skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This sentence in particular stuck out to me:

The novice writer, he argues, has a "natural tendency ... to think primarily of
himself—hence to write primarily for himself."

One of my writing professors had us write a description of our target audience as part of the heading of each essay we wrote to try to help prevent us from doing this.

It's a danger not just when you're writing, but when you're doing any kind of design. I think it's very hard to be a good designer without being able to understand how different audiences are going to see and interact with your work.

It's especially an issue in web/web application design when you're designing for people that aren't at all tech savvy. Besides being very important if you're trying to reach a broader market, it's amazingly gratifying to hear someone who self-describes as "terrified of computers" tell you about how they learned to use your webapp in 5 minutes.
Now that we have confirmation that Bing uses clickstream data on sites that they do not control, I'm surprised that no one mentioned this makes them sensitive to click-fraud.

Copying a leader isn’t as objectionable as denying it and I would argue that Google could split their search engine into independent entities—say: crawling, algorithm, interface. That way, competitors could try to outrun them and innovate on one or the other, separately: Firefox, Siri and many others on the interface; Cloudera or Amazon on the crawl, DuckDuckGo and physics labs on the algorithm (just spitballing there). What Bing did wasn’t that different from a grease-monkey script that would supplement bing.com results with Google‘s, it seems — or at least, they could have had the humility to present it that way.

Now, their pride made them confess to being easily gamed.
Did Google just Outflank Apple in the Tech Press?
No, they support H.264 because it is THE video standard. Not supporting H.264 for video would be like not supporting JPEG for photographs.
Bing is admitting their results are affected by click fraud then??
Oops, dupe: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2171963 (fixed)

Sorry
Completely flattening income is a horrible idea. Everyone would try to get the easiest job possible, because the income is the same. Yes, some people do their job because they love it. But most people bust their butt so they can make a good living.

"But in my system, everyone makes a good living," you say. What about inherently scarce resources? There is limited beachside property. Who will get it? Currently, busting your tail through medical school gives you a better chance than dropping out of high school. How would you decide when everyone makes the same?

And the income equality would be an illusion, anyway: some skills are inherently more valuable than others. Transactions would just go off the grid. You need a roofing job done? The roofer is all booked up. Oh, you can barter with your web design skills? Well, that's more valuable than the guy who offered yard service, so you win. But darn if bartering isn't awkward - if only we had some system to store this inherent value...
From the Google blog post:

"This [torsorophy] example opened our eyes, and over the next few months we noticed that URLs from Google search results would later appear in Bing with increasing frequency for all kinds of queries: popular queries, rare or unusual queries and misspelled queries. Even search results that we would consider mistakes of our algorithms started showing up on Bing."

That's the key. Not the honeypot. The honeypot was just a test to see if they could catch them red handed.

Bottom line is that Google looked at the statistics and found that Bing results were improbably similar to Google results. Maybe they're lying about this, but I doubt it.

There's not enough information to figure out exactly to what extent Google impacts Bing results, but I would bet a lot of money that in the Bing code base there is Google specific code that behaves along the lines of "if on google, do x" rather than some generic code that just targets all sites.
This article doesn't seem to reflect the title in any way?
There's a difference between rewriting history and scrubbing it. I think rewriting is far worse offence.

Regardless, I still disagree with the removal of the article.
Honeycomb is here: Google unveils Android 3.0, new Web-based Market
Recursive dupe ?
It doesn't though. My real problem with this whole Bing-Google mess is that if Google's search results really were just "one small component" of a good search experience, why doesn't Microsoft just remove them? Then it comes off looking reasonable and Google looks childish. That they haven't done so seems to indicate that they are an important part of the results.
I wouldn't say it was obvious, mainly because this was something Google did specifically to cause this. I would imagine you could replicate the same results with other major search engines simply by doing the same thing with the same amount of volume as the Google dudes did.

Additionally, if things were reversed and Google was posed these questions, I would imagine would be lacking just as many answers as what Bing is supplying.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2171963
Posted 2 days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2160105
Looking at your blog http://ryanwaggoner.com/ , I can see why you would come to his defence. You're obviously very much into self-help books. That stuff doesn't work for everyone.
Thanks for the reply, jhammer. I'll get the Pro version before the 50% off ends and I'll try by myself.
The difference is that Stackoverflow says "please index us" while Google says "please don't index us".
Ask HN:  Should the Internet be included in the constitution?
I think it's fairly accepted that the internet itself is generally protected under the first amendment. More recently, I was also thinking recently about how the internet could actually be protected under the second amendment as well.

In any case, should an amendment explicitly guaranteeing access to the internet be added to the constitution?
IPad 2 display leaked
Senators decry people watching them break what's not broken. Film at 11.
this isn't a great reason, but perhaps this is because users of the Chrome Web Store are guaranteed to be using a modern web browser (Chrome), while regular computer users of the Android Market can be using any browser. (Does the new Market work in IE?)
That's probably because they were. Developers previously have uploaded various promotional images at resolutions suitable for the mobile Market, but the web market seems to use resources at a range of different resolutions. Whilst I haven't tried it yet, I imagine that there will be a few more fields to upload appropriate images to, and frequently updated apps and popular apps will not suffer from this within a few days.
I'm just saying that you are doing a poor job of dispelling people's reservations.

What I'm saying makes perfect sense to people who can't stand the industry and Tim Ferris. I don't know what it looks like to you.

There will always be people who love something, regardless of what it is, and whether it works or not.
Had the same problem with all browsers in the morning (Chrome, Opera, IE, Firefox). But it seems to be working now (no certificates/cookies issues). Tried pushing a random app to my phone, and it worked seamlessly.
I haven't seen any kind of justification for the provision making the president's hypothetical action immune from judicial review. And I can't think of any justification, either.

Anybody care to explain what they're thinking?
Some people here might be interested maybe a list or a way to contact you.
1. You're definitely right. We're not front-end guys really.

2. Haha, really? Is the logo cheesy too? We kind of thought it was clever and cute all in one. "Poll" on "bare" (raw) music talent. Fair enough though!

3. Yeah, we've been trying to work on making it less confusing. Will do though.

Surprisingly, there's some good music on there, right? We've gone to local music festivals and whatnot - but not with much luck so far. We'll keep trying though.
this my th has been brought up before..

Google makes more than $1 billion or more on mobile ads..are you aware of that? That means in fact android does pay for itself..
This article is wonderful press. I want the book!
> I wouldn't say it was obvious, mainly because this was something Google did specifically to cause this

There is a subtle point that many posts like this are overlooking. Google didn't run this experiment to cause bing to show bogus results, they did it to confirm the rise in suspiciously similar results produced by bing.
"fair use" is a well-established practice for all of those things except (possibly) search results
Thanks for giving Rapportive a go! If you can, please stick with it: the results will get better over the next 1-2 days. (We know we've got lots of work to do on first user experience, and we're addressing that.)

We're also building features specifically to help spot email addresses belonging to the same people, which would have really helped in this case.
Boston, MA (not remote)

MDT Advisers - We're a small quant investing shop working with machine learning, financial analysis, and the hardest dataset in the world. We have an internship that is similar to our full-time analyst position: http://www.mdtadvisers.com/careers/qea.jsp , but that isn't on our website.

You can email me at jlewicke@mdtadvisers.com with any questions you have.
How To AMP Your Engineers: Ideas For Energizing Your Best
Wow that's a great idea.
http://www.hn-books.com/
Does anyone know if they are going to put more effort into their VLC browser plugin?

I tried it a few months ago and it only work semi decently in Chrome on Windows. For Mac it was totally broken.
The user's algorithms are going to have try to control for overfitting on their own. Try to make it hard for the users to evaluate the model on the same data they trained it on. Also educate them that in-sample results are meaningless.

I guess I'd want an easy way to get data in chunks for testing. You can either do it as a rolling window or regular cross validation. (Rolling would be train on N years of data, test on the next year. Then drop the last year and add another year and repeat. CV would be just divide in 10 chunks, train on all combination of 9 and test on the 10th.) It would be good to support both.
What you fail to understand is how search algorithms and machine learning works. Yes its no coincidence that Bing showed search results. Google pretty much gamed their algorithm so it would happen that way by providing false data for Bing to train on.

Really the only valid argument you've implied above is that it might be unethical to strip data using the Bing toolbar. But that's an entirely different point. I'm not saying Bing is being ethical. I'm just saying they aren't directly copying.
What I don't understand is how it is acceptable to essentially "void" all the contracts for internet and point to point/transport (which would travel over the same fiber and routers) just because the gov't says so.

The entire idea of having a court system is to ensure justice in criminal issues and in civil issues, protect the enforcement of contracts. Somehow this is getting turned around.
Can you then explain the use of the term "unlimited"
"What do you need to spend money on that you can't afford with $90K?"

Salary caps are, in my opinion, a backwards view. When someone says "basketball players shouldn't be able to make $10 million a year," what they're really saying is "people shouldn't be willing to spend $50 on game tickets," or "more of the income the team makes should go to the coach," or something like that. The money is flowing in already, based on the market's decisions. Shouldn't the players get a big chunk of it? They're making it all possible, after all.

Similarly, trying to cap the salary of a doctor or a CEO or whatever is really saying "nobody should value your services enough to give you that much money." But... they do. How can you keep people from paying what they're willing to pay? And if they can't pay more, how can they compete for the best doctor or CEO or programmer or whatever? They will find other ways to compensate.
I've read all of Vinge's work and it really is phenomenal. It's been years since I read it and can only remember vague concepts now... the singularities, the 'focus' drug that makes his programmers super-human.

I really must read them again. Quite excited to hear a new book is coming out.
Angry Birds, in a sane world, should be worth no where near one billion. They have sold less than 100 million copies, and I doubt they can keep on repeating their success year after year. It's a fad that will soon be replaced, just like Doodle Jump and Flight Control before it.
I understand what you're saying, but I don't think it's necessarily accurate. There are lots of people with marriages and families making good money in more open communities. I honestly don't believe the line that ".NET is a professional's community, Ruby et all are just for hobbyists". .NET has been relegated to a professional community because of the buy-in for everything, but it really doesn't have to be that way to make a living writing code.

Speaking as a 27 year-old-married-with-two-kids Rubyist, it's entirely possible to make a living charging for your work and still give away useful tools and libraries. I keep a GitHub account and publish code there, usually under MIT or BSD licenses, and while I don't publish everything I write, I have benefited so much from the open source that others have written that I contribute back to the community where I can, and somehow manage to get the bills paid at the end of the month.
I won't conclude that there wasn't more to offer than just internet fame, but I will say that brand is something that companies will pay a big premium for.
You're dead right. But most people don't realize the power of thought and how it affects our mood and determines the course of our entire lives. Comparing ourselves with others is a sure way to make ourselves feel worse. Facebook just provides us with an easy opportunity to do that.
I have no idea but judging from the amount of real ads I see on Reddit, I'd guess they make way more money from Gold than from display ads at the moment.
> We have been clear about this for a couple of years (see Directions on Microsoft report, June 15, 2009).

That's about as unclear as anyone can be. Seriously Microsoft, this is the Web. When you want to point your readers to a document, don't fucking cite it like some printed academic paper! LINK TO IT.
Why Only Five Polyhedra?
I agree with this. I'm still young and relatively inexperienced, but I'm in the process of moving to a new job - taking a 40% raise.

My current employer offered 10% when I said I was leaving, and all they offer annually is the rate of inflation. I don't know how common this is, but speaking to a few people as I was looking for my new job, it isn't at all uncommon unfortunately.

I don't doubt that there are companies that are more keen to reward good employees, but as a general statement I concur with jumping ship every 2-3 years while young. I also believe that this will increase your value in itself (especially while you are young) as it will give you a wider experience, show that you are able to integrate into new environments and 10 years later you won't be stuck in the mould of your first company.

edit: I should add, I'm a Software Engineer in the UK.
Great addition. Pretty seamless how you can comment right from the Rapportive sidebar on people's FB postings.
The landing page also links to a special AppSumo marketing bundle that's completely free. It's got both KISSMetrics and Visual Website Optimizer (3 months) included.

http://appsumo.com/hacker-monthly
I still don't get why individual developers are so cheap. It is a paradox.

$35 is nothing. I totally believe in supporting a good product with a very reasonable price.

Compare $35 for Reflector to $800 for TypeMock... $200 for Resharper... $300+ for dotTrace.

If you use something daily, <$50 is nothing... even <$100.
What Makes a Hit (Consumer) Internet Service
InternMatch Raises $400K To Help Students Find The Perfect Internship
There are very few examples of companies turning down large offers and subsequently regretting it. There has to be something pretty good going on to get an offer like that.
after reading the first few paragraphs, i closed the tab.. a waste of space. all PR crap.
Do you have a email address that I can contact you at for more information?
Wow, I didn't expect that. "We didn't censor it, we just took it down!" Pretty much the only thing that could leave a worse taste in my mouth about it.
More recently, I was also thinking recently about how the internet could actually be protected under the second amendment as well.

Wait, what?
Thetopspace - Taboo
I wasn't aware that they did -- interesting. But actually that only covers "any Microsoft software licensed for a fee for your end use." [0] Since Google does not charge end-users for any of its software that it distributes, you could argue that Google's indemnification program is just as extensive as Microsoft's.

[0] http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/D/0/9D0A6265-A509-4...
Looks like JetBrains is going to release an alternative:

http://blogs.jetbrains.com/dotnet/2011/02/reflections-on-rec...
+1 for making my brow bend and then laugh out loud when you corrected yourself and ended with "how embarrassing". I really needed that today, hope you don't mind it was at your expense--so I gave some karma your way.

I was just in a miserable mood and relief came in an unexpected place. Cheers!

(sorry this is off topic to the rest)
Data Journalism Tools Entered In 2011 We Media PitchIt Challenge
More like one of the twenty four-hours-before, if he's following 4HB. ;)
Story of Applifier: From the brink of death to reaching 55 million gamers
Although I agree, the MBA-dissing is really old. Every time I see yet another one of these articles, I heave a sigh and think "Again? Really? Slow news day?"

That so many people make it out like a stigma to have one, is ridiculous considering that really all it is is a Master's degree.

I decided to get mine because the advanced-level courses it offered were interesting; there is no other degree where you can learn so much about so many industries. A master's degree is also a pre-requisite for a CPA, and at that point I hadn't decided if the CPA was a route I might want to take (my undergrad is in Accounting).

Finished it in one year (2004) at a state school, so the expense wasn't necessarily cost-ineffective. Took classes about strategic thinking for the global marketplace, competitive positioning and marketing, employment discrimination law, negotiation, and learned a lot of the "lingo" that is necessary for industry analysis.

Do I regret it? No. Do I recommend it? Not unless you're a person who likes learning for the sake of learning.

Semi-related topic http://oss.zentu.net/?q=node/153
Whether it was a type of attack also known as “click fraud,” or not, it does appear to be an attack. One can argue that the attack was justified - and one can argue that it's not - but it still was a deliberate effort to improve page rank in a way similar to one which Google actively discourages.

The fact that only 7/100 of the honeypots were successful may mean that Google's motives may have been more complex - such as determining how and to what degree Bing handles "click fraud" type attacks. I just have a hard time believing that Google would turn 20 engineers loose on a task that can be so easily automated.
OK, but as someone who as run a 50k, "20 minutes 3 times a week and you can run 50K" is bald faced lie.
Transparency in development process isn't the same as transparency in interpersonal drama.. with OSS it is hard to draw a distinction between the two sometimes. I applaud the relative civility with which this fork is happening and I appreciate the fact that we arent focusing on the drama but rather on the options and opportunities that this split creates.
A common counter-argument seems to be 'But this effect only happens when there are no other sources of relevance data'.

Well...

'over the next few months we noticed that URLs from
Google search results would later appear in Bing with
increasing frequency for all kinds of queries:
*popular queries*, rare or unusual queries and
misspelled queries.'
-- http://goo.gl/Bi0JH [googleblog]

Now it's possible that Bing really did have no data for these 'popular queries' but I don't think that's an argument anyone would like to make. The alternative interpretation is that top-ranked pages in Google get added prominently to Bing after some interaction involving the toolbar, even when there are lots of other possible matches.

You can still say that this would represent just a single data-point among many but unless you think Google is lying, you can't say that it only happens with rare searches.

BTW: I'm not arguing that there is direct evidence that the mentioned effect on popular queries is related to the toolbar. But the effect is there.
Works on my 2.1 HTC Hero. It surprised me, didn't think it would be so simple. I'm a bit concerned over the privacy and security implications of this feature though. How is it guaranteed that only Google can trigger app installations? What else can Google trigger on my phone?
What happened to their old design?
Accelerando was all right, but unexciting if you already read of most of the ideas back in the 90s (in Extropy, etc.). Similarly Vinge's _Rainbows End_ was a much bigger deal to me than Stross's _Halting State_. I do read Stross, just without the same avidity.

I like Banks; he's a first-rate writer, as a writer. Not really in the same category for me of writers who hit my hacker sweet-spot: Vinge and Stephenson.

Haven't read Morgan.

A bit of a Blub paradox here wrt Stross and Vinge. My author can beat up your author?
How Shaw Cable dicked us out of bandwidth
This is a bogus argument. Google is not the "messenger" any more than Microsoft is the victim (as they seem to be portraying themselves). Google is the accuser, and they have their motivations for bringing this to light. Microsoft is free to question Google's character or motivations as much as they want. The discussion I've seen here in HN and elsewhere doesn't seem to reflect the expectation Google probably had when they leaked this to a third party -- the universal "Microsoft sucks" reaction they might have safely garnered a few years ago.

The "shoot the messenger" argument has its place, but this isn't it. In this context it just comes across as an emotional appeal biased against Microsoft. I don't think either party is innocent here.
Read google's "Bing Sting" experiment on Google's blog. Their test had no control variable (ie: running the same test on another website that wasn't Google). If they had done their expirement on another site and Bing results didn't change then Google would have a very plausible case against Bing.

Google fell into the classic trap of confirmation bias with bad scientific method. And thus the test was 'rigged', they never had a control variable.
Whether it was a type of attack also known as “click fraud,” or not, it does appear to be an attack. One can argue that the attack was justified - and one can argue that it's not - but it still was a deliberate effort to improve page rank in a way similar to one which Google actively discourages.

The fact that only 7/100 of the honeypots were successful may mean that Google's motives may have been more complex and slightly less akin to righteous indignation - such as determining how and to what degree Bing handles "click fraud" type attacks. I just have a hard time believing that Google would turn 20 engineers loose on a task that can be so easily automated.
Not quite - they are admitting that click fraud on google.com affects their results!
Perhaps, but Google hasn't been one of those companies, Google Earth and Google Analytics are both things they acquired --- and immediately rebranded. (Originally Keyhole and Urchin respectively.)

In any case, I'm not sure Path has yet established enough of a brand to be worth that kind of premium.