skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You actually have a fair point, though you've phrased it in a needlessly combative fashion.

You are correct that the answer you linked really wasn't one of my best. I suppose that answer is a good example of failing to see the forest for the trees (rather, I didn't see "the trees for the forest" in this case).

When I read that question, I interpreted it incorrectly as being an issue where the textarea was formatted specifically for the screen, but that needed to be resized for printing. I then generalized the problem to "print styles" in general and gave an answer to that.

I went through a period in Nov./Dec. where I spent a lot of time answering questions on SO. I gained somewhere around 2000 rep in that time from my answers. Other than the question you linked, I was only downvoted on one question, but I deleted that answer when I discovered that I was wrong (specifically, I misinterpreted an svn feature I've never used, and my answer appeared to work on my single-user repository).

My point is that I actually take/took pride in crafting an answer which explains exactly what's going on, and how to fix it. Really, I don't care about gaining reputation on StackOverflow, and I'm offended by the accusation that I'm a "rep whore" when all I've ever tried to do is help folks, and I try to go "above and beyond" with my answers to make sure the asker is clear on what's going on. If I dropped the ball on this question, I'm sorry (since you seem to take this question personally), but I think it's more an outlier than the norm.
Great interview. Congrats, guys.
possibly my British grammar is stumping you, but yes, to read something you have to look at it.

This article might appear well researched here, but this is the hello-world equivalent on an art forum.

Maybe if Jason believes he has something meaningful to contribute to color theory, he should consider updating the Wikipedia page rather than promoting his own self interest by advertising his book & blog on HN.
The statements by the Microsoft people remind me of "I did not have sexual relations with that woman."

They don't seem to realize that ordinary consumers don't care about this, and that the people who do care (e.g. investors, potential employees) are smart enough that these evasions just make the problem worse.
This could be very interesting but without some of the "big names" (RE: Google Maps et all) participating I'm not sure it will be more than just a few people participating in an interesting concept open content database.
That's exactly why it is worth quitting over: I don't want to be part of a culture where that's normal.
I disagree. If a user buys a Kindle book* he is aware of the fact that it is bought from Amazon. Why would he want another party involved? Just for payment, along with an additional fee?

*) I'm aware that it's about the Sony app, but it might equally affect the Kindle app.
EDIT: joeld42 answered my question elsewhere on this page:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2166782

The artists reds and blues are just approximations to the magenta and cyan of printers.

----

So I understand that in order to mimic the electromagnetic stimulation to the cones you only need to control the amount of RGB light hitting the retina. And I understand that propagating light is additive, so that for light producing displays you mix amounts of RGB, whereas pigments subtract light, so that for printing you mix amounts of CMY. (C paint absorbs non-R light, M paint absorbs non-G light, and Y paint absorbs non-B light.)

I further (kind of) understand that once printing and CRT screens are explained, there are additional properties of light due to the filters described in the article.

But can someone explain why the artist's paints are different from the CMY ink pigments? It seems like it's either (a) something weird about the way paints mix, (b) artists use paints which somehow take advantage of the filters in the eye, or (c) a combination.
Site was temporarily unavailable when I tried to post a comment, so here it goes:

This post clears up a few misconceptions for me, thanks for that.

I think you will enjoy the following link about "context" related illusions: http://www.psy.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/color12e.html

Akiyoshi Kitaoka is a university professor from Japan that has created a very extensive and amazing collection of illusions, documenting so many subtle ways our eyes play tricks on us.

His homepage is really worth exploring:

http://www.psy.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/index-e.html
The situation you're describing is probably great for the askers of questions, but it's certainly not good for those of us wanting to contribute answers.

edit: That's not necessarily a bad thing, and I don't think that "StackOverflow sucks," but it does means that it sucks for new users trying to become useful contributors.
Something fresh for a change, and interesting to play with! Love it.
Do I have this right?

1. User does a search in a Microsoft toolbar, using Google as his search engine. User is searching for $terms.

2. User gets a results page. User clicks on the entry in the results for $site.

3. Toolbar sends back to Microsoft that the $site was the first result the user chose for $terms.

4. Bing uses this to increase $site's placement in searches for $terms.

An interesting question then would be whether or not Microsoft also "copies" from Bing? That is, if you are using Bing as your search engine, do they still use the fact that you went to $site after searching for $terms to adjust the rankings?
Honestly, I find my high SO rep kind of embarrassing. I like helping people, but every time I see it, I feel like it's kind of a "needs to get a life" score.
I think it's popular because it's: simple, small, efficient and documented.

For hugely complex web applications you would probably desire more, but the fact of the matter is that the browser world is not ready for huge stuff, we still have IE, we recently got iOS, Android and many others. Progressive enhancement doesn't really allow you do those complex client side apps.
> Associating search queries and click stream behaviour is fine if it's your own search engine. Doing it for someone else's search engine isn't (regardless of who's doing it).

Why? This seems like a great idea.
I'm still seeing it on tmbg, but thor and www seem fine:

http://tmbg.duckduckgo.com/?q=hiybbprqag

http://thor.duckduckgo.com/?q=hiybbprqag

http://duckduckgo.com/?q=hiybbprqag

Edit: The same appears to be true for mbzrxpgjys and indoswiftjobinproduction

Edit 2: Hey, that's weird. Adding a comma, semicolon, period, or other symbol to the beginning or end of the query makes the gamed results show up on top at thor and www as well. Seems to work for all the terms at issue:

http://duckduckgo.com/?q=hiybbprqag%2C

http://duckduckgo.com/?q=----hiybbprqag----
I think the competitor they're addressing in this case is tossing up a forum and calling that support. A competitor is not always another business.
If you disagree with an edit - you can roll it back.
You said it with more finesse, but exactly. This is just an badly written article on a subject that is clearly not understood by the author trying to grab eyeballs through sensationalism.

Using printer inks as an example was the first big cue that this was link bait to a self-aggrandizing blog.
It's merely a matter of definition - whether to include the disk cache in the "used" memory or not.
For all the money, resources and engineering talent that Microsoft has, you'd think they wouldn't need to do this, though. That's what's baffling to me.

Call Google the market leader all you want, but let's not forget that Microsoft's market cap is around 40 billion dollars greater than Google's.

That's more than Research in Motion's total value!
Really awesome stuff guys, great job with the interview Nicolae! Just started using the service and really enjoying it already
Intro to Yada Project - An Open Source p2p Social Network (proof of concept)
Yes, but it will be an iPizza and have amazing industrial design.
In Python versions older than 2.6 and on Google appengine it's the only reliable way to generate bytecode. For things like template engines this is important to not add extra overhead over an already slow language.
Microsoft Calls Google’s Cheating Examples 'Outlier'
maybe we'll finally get kindle for the web out of this.
Apple said if the app lets you buy books outside of the app, i.e. you click the buy button inside the app and are then sent to the webpage to purchase the book, then the app must also let you purchase the book without leaving the app by using in-app purchases.

Okay. But they also said you cannot buy books inside the app unless Apple gets a cut:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/02/change-in-apple-po...

It appears as if Sony's app tried to offer a built-in bookstore as well as the ability to download books purchased on other devices, but that idea was shot down when Apple reportedly told Sony that all in-app purchases must go through Apple.

So that basically means if the Kindle app wants to let you buy books from Amazon it can only go through the Amazon website and it has to allow you to purchase books from Apple. How does that make any sense?
Good catch. There are a few other bits that bothered me as well.

The employer's contribution to retirement is counted as a gain in Australia, but the employer's matching Social Security contribution in the US is ignored.

It also assumes that a car is absolutely necessary in the US. I live in the Bay Area, and I haven't driven my car in any material sense in 4 months (by choice).

Regardless, it's pretty obvious that one can earn six figures in the US, but choose to live within the means of a bartender in an Australian tourist trap. Which provides more disposable income?
who else do you think are important big names?
"If ain't broke don't bother fixing it"
This reminds me of the "no intermediate code" snafu that was later repealed. Apple keeps testing the boundaries of what we will tolerate because it knows it can get away with it while the competition still lags behind.

This newest development sets a truly frightening precedent, though. Any subscription service that sees significant growth through their iOS app is vulnerable to Apple's tax collectors. As soon as it looks like you're making money, Apple can jump in and extort 30% of your gross revenue or sink your whole business. Granted, maybe you owe some thanks to Apple, but 30% can quickly turn a sustainable business into a bankrupt one.

Considering Amazon already loses money on each Kindle book sold, losing an extra 30% on top of that may not be a financially viable option. Apple is effectively trying to edge Amazon out of its marketplace.
Prudent to be on the safe side but also difficult. When you live and breathe grad life, it's really hard to keep the projects separate from the thinking, collaborating, working that naturally comes from being in an environment full of bright, motivated, enthusiastic people.

And this is part of the dilemma right? Being in the school environment is clearly a priceless opportunity to find and work with great colleagues. Very important to find out if you'd make it with these people after you're bumped out of the safe harbor that is academia. So, waiting till graduation is a cost with its own potential risks and drawbacks.

I agree that we should be cautious and try to minimize the footprint we leave for the school to point out. But the hurdle to truly separate everything is quite high, and given the options it's probably going to end up a situation where you just have to do what you do in stealth mode to some extent. At least until Universities address this issue very explicitly and clearly.

It's great that this issue is being raised. Perhaps there needs to be more student advocacy to take this issue forward and work with Universities to articulate very clear guidelines of what is acceptable and not. Like you said, the old models don't reflect the nature of entrepreneurship today and the nebulous boundaries are keeping people from charging ahead on the things that matter most.
all search engines make use of a variety of signals. Bing decided to use what users click on as a signal. Google spotted it and thought it was 'zomg bing are stealing our results'. I don't understand why you think taking advantage of a new signal to improve search is not a smart move by Bing?
This is a real treasure to come across. I hope we'll keep seeing jacquesm's blog postings here.

Anyone know of any publicly available song lyric databases?
Are you sure they all understand its a joke..? (Ok, I know its in big letters at the bottom) The signup section is really attention grabbing and convincing though
There seems to be a trend in design the last few months (GAP, American Apparel, NBCUniversal the other day) and now MailChimp joins the ranks of people who throw out existing, awesome brands. The monkey is still somewhat present on the page, but this is really a downgrade from the old page. It definitely doesn't look good, and it completely disregards all the brand equity they've built up. It's too bad, because they had a great brand that I really responded to, even though I wasn't even a customer (I just realized I have recommended the service multiple times without even using it).
Love the new design
Skin To Heart Cells In Fewer Steps
> just basic stuff presented as if it were obscure or clever.

I think the part about the three filters is at least somewhat obscure and probably the most useful thing I learned from the article.
I have had the same problem, plus some, when trying to guesstimate memory usage in vps servers. The caching is transparent, so free always reports zero swap. ps gives sensible numbers, but the total used memory is neither RSS nor VSZ summed. I've heard about library memory being double-counted, but I've found no way to accurately get the numbers. In the end I pretty much gave up and settled for the settings that worked.

tl;dr: on vps things can be even uglier.
Instructure Goes Open Source
Why 37signals is falling into obsolescence
I think its great the the university decided to change their IP policy. I know at my school it is brutal and discouraged a few students from doing ideas they think they could work on after graduating and maintain complete ownership of.

For example here is how my University defines Patents (or IP)

Inventions involving the use of funds, space, personnel, equipment or facilities administered by the University, but without any University obligations to others in connection with such support, are the property of the University.

And the income? Let's just say you dont want to make a lot of money off of something you create.

A.1 Schedule of Net Income Distribution

For the first $10,000 of net income:100% to the inventor.

For the next $500,000 in cumulative net income: 50% to the inventors, 25% to the Office of the Vice Provost for Research and Dean of Graduate Policy, 25% to the inventor's Institutional Unit(s)

For the next $1,000,000 in cumulative net income: 40% to the inventors, 35% to the Office of Vice Provost for Research and Dean of Graduate Policy, 25% to the inventor's Institutional Unit(s)

For cumulative net income in excess of $1,510,000: 25% to the inventors, 50% to the Office of Vice Provost for Research and Dean of Graduate Policy, 25% to the inventor's Institutional Unit(s)

I wish more universities would follow in the footsteps of the University of Missouri at Columbia and be more relaxed on there IP rights. It would encourage students to produce better work and could possibly give the university a better name if the students work becomes popular. For example how many times have you read an article where it say "John Doe, a graduate of No Name University, created product while a student."
If people are really interested in speeding IPv6 adoption, the fastest way might be for government and/or industry to subsidize IPv6-only broadband for consumers (via existing ISPs).

Imagine $1-5/month DSL to your home, price-locked for 3 years--except it's IPv6-only. Lots of cost-conscious people would sign up or switch to save $xx/month, even if it meant their Internet access was crippled for a while.

But it wouldn't be crippled for long, because with such an underserved user base, the major services most people care about (Facebook, Google, etc.) would very quickly start to cater to it (even if the demographics did skew low-income), because it would be a green field and a big opportunity to build longer-term user relationships to monetize down the road.
"SO is a superb solution for the person asking the question because they do get fast answers."

You want an even faster answer?

Ask on IRC.

As far as programming questions go, freenode is usually the best place to go (with a minority or apps and projects off on some other irc networks, sometimes).

That said, HN, forums, mailing lists, usenet, and SO are usually better for preserving answers for others to learn from once the question has already been asked by someone else.

The quality and depth of the answers can sometimes be better in these other media that are more well suited to longer, uninterrupted, essay-like answers.

On the other hand, that's not always the case, since on IRC there is a much higher level of interaction and you also have the ability to interrupt the speaker and ask for clarification on any point, with immediate feedback.

As a very rough analogy, I generally find IRC to be more like having a real-time spoken conversation with a teacher (or teachers). Whereas those other media are something more akin to correspondence via letters and email.

Of course, you don't get upvotes or points for answering questions on IRC. But the system works very well anyway. And, honestly, who really cares about these silly tokens anyway?
Don't Chrome and the Google Toolbar also track clickstream data to refine search results? I assumed that's what they were asking my permission to phone home with, to 'improve their services'.

Do they gentlemanly ignore clickstreams on competitor web sites?
I think we were all afraid of some move like this. Nobody cares about Sony's ebooks. Everybody (me included) cares about Kindle.

I can sort of understand where Apple is coming from in this. They provide an ecosystem and apps live within their ecosystem.

That being said, I can't see Amazon or any other big player rolling over on a margin of 30%. This is the problem with one fixed margin: it works well for apps and music but not necessarily for other things.

You see the same problem with the Mac App Store: smaller devs love it. Will you see Microsoft Office or Adobe Photoshop on it? I doubt it. 30% is just too much for those big players to hand over.

I consider Kindle to be a key part of my iPad experience and I can say if the end result of this is that I can't read my Kindle books on my iPad I will be pissed. I bought them specifically because I could.

Ultimately though I think Apple needs to give up control here. They should provide a payment infrastructure and if it's comeplling, people will use it. If it's not, they won't. But don't make me a casualty of war in the names of the the consistency of your 30% cut.
"If it's quality is so poor, then why is Bing stealing its results?"

Bing is apparently using toolbar click data (AFAICT it hasn't been shown that this is specifically targeted at Google or even at search engines in general) when it has no other information for the given search term. That has very little relation to the quality of Google's search in general.
Walking Down Memory Lane
Completely agree - the new design of the site doesn't lend itself to mailchimp's "culture" like the old one did. I thought the old site was damn near prefect for what it was!
it actually can be a real business, get on with making it
Gramatically you might be correct, but effectually ars is correct.

You will not be allowed to access the content if Kindle does not allow you to buy books through IAP. That is exactly what ars is trying to communicate.
Clickable: http://www.crtcrazy.com
TL;DR

1.Bing is inferring search results from user behavior, collected via Bing Toolbar

2. Google team makes an experiment: using Bing Toolbar to feed Bing particular behavior. Namely, they all go from a search result page on Google.com laden with a unique word to a particular target site.

3. Bing infers connection between the unique word and the target site.

4. Google cries cheating.
Not a huge problem, just polishing.
Do you take the trouble to upvote those answers that are helpful to you? I think that, given some time, the best answers of all questions will slowly bubble up, but that only happens if folks like you and me upvote the answers that are actually good
>So what happens when a developer builds an app that does almost nothing.

You will never get that app approved in the first place.
FYI Android started before iPhone was released. It's based on the Sidekick.
Thank you for the feedback. Ive launched this couple of hours ago and were already getting a good amount of posts and hits, only issue is a lot of the posts are very racist and bizarre, I can add algorithms to classify certain content and build separate feeds for them so that people dont see that content on the main feed. As for interacting there are many cool things that can be done, do you have any ideas to get people to interact in a unique way?
Summary: If you are smart enough to crack the scratch off lottery you already make enough income that cracking the scratch off lottery is not justifiable.
I agree, many (non-tech) people may not understand the joke. You'd have to know what latency and bandwidth mean to get it. Most people know that bandwidth is good, so having amazing bandwidth is something I'd sign up for. I doubt most people understand latency. They may assume "horrible latency" is a positive thing.
Why not ask questions that you've solved yourself with much effort and googling? That would mean that that knowledge is captured on SO for easier access by others.
Why would potential employees take this negatively? This is exactly the type of thing I'd love to work on. Give me opt-in to your web browsing characteristics, and let me optimize your searches. Opt-in is the key.

I'm certainly an odd one here, but I'm more inclined to use the Bing toolbar due to this, although the perf cost is still too high to use any toolbar, IMO.

What would be nice is if the browsers had an open format of your browsing history that you can send to providers of your choice...
I'm trying to get a little insight into what HN wants from a new startup blog, I have already started writing a few posts and am a big believer i just diving in, but wanted to see what your thoughts and what you guys are looking for in a startup blog.

Is there anything besides the typical startup review you would find useful? Maybe the community. I read facebook is putting out a 3rd party commenting system and thought it would be great to have a quora style accountability in the comments. What do you guys think? Any ideas, feedback on a startup blog is welcome, and I'll definitely get it going asap. I already have the wordpress up and a few posts.
Check-ins with Google Latitude
That was sarcasm. I get the impression that many of the people put off by Erlang's strings are unaware of atoms, too.

The string type could be better, certainly, but the language has plenty of other aspects to make up for it. I hear Java is bad at {atoms,pattern matching,fault tolerance,...}.
moreover, Clinton's statement was an outright lie, not an evasion. And it didn't seem to hurt his approval ratings. The analogy makes no sense.
Ironic? no; sad? yes.
I mention that companies must provide for distributed client access. There are other ways of doing this than developing all clients in-house. Twitter has demonstrated this excellently through their fantastic API. I think a key for startups to focus on is API first, client acces second.
...but you can teach the technique to someone who is not so smart. Or you can use the technique to launder money.
Yes, it would blow my mind, if that wasn't the kind of stuff 12 years old sci-fi fans talk about, you know, the kind confusing semantics games with reality...