skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Consider the millions of people in the west that can verify MEMRI, since the original tv programs are on the web. [Edit: Also consider that Wikipedia quoted MEMRI.]

So what can be said, is that the type of content exists in Arab media.

I don't really know about Al Jazeera and their spin. I seriously doubt most people claiming it is trustworthy do, either. The pro-Al J seem willing to vote up/down people for agreeing/contradicting, which is an interesting weighing of the importance...

Edit: It is fun when people recommend Al Jazeera without even knowing their agenda -- while other sources are dismissed, which are verifiable by many millions of people in EU/USA...
I know what we are going to do with it - we have a great idea, I just wanted to see what others would do with it.

True, that is what is holding us back. We're exploring some .coms
Google referrer gives you the article, so, google " http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/h/himanen-hacker.html ", and click the link, with the google referrer, it will work.

Idea: Url shortener that forwards you to a link and gives the link a google referrer. Would take 5 seconds to write. Might start a paywall arms race. :P
If you want to do some research into the gun debate, a good place to start is the movie "Bowling for Columbine". Some people will think of it as an extreme left-wing-nutjob propaganda piece, but my recollection of the movie is not that it hammers you with a conclusion, but that it presents a bunch of different scenarios that are all 'odd' in their own way. Accusing BfC of being a propaganda piece is like calling Borat a propaganda piece, stylistically they are quite similar.

Anyway, one of the things that really struck me about that movie was the difference in gun related deaths (per head of population) in Canada and the U.S. Basically both countries have buttloads of guns and the justification in both is that they are for 'hunting'. I don't remember the exact figures, but the deaths per 1000 from guns was enormously much higher in the U.S. than in Canada. Moore doesn't give an answer to that dilemma per se, but he does throw it out there for people to think about and make up their own minds. Frankly, if that is propaganda, I think the U.S. and the internet in general need a lot more of it.

-----

As for the guns debate, you could make an analogy to poison, where you say that poisons are sold at the supermarket, so why not sell guns at the supermarket too? I guess the reply would be that the poisons that are sold invariably have some other practical use, e.g. cleaning products. Whereas guns are pretty much designed with the express and only purpose of killing stuff.

Then the gun-nut will reply "oh, there's lots of other uses for a gun, like sport (target practice), hunting and personal defense as a deterrent". The problem isn't that those things are wrong, the problem is that - unlike pretty much every other country in the world with guns - people in the U.S. don't seem to stop at deterrent, they are much more likely to use the 'personal defense' guns to try to kill someone else.

Why is that?

What is it about the U.S. that as soon as they get a gun in their hand they want to go 'pop a cap in yo ass'?

And why doesn't that happen in Canada?

Some of the scenarios I remember from the movie that were presented:

The bank that gives you a shotgun when you open an account

The mall store(?) that was selling ammo in massive aisles

The five year old that took a handgun to school and shot one of his class-mates dead

The Columbine massacre

The gun lobby holding a big pro-guns rally in Columbine immediately after the massacre

Moore harassing Charlton Heston (figurehead of the gun lobby) (this one was most like a scene from Borat - it was an uncomfortable 'excuse me while I invade your personal' thing and went on for ages)
I think it's more of a soundbite than a misunderstanding. Yes, Facebook did succeed because Mark Zuckerburg saw the opportunity to start a social networking site. Dropbox did take off because Drew saw the opportunity for file synchronization. It's just that they succeeded for many reasons besides that initial opportunity.

In a one-sentence press soundbite, you can't exactly enumerate all the things that the founders did right. But that doesn't make the "opportunity" part wrong. It's just one of many necessary-but-not-sufficient conditions that the founding team managed to nail.
I understand the point you're making. I was addressing your use of "human suffering". Staying at the Hilton is unquestionably better than staying at a Motel 6, but calling a night at the Motel 6 "human suffering" would be ridiculous and such use cheapens the term.
> Which means that there will almost certainly suddenly be a lot more "workers".

You mean a low unemployment rate?

> Your system relies on taking away a great deal of money from rich people... the more you do it the harder those rich people are going to try to avoid paying

Not really, no. Money in excess of $90k isn't confiscated, it's still used to purchase status just as it is today. The only difference is that it's purchased from the government instead of BMW, De Beers, etc. Status markers are essentially arbitrary anyway, why not just have a single number? It's much more efficient.

> suppose that every employer that currently pays anyone $(90k+x)/year decides to pay them, say, $(90k+0.1x)/year

They could do that, and it would lower everyone's rank. This would cause some people to quit those jobs and find other jobs that offered more status, lowering supply and causing the price to go up again. If salaries drop because of market forces, the savings would be used to invest in the business: hiring other employees, improving operating efficiency, R&D, etc.

> they also want to get rich because wealth brings large houses, etc.

Any income above $75k doesn't contribute to personal happiness, and standard income is already 20% above that. Luxury goods don't contribute to happiness, they're just a wasteful and inefficient way of signaling status. That money that could be used to improve lives or fund innovation.
Hudson CI developers vote against Oracle control, "Hudson" name...
90% of Y Combinator Startups Have Already Accepted The $150k Start Fund Offer
The Problems of Scaling and Scoble at Quora
I'm not saying you're wrong, but it's important to keep memory biases in mind. In particular, our penchant for rosy retrospection[1] seems pretty relevant. I'm just saying that this post has a very "kids these days" feel to it. :-)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosy_retrospection
Complete Internet Blackout in Egypt (Updated)
Works for me in Firefox 3.6.13 under Linux.
I remember a few months ago when Scoble was singing the praises of pip.io from the rooftops. You had to go sign up for pip.io, it was gonna be huge and it was so awesome to have all your social media content in one place.

So, yeah. I hear you. I'd rather not diss the guy, because he has added a lot of value just by covering the startup space and conducting a lot of great interviews. I just wish he would spend more time doing quality blogging.

I give a lot of credit to Scoble, though. He's unique among the meta-geek crowd in that he'll respond to anybody as long as you have something intelligent to say without regard for whether you're in the "inner circle" of SV. Not many people at his level do that; in fact the only other person I can put in that category is Steve Jobs.
If your government shuts down the internet...
I love it how the Guy Fawkes mask has become a universal symbol of resistance
I wish this wasn't so far above my abilities. It would be fantastic to find a course to work up to this point.
Well ... it looks like they'd be right for fail blog, so perhaps people will think this is funny too? Or you can always sell the site to the "I can has cheeseburgerz" guy.
Anyway, TechCrunch says that around 90% of them already signed up for the money so we'll just have to wait and see.
Same video submitted 4 hours ago to thunderous silence:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2156163
We live in a society that uses fiat currency so why does it matter how much we're in debt? Why can't we simply say "that $12,000,000,000,000 we owed? We just hit a triple word score and we have it in the bank now." The USA has carried a debt for the last 190 years and we haven't gone bankrupt yet.
Considering the extensiveness of the general populace's access to the PS3, is this really surprising?
Do we know what project she was on?

If the project was for instance 'wave' then I can easily understand how having it terminated is a pretty gruesome experience. If you have been given the impression that a project has staying power and the carpet gets yanked out from under it before it gets under way I'm not quite sure how I would respond to that but it certainly would not make me happy. (and if the project wasn't wave then I'm really curious what it was).
I'm very curious as to what are the philosophy differences and trade-offs between Angular, Knockout, and more lightweight plugins such as jQuery Data-Link [1].

(1) https://github.com/jquery/jquery-datalink
No it's not. Checking for nulls (and it's brother-by-a-different-mother catching exceptions) is entirely in keeping with the philosophy of being lenient in what you accept as input.

Checking for nulls is good practice because it makes you think about what is happening in the code. It makes you think about making design decisions about how you will handle nulls. It makes you aware that some libraries out there may return null from a method call. It makes you aware that no matter how often you make your co-workers sign a death pact in their own blood that they will never return a null or pass you a null, that they may do so anyway either through omission or commission (incompetence or miscomprehension or some weird boundary condition).

Checking for nulls is compatible with a philosophy of thoroughly testing your code.

Even if you are the perfect programmer, others are not. Refusing to check for nulls is to be at risk of disagreeing with reality how it should work. Reality always wins.

Realising that if everyone else is not perfect, that perhaps they are also not perfect, is what causes the personal growth benefit I ascribed to being a more careful programmer.
Of all those that agree with such argument, I'd like to get an answer to these questions:

1) have you traveled to a developing|third-world country?
2) if you haven't, you should. if you have...
2a) what price tag do you put on first-class infrastructure that makes your business run smoothly, not to mention make it safer to deliver?
2b) what price tag do you pay to ensure that you have a well-nourished and healthy work-force that is more intelligent, stronger and efficient?
2c) what price tag do you pay to ensure that everyone has access to a world-class education (again, compare to a third-world country, I know ours sucks compared to others') that is again, more knowledgeable, more creative, etc and will one day help you boost margins, compete globally, etc?

And I could go on...

You see.. safety goes hand in hand with:
1) economic stability
2) health (ever wonder why some people risk their own lives to cross borders? their families are starving/dying!)
3) education
4) and much more than just a strong military, uncorrupt/just police/court system

And those things cost money. If you'd rather grow wealthy in another country, I dare you to try! And if you're already wealthy and you think taxing you more is unfair, I dare you to move to countries like Mexico where many business owners now have to pay "taxes" to drug gangs or else, they just don't go to prison, they get killed!

I'm not arguing that our tax system doesn't need reform or that current rates are fair, I'm arguing that if you want to be wealthy one day or are already, it's in your best interest to contribute more. Consider it an investment where you can. Yes, surely there is waste, but focus on that, don't whine about the fact that you're getting punished because YOU ARE NOT... you were rewarded with all these great opportunities and public goods and services you seem to take for granted, that's all (again, see my first question above).
Because Fiat currency is a representation of a promise that is paid for with human life, rather than a precious resource. Our debt is a guarantee that american tax payers have to pay OR the government will need to declare bankruptcy of sorts.
Privacy At Stake As Sites Track Online Preferences
Bit.ly's Chief Scientist Hilary Mason's interview on NPR.
I did an individual plan for a number of years.
The reason people in the US can't watch Al Jazeera on TV is because it doesn't fit into the US MSM model. Modern US news isn't about news, it's about opinion and entertainment.

I don't know many Americans that watch Fox, but of those that I do know, they wouldn't watch Al Jazeera partly because it's not American (and therefore not trustworthy - with the exception of the BBC) but mainly because of the long form nature of the stories and focus on the news rather than building an emotionally charged narrative.
this is too bad, call of duty is going to be full of cheaters again...
Going off on a tangent, one of the comments on the TC article seemed really odd - even by TC's standards for terrible comments.

Am I the only one who finds Y combinator predatory? It preys on 20 year old kids who think they're building the next google. Am I crazy?

On the actual subject of the article - if any of the four startups that haven't (yet) signed the paperwork don't end up accepting the offer, I hope they share their reasonings (either now or sometime in the future).

And on a pedantic note: 39/43 rounds to 91% rather than 90%.
> practical alternative is a total judgment call

Right. So is the Autobahn actually all that accident prone?

55 was initially marketed as something that saved gas. After that was debunked, it was changed to "55 saves lives".
It asks me for a login.
Surely not! Lisp must have close to the fewest features of any language (other than the weird ones like Brainf*ck that only have 8 instructions).

Other than Macros and parenthesis there isn't anything to it. If I remember correctly, pretty much all you need to do to write your own lisp is to implement eval.
I like startup names that are made up of real words...

Dropbox - Drop, Box

Facebook - Face, Book

Linkedin - Linked, In

...or ones that sound like real words

Notifo - Notify
> Tax the rich too much and then they stop creating jobs for all you whiners who can't hold on to your money.

This is true. You're essentially increasing the tax burden on the entrepreneur class. This means less money spent on business formation, job creation and capital investment. The last thing that the US Economy needs right now. Not only that, but many "rich" might just decide to leave the country and go somewhere where they are allowed to keep the money they earn. What will you tax then?

Taxing the rich is a stupid policy. Look at the unintended consequences. There are two sides to every coin.

The problem with the US economy is simply that there is too much government and it's choking the private sector like a giant parasite killing it's host. CUT GOVERNMENT SPENDING.
The reality is that the biggest competition for silicon valley angel investors is not Yuri Milnur but Google, Facebook, Apple, Twitter, and Zynga.

pg says it much better: "Investors all compete with one another for deals, but they aren't one another's main competitor. Our main competitor is employers. And so far that competitor is crushing us. Only a tiny fraction of people who could start a startup do. Nearly all customers choose the competing product, a job." [http://www.paulgraham.com/future.html]

Here's to hoping more college grads join an early stage start-up or start their own company instead of joining Google or Facebook
Maybe that commenter is being a bit harsh, but I certainly also get that vibe. At the very least the whole thing has a "dotcom bubble, version 2.0" feel.
You're right, but the point of an HSA is to cover the cost of paying most low-to-medium-grade medical problems out of pocket, and to relegate health insurance back to its original role as insurance.

Also, you don't have to be good at investing to fully fund an HSA; the difference in cost between low- and high-deductable insurance is supposed to offset the cost of funding an HSA, and currently does do that.
Was this the time that everyone posted Erlang stuff to make the site look more boring? I never learned so much about an obscure programming language in a single weekend.
I'd be interested to hear you elaborate on that. I keep hearing comparisons to the tech bubble (particularly around LinkedIn's IPO), but I'm having trouble seeing the parallels.
I'm not sure those are even different issues; if you get seriously ill while on your BigCo Kaiser plan, you're stuck at BigCo; even Kaiser isn't going to cover you if you switch jobs (and thus plans).
Keep a cool head. Get feedback. Do stuff that your users want. Let them worry about copying you. Seriously, it means you're doing something right.
It sounds a bit random to me.
There isn't one. However, if that is true, why are programmers compelled to argue about it? :D

I think that there is a shared common intuition that some languages are better than others. Think of it like the P != NP problem. We may not be able to objectively prove that P != NP, but we all share a strong belief that it must be the case.

This argument also takes the form of 'my language can do the same thing in fewer keystrokes'. Personally I think typing speed is near irrelevant, since I've never met anyone who churns out working code as quickly as they can type.

And I'm a big fan of the 'my language is more readable than your language' argument, I find it compelling, but I recognise that others do not.
Don't forget the massive famines in North Korea, not long ago (1990s)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_famine
>emacs and vi are console based editors.

Don't know about emacs, but vim has an (optional) gui.

>In Sublime you can select text with your mouse

And in vim - even in the console version in fact. It's useful being able to select text, scroll with the mouse wheel, etc in a terminal window, particularly if you're editing a file on a remote machine.

>and on the right there is a graphical overview of the entire document.

Depending on what 'graphical overview' means, it's almost a certainty that vim can do something similar. The only thing I can think of where that would not be the case is if you mean something like a thumbnail view of the whole document (can't see much use for that offhand, but maybe) [edit: I had a second look to see what you meant by that, and yeah it looks like that's one thing vim can't do].

Not sure if you're aware but it also has features like tabs, arbitrarily split screen, colouring (console version is limited to 256 colours unfortunately, not sure about gui [edit: gVim supports proper 24bit colours]) and numerous other features that you might only expect in a dedicated graphical application.
I'm too lazy to write up a blog post on it, but here's my take on how it could conceivably affect my startup:

Up until now, I've looked at YC as something that wasn't a doable scenario, because they require the founders to move to the Bay area and live out there for the 3 months, while investing a fairly small amount (I think somewhere around $17,000 is the norm, no?) Anyway, for somebody in my shoes, that is, doing a self-funded, bootstrapped startup while working a day job, the requirement to move would mean needing to quit the day job, but the initial investment would leave - for me anyway - too short of a runway to justify it. At the end of 3 months, I'd come back here (presumably) and need to find another day job, and need to find it pretty quick, in order to pay rent and car payment, etc.

But the $150,000 investment option should be good for at least a year of runway, enabling a founder to work on their project full-time. Given a year, I'd feel pretty good about the chances of getting some traction and making a go of things.

So where, before, I looked at the YC application as something to do just to force myself to think about things, and maybe do a "mock YC interview" with some local people as an exercise, now I'm seriously interested in actually applying for a future cycle (if this offer continues as future cycles come along.)

I see it as changing the whole game for somebody in my position... from YC being something I'd have to turn down even if accepted, into something that is a very real, practical scenario.

Of course getting accepted is a whole different story, but hey... you can't win if you don't play, right?
It isn't? Social security is solvent assuming no funding changes until 2037.
Some people believe that in every economic transaction, at least one party must be exploited, no matter how wildly beneficial the deal is to both sides. It's actually a natural implication of the idea that wealth is never created, only reallocated. Unfortunate to see that view among TechCrunch readers, who have evidence to the contrary presented to them every day.
A Threat? One things for sure, If an investor does his investing averagely, sticking to industry protocol and so forth then that investor can expect average returns. Thats all fine and dandy, but doing things differently will get different results. In Yuri's case its obvious hes banking on having at least 1 stellar investment per round. If anything Yuri understands the coming net boom and is posturing well to take advantage of that fact. Yuri just upped the performance bar for the rest of the investors out there.
Seems to me that the people who get accepted by YC (and, most likely, the majority of the people who apply to YC) are the kind of people who would be doing their stuff with or without the help of YC.

As to a bubble - without getting into that debate now, even if it later turns out that we're in a massive bubble right now, YC are investing money/time with the purpose of making money, so they're in the same situation as the founders themselves, in that they don't want the bubble to burst, and they don't want to see their startups fail.
All I can say is it is a good thing they separated New Zealand and Australia!
The $150k offer reminds me of a rumor about the way in which Subway selected franchise locations back in the 1980's.

Subway wouldn't do extensive market research or study traffic counts. Instead, they would see where there was a McDonalds franchise and then open a franchise in the same catchment area. At least that was the rumor (not to compare YC to McDonalds or Hamburger University).
Windows 7: The Best iPad Seller
http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/29/hackers-obtain-ps3-privat...

"Sony didn't bother generating any random numbers to secure the blasted thing."

Not to bash Sony, but I think the interesting point here is that creating secure systems is actually a really hard problem. Creating usable secure systems is an even harder problem.

See Schneier: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/08/security_vs_us...
To apply directly to the venture capital world, LPs are the ones who provide the capital to the fund manager to invest. Other than providing the capital, they normally have no role in managing the fund (except perhaps an advisory committee role). Regardless of the legal structure of the fund, "LP" is shorthand for investors in a VC fund. To make an analogy, LPs are to the VC funds what the VC funds are to the companies they invest in, with the only distinction that LPs are typically far less involved in the funds they invest in than the VCs are in the companies they invest in.
LPs for large institutional funds are generally university endowments and pension funds.
because you have a big ego ?
I wouldn't mind hearing the view that YC is exploiting founders (though I wouldn't agree with it), but the idea of YC exploiting them in such a way that YC would lose money is fairly dumb.
Open Source Compiler Construction for the JVM - linux.conf.au talk
Response to Mr Wadhwa
On the other hand, a mild aristocracy does seem better than the nation crumbling under debt.