skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> You will have to excuse me for not being terribly excited about the words "probably" and "in many cases".

He said categorically that it would not happen without the user's permission. And then went on to further say that it probably would not happen at all (even with the user's permission). The last sentence was further limiting the scope of what Google will do, not expanding it.

> He sounds to me like someone who is saying exactly what he thinks people want him to say

He is talking to investors, not privacy advocates. He is saying the opposite of what investors want to hear. Investors would want him to say "we are sitting on a high-value treasure trove of marketing information, and of course we will use it to enhance the value of our ads products whenever we can." Instead he is saying exactly the opposite of what would increase Google's perceived value.

> Yes, perhaps Schmidt was only trying to cover the company's collective rear end for when federal laws require them to disclose information, but if so, He has done an extremely poor job of convincing me (and obviously many others in the world) that such was his intention.

What about the fact that his very next sentence was: "If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines -- including Google -- do retain this information for some time and it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities."

Google is not the only search engine that keeps logs, and any US company that keeps logs is subject to government subpoenas. This is reality. If Eric or any other search engine CEO told you differently, they'd be lying to you.
I Will be the First Woman to Walk on the Moon
Not trying to be snide, but I don't understand what 'realism' means in this context. Personally, if a potential business partner told me that they were 'realistic' about strategy or risks or whatever, I would take it as a warning sign.

No doubt there are limiting factors and risks in anything that you do, but I'd rather find those by bumping into them, not by cautiousness. I'd rather get a new paint job and win the race than lose without a scratch.

BTW, not sure what you meant actually, but it just brought out the thought.
.com, the class
Is this too trivial or is it just me?
Horizons - What Is Reality? The Best 60 Minutes of TV I've ever Watched
Yup, FF is just the root cause. We didn't do any browser sniffing for the fix.
It's kind of an interesting question -- usually importance in the art world is a combination of excellence and influence. So even if you hate Andy Warhol, you have to admit the guy was influential, so he deserves his place in art history.

Now we have a case of someone whose work was excellent, but for obvious reasons could not possibly have influenced anyone else. Where should she be in the history of art?
That's so funny I spilled my coffee.
Microsoft? Pff, I hear there's a CEO job currently vacant at Apple...
Lessons learned from rapid prototyping
WikiLeaks: Why It Matters. Why It Doesn't?
Driving Traffic To Your Site After the Initial Spike
Would be so much more awesome if it calculated travel time for you.
I'm sure that I can hear a faint amount of music in the background.
Year of the Cloud
There's always going to be debate over whether how involved the Government should be in the private sector. On it's merit, to be honest, I don't think that Jason's proposal goes far enough. He's definitely got his eye on an undercurrent that could be a problem if we don't try and do something about it.

The real issue at hand is what's the real expectancy of college. Is college supposed to teach you to think, and make your more well rounded or is it supposed to turn you into a ninja in your space? I always understood that it's academia's responsibility to teach you to think and give you fundamentals that you can take to the market, and have the market shape you. Obviously that's archaic.

My generation (I'm 26) is, in general, a disaster coming out of college now, and it's because they spent 4 years learning the applied physics of throwing a ping pong ball across and 8 foot table and driving vaporizer innovation. Don't get me wrong, there are tons that are graduating, and are doing awesome things right now, but I bet that most of them had some sort of taste of what it was like to work in their space while they were in school.

I think that students would leave school significantly better equipped, if we found a way to make it so that you can't get your degree without spending the last 18 months of college if you don't go work full-time in a startup-like scenario, whether it's an actual startup or something like a Y Combinator. How you pay for it and make sure that students aren't free labor and a tax break for a startup, will be an issue, but overall this would end up being a net-benefit for the economy.

The last 3 years in school, while I was getting my BA in English, I worked at a tech startup, and very quickly I had to come to grips with the brutal reality of where I was, what I knew, and what I had to learn- and quickly. Those three years were a fundamentally life changing experience for me. I was hired to do user quality assurance and content development, and by the time I left, I was the de-facto project coordinator, because I was the one writing all the python to make sure that everyone's content and art assets made it into the system, so the developers could tackle implementing the new features of the software.

The real key to make this proposal work, although funding is important, is the quality of mentorship that is available to students who participate. I'm freelancing now, but I've been able to pay my mortgage for the last 2 years because the lead developer and CTO of that company decided that investing 20 minutes of their day, having lunch and sipping cups of coffee with me was a worthwhile investment of their time. If the quality mentorship component is there, programs like this will be able to help students really step it up a notch or three.
Two quick notes:

* The start page is a bit too busy. And the red really clashes with the FB connect button

* Yes, I know guys would like us to run around wearing low-cut dresses all the time - but do you really think a lot of women are going to respond to that image & "Ladies, click here"?
They can't say that outright though. They have to pretend to want piracy to end in China, even if that's not the case. They probably know that there's little that will be done to stem the issue, at least at the present time.
Google tries to make no judgments about the sites that go the top of their algorithms.
I was hoping to see something in the latest blog post from Google about spammers using Exact Match Domains to get huge algorithmic boosts. EMD + tools like xrumer usually = first page results :(
Here's some lines from the article going over the types of tests...

> A week later all four groups were given a short-answer test that assessed their ability to recall facts and draw logical conclusions based on the facts.

> But when they were evaluated a week later, the students in the testing group did much better than the concept mappers. They even did better when they were evaluated not with a short-answer test but with a test requiring them to draw a concept map from memory.

> The final group took a “retrieval practice” test. Without the passage in front of them, they wrote what they remembered in a free-form essay for 10 minutes. Then they reread the passage and took another retrieval practice test.

Another issue with the overall study is a lack of blindness of the researchers, as well as people making up questions about the material in a disconnected way from the study to test the students on those.
You do, though. I recently had my AdWords account suspended and got to talk to a human at Google to handle the issue (through normal channels). For Chrome OS, we have an actual call center with real people sitting in it.
Demand Doubles For Private Shares On SecondMarket: The Q4 Report
Good idea about google. OpenID probably won't add much tho.

Hope to see you around the boards then :)
Whoa, excellent insights. This could be an essay on its own.
The ability to enjoy Sudoku-work is something of a defining characteristic for programmers, too.

There's a certain overlap here with the theory of "Flow":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Challenge_vs_skill.svg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29

It seems to me that programming is special, because repeated tasks tend to be automated away. If you ever achieve Flow doing one task, you'll never achieve Flow there again because you won't need to.
Ask HN: Starting a side business to support your startup?
Have any HNers started a side business to support themselves during the startup process? I know of AirBnb’s selling of Obama and Mccain cereal; anyone else have a story to tell?

I’m in the process of learning how to program so that I can build an MVP for my startup idea. My runway is relatively short, as I’m a part-time college student with less than 6 months in savings. As such, I’m working a part time job to support myself. So, instead of relying on my current $7.25/hour job to pay the rent, I’m thinking about starting a separate side business.

I’ve already got the idea mapped out. It doesn’t require any technical skills, and after initial set up (approx. a week) I’ll only have to spend about 3 hours per customer. It's not a scalable business, and the pricing is relatively high, so I probably won't have the issue of too many customers. More importantly, the high price means I'll only need to attract a very low number of customers (<10) to make more than the equivalent minimum wage position, at ~60 hours per month. Obviously I have to actually get those customers, but I'm fairly confident I can manage it.

The best plan seems to be: start the side business, and if it takes off, then quit the minimum wage job. Does this make sense, or would I be better off just trying to get my main project out the door?

Thanks a bunch.
It offers the choice now of build from source or RVM
Four Tips to Drive Traffic To Your Site After the Initial Spike
How many 'normal people' even know/care about OS updates?
PostUp Acquires UberTwitter, Renames Itself (Again) To UberMedia
Thanks for the feedback -- appreciate it!
Self publishing for Apple iOS devices is not possible.

As I said in another comment, I have nothing against app stores.
The definition of 'low-quality' sites can be rather subjective, can't it? I personally get no value out of Mahalo or Squidoo but I know others actually do.

While I might not love eHow's process and tactics, I'll admit that I've benefited from one or two of their easy-to-read articles. (Though I'll often second source that information.)

I think Google's in an interesting pickle to decide whether results should be: fast food or fine dining.

Google could serve up 'fast food' in results (e.g. - farmed content) and it would likely be 'good enough' for MOST people. Plenty of folks will eat fast food even if there is a better alternative down the road.

I'd like to see more fine dining results, but I'm not sure I'm in the majority there. Quality for the early-adopter might look different than quality for the late-majority.

If the algorithm is leveraging user behavior as a signal, doesn't it follow that popular and familiar sites and brands may gain more trust and authority?

Is Google thinking at all about search in this way?
First, I haven't noticed any significant increase in the frequency of spam sites appearing the Google search results. The biggest problem that I did notice is social bookmarking sites, like reddit and digg, outranking original content. They often have nothing more than a copied-and-pasted paragraph, sometimes supplemented by low quality comments (as is common with these types of sites). Since this site is very similar, not many people will be concerned about this issue.

Second biggest issue is poor Wikipedia articles appearing in the top results for almost any reference type query. Many less frequently updated Wikipedia articles are nothing but regurgitated content lifted from other quality sources. What makes it worse is that Wikipedia is using no-follow for their links, so even if these sites are linked in the reference section, they won't get any credit. It's interesting to see so many people complain about low quality content on commercial sites, but they never mention Wikipedia, which is a much bigger offender (I guess this might be because Wikipedia gets its content for free and doesn't have ads and other sites pay for the content and do have ads).

Third, I hope Google doesn't make any changes without checking very carefully that good sites will not be negatively affected. For example, newspapers will often have the exact same articles from the AP, but also original content based on their own reporting. Punishing them for having duplicate content would not work well. There are many similar possible pitfalls.
An economics lesson for the concert business
How to Become a Great Investor
There's a small, recent scholarly literature on this in computational linguistics, referring to these as "lexical blends". This journal article is the most prominent publication, I believe: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/coli.2010.36... . The first author, Paul Cook, did a dissertation on them.
Bingo. When our indie music site's stream server would go down, our adsense ctrs would skyrocket. The people who come from google go apeshit and start clicking anything--especially adsense units--when the content they were expecting isn't found or isn't functional.
I'm getting some 4chan style questions here and nonsensical things such as "Who attends your workshops" and "Did you ask the forums about your problem?".

What is this site supposed to be?
Erlang peculiarities
Hooray! Thank you.
Will Betelgeuse Really Become a Second Sun?
Destructuring JSON in Erlang Made Easy
PyCon 2011: Why You Should Go
Ask HN: Here are 40 app DL codes. How can I grow my iPhone app?
I am trying to grow my business, I have a lot of product ideas that revolve around AI / human computer interaction and this is the first app I have released that starts to dip into that space. Would people even use this? Yes, some people have payed for it, but I want to take it to the next level. Customers don't seem to comment on it or email me feature requests. What do you think?

Link to SnoozeRobot in appstore: http://bit.ly/heYNgJ

The codes:
H9PKXNRALRA9
3X9J3AWFHMLA
7MHF4J6H7NXE
43RRHMW9WPMA
3P7MXJAFNWPK
AYMXMHLNTJ9E
N6K9E4NRTW6L
EXN4JHLMHNXA
HFF3JY49ALRJ
7Y3TJJMYLKMY
FAF9MLMWY4LP
EYLFE4XXW9JH
7PH3W7EWLAKL
9RJE4XML734N
XRPYKLRLXHE7
9FKRMXH9JLN3
6ETHEHH3EN7N
H3Y4NYK7JEJA
76JMAFALNN34
NTHJWLAL7J96
AYHMRNXK3HAK
LM3LF3A9MY33
WE4K4HRAE49Y
LTK973MXYPFL
3ANHNFHW9HNA
HEFTTTXMLFTA
HXPNPAKJYX6K
KWA97L64364N
LHK4AJAY6EFP
FTTLPE63KJYW
JK3WFAHKXNTN
HYHHXWME6HXL
LN7AAE47MJ74
7Y4JEL94NTEA
M4Y37M7RY9RX
TW3HKMYERLYR
LEELFJKE3HAJ
YELHKN3XE4LP
MR4LYXFT3RP6
6XA7NJPYJTTK
The one and only time I tried to use the automated check-in system at Citizen M it didn't work. Then the key I got to the room didn't work. Probably just my luck. But overall I really liked the concept and would still stay there again.
If I were the chinese I wouldn't be able to resist the temptation to say -

"you're right we will introduce the death penalty for software piracy, ban the sale of imported software at below US list price - and we will put 100,000 programmers on a plan to produce OpenOffice for the people"
That's good to know. I thought I had found some real bargains in Manhattan but then realized the apartments were not in Manhattan, e.g. the address on Craigslist would simply be '34th St.' and PadMapper would plot it in Manhattan, but it is was actually 34th St. in Astoria.

It would also be good if PadMapper could scrape addresses from the title of posts (or from within the post) when there is no (full) address link at the bottom of a Craigslist post. This might be a bit more tricky since the way some of the addresses are written can't even be interpreted by Google Maps.

I still found PadMapper to be the best way to find apartments in areas I wanted to live, and it is a lot clearer than HotPads and Google Property search. One thing that I would really love is a more complete map that shows transportation and amenities like Google Maps. I often found myself having to re-search the address on Google Maps to find out what was in the neighbourhood.

My experiences are still fresh in my mind, so feel free to contact me if you want some more feedback.
I've let it run for 10 generations in the background, and keep coming back to be entertained. It's fun to see the cars tackle the course. I've already gotten attached to a few of them - I cheer them on when they make it over a hill and cry with despair when they don't. =)

Here is one car that I got in generation 10: http://i.imgur.com/J0kdV.png

It didn't do too well, but it reminded me of a [update] penny-farthing. This should be familiar to people living in Palo Alto: http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/show_story.php?id=11781%3...
I'm not going to lie: when I first read the Huffington Post article (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/20/two-suns-twin-stars...) citing a news.com.au article (http://www.news.com.au/technology/sci-tech/tatooines-twin-su...) I was genuinely excited: ever since learning about Betelgeuse as a little kid, I always thought, "wow, I really hope that thing happens to go supernova within my lifetime. It would be amazing."

Here's hoping it will still happen after all.
Facebook is in a great position and will surely be quite influential in the next 5 years, but I think they'd have to do more before they could be called 'top dog'. Really I don't think any single corporation is in that position. Some people make hardware, some do software at different levels, then there's the government - and they're all interdependent.
Actually, it does:

>Hit Options and make sure you're using the Master Boot Record option. Then hit Apply to format the drive.
I swear one day to make a startup and display "Not available to your area" to the whole US.

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/6110859/BBC_Horizon_2011_Wha...
Read the script, it's adjustable. Download, change your version and run. They are listed as they help 'cover all bases' as they are used by some gems that people might need.
Why don't they make their most valuable features only work if a valid license was shown to a server within the last week?

Seems like there's no way Google Apps could have unauthorized users precisely because you do need to login to their servers.

There advantages to having Office installed locally, but surely this is a big enough problem to change how things work. 90% is a lot.
(the bike is a penny-farthing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny-farthing )
Get Better Student Discounts at Your University's Computer Store
Hey Matt, thanks for the response. I actually have a huge list of these type of sites that I've submitted through the spam report and 90% of them are still indexed and have pagerank. Is there another way I can send them in?
I recently built a game with similar mechanics (http://www.bigblockgames.com/games/goblin/), and this is basically what my first day of development looked like, just sped up between takes.

Except at least this doesn't create many cars unstable enough that the structure starts oscillating before shooting off to infinity. So I guess GA 1, Michael 0.
My guess is that the copyright issues aren't actually in the suit as an attempt to get copyright royalties. I think Oracle's goal is patent royalties from the several patents in the suit.

If I'm right, the copyright part of the suit is there for two reasons.

1. It might make Google look bad. Even if Google prevails on the copyright aspect of the case, some jurors may think that they were doing something shady--there just wasn't enough evidence presented to nail them for it. If Oracle wins on the patent side of things, those jurors may be more inclined to vote for higher patent damages because of the impression they got from the copyright side of things.

2. It might be a tactic to waste some of Google's time at trial. You don't get unlimited time to present your case, examine witnesses, cross examine witness, or present final arguments. In the patent trial I attended as inventor and witness, each side had something like 15 hours. Some courts go so far as to use a chess clock and time it down to the second.

Oracle could tell the jury what files they are going to show, enter into evidence proof that they own the copyright and have registered it, put up diffs between their version and Google's version, pointedly call attention to how similar they are, and be done with that in a few minutes. Let Google them spend an hour explaining it all away, teaching the jury about Java boilerplate code and such. That's an hour Google won't have on its clock for tearing into Oracle's patent expert on whether or not Google's VM reads on the claims of the patents, and other things like that.

Something like that happened at the trial I attended. As is common in many IP cases, the IP had been transferred to a holding company created specifically to hold it for the trial, and if we had won would deal with collecting and distributing the damages. Perfectly routine thing. However, someone screwed up. They did not file with the state's corporate authorities a document they are supposed to file that comes from the state's tax authorities that declares that the company has paid its taxes. They had paid the taxes--they had just not filed it with the appropriate corporate records people.

The other side found out that, and at trial asked our CFO (who was not involved in setting up the holding company--that was handled by the CFO of a company that was jointly involved in the suit, although our CFO has specifically asked before trial if they had taken care of this and they said yes), "Mr. Soandso--why is HoldingCorp cheating on its taxes?" or something like this. This of course flummoxed our CFO, and made him look confused in front of the jury. Then, the next day, after our lawyers made sure the filing was taken care of, they had to spend a lot of time teaching the jury exactly how these filings work and showing them we had paid taxes on time, and had just misplaced a minor documents.

Throughout the rest of the trial, they had to let some damaging things go un-rebutted, and drop some good arguments, because of the lost time on that tax thing.
How Much Money Is Your Clutter Costing You?
The Robustness Principle
Why should the frequencies be more compact than the tree? If at all, they should take more space.
> this is traditional journalism

The fact that this style of journalism is considered "traditional" is itself quite lamentable.
I think there is a disconnect in the scale at which you are both commenting:

Comment #1:

> I've been tracking how often this happens over the last month.
> <snip>
> it definitely happens less often compared to a several weeks
> ago.

Comment #2:

> I am seeing many, many more clone sites in my search
> results in the last few months

You can't argue against "things have gotten better in the last week" with "things have been getting worse for the last 6 months."
Thanks for pointing that out. To be technical, though, it is a reverse penny-farthing.
DTerm: A command line anywhere and everywhere
Huge rocket launch from California
Actually, there's a Chinese fork of OpenOffice.org, it's called RedOffice. It also has a pretty good interface!

review: http://www.johannes-eva.net/redoffice-review

official site: http://www.redoffice.com/
Not thunderbird's filter, unfortunately.
The reason Google isn't doing the same thing as DuckDuckGo is most likely because manually banning a domain instead of improving their algorithms to avoid unwanted behaviors will only temporarily work, and only in select cases. There will always be new spam and content farm sites.
Oh, herbivores may be easier to feed though.

(Though---probably not. Meat has changed less than plants since the time of the dinosaurs.)
Zyzmor’s Revenge? Making faster buying decisions?