because of their genitals?

Come on. There are countless studies that show the biological differences between the sexes and the way their brains work. It's not rocket science.

If you believe in evolution, surely you believe that over time, the female and male brains have developed for different functions. I've never understood why people disbelieve this and try to pretend that the sexes are identical.
I'm astounded Zynga isn't in the top ten advertisers on Facebook. Playdom probably is lumped into Disney these days, but unless Zynga's ad lab is named named Official IQ Quiz I don't see them here at all...
Amen on that! Tarsnap is a key tool in my stack and I feel like I pay 1/10 of what it is worth relative to the other tools.
tarsnap had a government backdoor! colin just did this to get publicity! colin just did this to get a free security audit!

</sarcasm>
It already exists. Hulu has a lot of exclusive content.
thx diego. game on.
I thought the post was novel. As much as I want to know what the product is, it's still good advice.
Scientific Proof Facebook is the Jersey Shore
His process for finding markets rather than ideas would be a much more interesting topic.
Apple Analysts Are Very Well Trained. Not One Asked About Jobs’ Health.
Hollywood is being shortsighted about online content distribution.

Consider what happened in online music distribution. The music companies were very resistant in making their content available online, until Napster and others began chipping away at their revenue. Then the music companies aligned with Apple and iTunes. At first, iTunes looked like the answer to the industry's problems, providing a regulated online distribution channel for music (DRM and all). But over time, as iTunes gained market share, Apple gained extraordinary industry power. Now Apple captures much of the value in the music industry, not in the form of music sales but with hardware sales (iPod, iPhone, etc). And even though the music companies have tried to boost the market share of competing distributers (e.g., Amazon) to reduce Apple's industry power, Apple's strength is still largely intact.

I think Hollywood can learn something here. Despite resistance, we know that video content distribution is moving online. It's just a matter of time. If Hollywood is dragged kicking and screaming into online distribution by Netflix, then so be it. But Hollywood must know that if they enter online distribution hesitantly and with just a single partner, then overtime Netflix will gain significant market power and the tables in any negotiations will be turned. It won't be Netflix paying high prices to obtain any licensed content. It will be the content producers begging to get onto Netflix to distribute (and showcase) their content to viewers.

I think the best thing that Hollywood can do at this stage is to embrace online distribution and create a competitive marketplace. This will not only enable Hollywood to retain its industry power, but also increase the availability of content for viewers. Will it increase Hollywood's revenues and profits relative to their historic highs? I doubt it. But at least it won't lead to a dramatic decline in revenues and profits, as what we've seen in music sales. Your thoughts?
http://bjsw.oxfordjournals.org/content/33/4/481.full.pdf

This study is mindbogglingly dodgy, if you actually take it seriously I understand your hysteria, but a few thoughts;

1) Basic sanity check, you seriously buy that approximately one in five male workers in public sector child care work diagnose themselves as pedophiles? That's the most absurd up front point that just doesn't stand up to any kind of real world critical thought.

2) The methodology of the study claims that two questions were asked with responses on a likert scale "I am sexually attracted to some children" and "I would have sex with a child if it was certain noone would find out and there would be no punishment" with levels ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. On this seven point scale anything from 4-7 is considered to mean that the person is a pedophile. Children are defined as "before the subject's sixteenth birthday", by this measure someone who was unsure if they found a Britney Spears music video sexually attractive might potentially incriminate themselves as a pedophile.

3) further, the actual responses even by their dodgy methodology doesn't bring up the quoted 20% figure you offer, but these figures; Female childcare workers sexually attracted to some children 2%, Male childcare workers sexually attracted to some children 12%. I would have sex with a child if it was certain noone would find out and there would be no punishment, female 2%, male 4%.

By these methods they actually then come to the conclusion "sexual interest in children is relatively common among male public sector child care workers".

It is for reasons like these that I as a 31 year old male with no children or criminal history of any kind and an otherwise pronounced protective streak, would if walking down a dark street at night seeing a child crying and alone on the corner by themselves, not just keep on walking but move to the other side of the street. It should be terrifying to parents that this is the rational response for otherwise concerned strangers, but I guess that's more your problem than mine, and you can see how we come to that position by persecutory hysterical media such as the cited "study".
Hear hear. Seriously, this is how discussions should work. Ken stated that there was data, I asked for it, and he delivered in spades. Sadly, his HN Karma is close to net-negative for this thread, while mine's shot up by a few tens of points. Things absolutely should not work that way.
I'll agree that it certainly would've helped to know what the product is, but it's still a good read -- especially nice to have pictures :-).
There's some ad where the announcer states "available 28 days before netflix". I mean Netflix should be paying for such good advertising.
At least the book recommendations are fairly good, if not the discount.
Bye, bye 5 (Jeremy Keith about the W3C HTML5 controversy)
I don't know that much about Windows Phone 7 but my understanding is that developers code against a version of the CLR, so their apps should be easily ported to a new OS.
when someone calls 'Scientific Proof' it should at least have some reference or description how it was analyzed.
Javascript Beziers
typo on http://www.gnome3.org/faq.html? It says "Commons Questions and Answers", where I think it means "Common ..." Didn't see a contact link so maybe a webdev will see it here.
Sidebar: I love the way they did the screencast. Smart and it made me laugh a bit. But mostly I'm a sucker for "weirdness" in any medium. (This is why i like the yayquery podcast, too.)
What I Learned from Zuckerberg's Mistakes
Pirate Party Member Slim Becomes Secretary of State for Youth In Tunisia
tarsnap.com has exceeded their app engine quota. Not good for business.
You'd be forgiven for thinking this is a cheap shot, but nope— Wikipedia lists the difference in mean height for Americans as about 5" (~5'10" for men, ~5'5" for women). If you get three guys together in a room, you've probably already got more variation than that.

The general point here is that there is much, much more overlap between the sexes than there is difference between them. That's why although you certainly can make interesting statistical inferences about populations, applying the same statistics on an individual level (this person is a woman, she's probably [whatever]) is very likely to be false and is equivalent to blind prejudice.
Yeah, I've long thought it's a great idea that circumvents a lot of the weaknesses of tightly-constrained TV storytelling.

The problem is the economics. It seems people tend to respond negatively to production values below a certain standard. Cable productions run about $2M/episode, which translates to roughly $3M/hour or $50K/minute. Even if you can cut that by 20%, you still need to make a serious amount of money, and that's a lot of $2.10 iTunes purchases or $0.xy (I don't know what that number is, but it's got to be smaller than a dollar) Netflix streams that you've got to get in order to break even. And that's for the production values of "White Collar" or "Leverage", not "LOST" or "Rome"

On top of that, you have the business costs. You've got to pay the overhead costs, and you've got to pay development costs. Half the new shows that get a slot on TV fail, and getting one slot filled requires shooting 2-3 pilot episodes at a couple million a pop. In addition to expansion, you've got to replace your shows every few years, since (a) even the best shows get stale after a while and (b) costs go up every year.
re: diversity, wouldn't lack of diversity be a consequence of the selection method? That's what I found with the genetic algorithm for hello world I wrote (which I fully admit is decidedly less complicated than GP). When I simply culled all candidates below a certain fitness, I quickly evolved a population of clones. Likewise roulette-wheel still got the population converging on one fit solution.

Whereas with tournament selection I found that the population remained diverse.

Just my findings though, I'm no expert on GA and certainly not on GP.
Although I'm sure there are men who have a sexual interest in 5year olds - it is shall we say a rather 'specialized' section of society.

However - what proportion of 25year old TAs have a sexual interest in 19year old students? Perhaps we should allow the men to be kindergarten teachers but ban them from being junior professors?

Actually in my new lab we got these nice new offices with big heavy doors. We got 'advised' not to be in a room alone with students, then we got 'advised' by the fire dept that we couldn't wedge the doors open - so much advice for one little physics dept.
What is the best religion for an entrepreneur?
Not if it's a driver.
My Favorite Chart on Earth
Well, surely if you accept the evolutionary premises that
a) women seek men who are successful

b) men seek women who are beautiful

c) intelligence leads to greater success

d) intelligence is genetic/hereditary (to some extent)

then this is an inevitable outcome. That more physically beautiful people tend to be more naturally intelligent, due to sexual selection / natural selection / evolution.

(I didn't come up with this myself, I read a psychology paper that pointed this out some years ago. Can't find citation though)
Essay Library (Buddhism, Greek Thought, Space Time, Mind)
> " Let's suppose that the average abuser abuses 20 people."

According to kenjackson's post and data, it's closer to 110 people. This seems to put the real number closer to 0.2% of the population.

That being said, this type of context-less extrapolation can be dangerous.
Developers for Windows Phone 7 target either XNA for games (which in theory is why they are able to integrate with XBox Live) or Silverlight for everything else.

I assume that if Microsoft intends for Windows Phone 7 to be a long-term platform (which their statements at CES cast some doubt about) they may add in further parts of .NET into the SDK.
Tap.me In-Game Mobile Ad Platform Raises $1 Million
Well, I'm curious about your conceptual design for this, because to me, the whole No Formats post directly contradicts your seventh rule. We can make the network transparent, but we cannot ignore the authority boundary between our two nodes. If I am to control the code running on my node, then I can't be expected to pull in common library code from your service to view your published data.

For example, this is the way things work with a standardized format. ( -x-> means depends on and trusts through some interface (non-transitive!))

MyEnv -1-> MyImageLib ---> Jpeg specification
YourCode ---> YourImageLib ---> Jpeg specification
MyEnv -2-> YourCode

Interface 1 defines what I may do with images, while interface 2 defines how I may interact with your service. MyImageLib and YourImageLib may of course be the same library, or they may not.

This is what I interpret your post as saying:

MyEnv -3-> YourCode -4-> YourImageLib

In this new relationship, I am relying on interface 3 both for my relationship with you and for what I am allowed to do with images. If you are nice as well as thorough, I am able to rely on interface 3 to get the identity of interface 4 such that I can both work with the image library directly, as well as override the reference after forking my own copy. However, if you wish to restrict me, or even simply update reference 4 to an incompatible api, my ability to work with the library directly goes away and/or my local modifications are no longer referenced.

What have I misunderstood?
The study indicates women, on average, have higher empathy scores than men. But other studies have demonstrated similar results. Such as this one:

http://www.springerlink.com/content/r2k31831780w417w/

On the "Empathy Quotient" test, the average female score is 47 while for males it is 42.

So, no, I'm not using "a slight statistical association to rationalize" either (a) "a cultural prejudice" or (b) "bigotry" (which you unfairly accused me of in an earlier comment). I could just as easily accuse you of denying the weight of the scientific evidence because of misogyny but that would be silly. The fact is, there is room here for reasonable debate and your attempt to paint this issue in black and white is unjustified.
Buddhism. Most likely to cure him of his ignorance of impermanence, delusions of self-importance, and greed of material things.

Also, Steve Jobs, one of the greatest entrepreneurs ever, has been a Buddhist since he was 21. Zen Buddhism has a lot to do with Apple's simple design philosophy.

Here is a great intro to a beginner:
http://www.thebigview.com/buddhism/

Personal Story: In high school, I used to be motivated by money and status. I wondered about God and morality from time to time but, never changed my behavior. By college, that all changed as a few lucky encounters with the right books, songs, and people changed me to believe the complete opposite. I am now motivated by trying to do the highest good for the highest number of people. That has led to me be a Buddhist while exploring scientific revolutions, creative masterpieces, technical innovation, and social change on a daily basis.
Demdex acquired by Adobe/Omniture
I'm discussing one such study in a sibling thread. I'd be happy to do the same here if you have one you feel is persuasive.
Poll: What do you think of the new HTML5 logo?
See: http://www.w3.org/html/logo/
Dislike it
> Use TLS for data in motion; use PGP for data at rest.

That's useful advice, if you need and _want_ the guarantees given by TLS or PGP. If you have other needs then a look at, say, off-the-record messaging may be useful.
I'm intrigued by your willingness to use and to admit to using the metric "socially harmful" (as opposed to, say, "correct") to judge an opinion.

For example, what would you do if your own opinion (that is, your honest best assessment of what the truth actually was) was an opinion you judged to be socially harmful? Would you continue to hold the opinion, but try to avoid mentioning it? Would you publicly lie about your opinion? Would you express the opinion and expect public disapproval? Would you intentionally try to change your own opinion somehow?
I'd imagine that the number of iPhones sold are only going to go up now that it's coming to Verizon.
Winklevoss.me
Honestly, I think Netflix and Hulu result in me watching more TV. If I miss an episode or two of a show, that starts the slide into quitting the show. But if the show's on Hulu, I can stay caught up, and then go back to watching it live.

Similarly, I wouldn't want to jump into a show halfway through Season 3. It'd be confusing and too much work. And I'm not going to buy two seasons worth of DVDs because the current commercials look cool. So if I can get those back seasons on Netflix then I can become a loyal viewer.