skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Stated beautifully. The issue cited in the paper doesn't seem to be "rage", which seems fairly uncommon. Instead, it seems to address common exasperation with the congenitally (and deliberately?) witless, with a few extremes thrown in for good effect.

It would be different if the author acknowledged that the people triggering exasperation were, in fact, behaving badly. Instead, he seems to dismiss any sense of socially cohesive conduct as something mysterious, arbitrary, and possibly dangerous. It's easy to read the whole thing as a passive-aggressive defense of passive-aggressive jerks.

The one in a million who actually go ballistic are outliers. The PA types who trigger them - though a minority - are exponentially more common, and an irritation for everybody.
"Hey Watson, I bet you can't guess what's coming for ya!"

Watson: "What is shoe?"
Oh, you're right. I agree, any site that displays significantly different content when coming from a Google search should be heavily penalized.
A primer on corporate valuation
South African here and every time I have to quote my birth date over the phone to validate my identity I usually stutter when trying to get it right.
Heh, it's a boring industry - Insurance sales. But other than a few small players that are focused on the wrong things, we mostly compete with home-grown systems and excel worksheets over email.

We made a choice to focus on this metric a few years ago and it's been a tremendous boon for us (and our customers). Now we consider every change with the lens of "Will this help our customers do their jobs better?"
In the private sector, it’s not uncommon for the party that controls a distribution channel to extract rent from both ends.

For example: I know a guy who worked for a startup that made a new kind of low-fat mayonnaise. They had trouble getting their mayo into grocery stores, because the grocery chains charge fees (something in the five figures, IIRC) for giving new products shelf space, and the company didn’t have enough cash on hand to pay those fees.

η http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slotting_fee
The most straightforward way is to start with some default value for "hotness" and then decay the hotness by time (a logarithmic basis is popular for this), and increase hotness based on activity (votes, comments, etc.)

For a real-world example (albeit one from code that's not much beyond "prototype" status) feel free to look at what we do in Neddick:

https://github.com/fogbeam/Neddick/blob/master/grails-app/se...

look at the calculateScore() and calculateHotness() methods in particular.

What we do there is basically just use 0 as the default, count each upvote as +1 to score and each downvote as -1 to score, then use the score as the hotness, before decaying by age. It's simple and not optimized at all, but it gives the general effect we're looking for.
Show HN: my humorous and entrepreneurial take on Watson's Jeopardy appearances
Agreed. However if CompanyX has a relationship with CompanyY and is negotiating prices/deal/terms/whatever it is in on very shaky footing to get a favorable deal if CompanyY completely owns the customer base for CompanyX.
I don't have an answer for you but might I make a suggestion? Maybe you should spend some time with some severely disabled kids. Even in the best of circumstances (wealthy parents with lots of support living in a developed nation, etc) disabilities can cause immense suffering, for the people diagnosed with the conditions, for their families.

When making a decision it's often a good idea to weigh the benefits(genetic/developmental conditions providing troubles to overcome, character building) versus the costs (the profound difficulties these conditions can place on individuals families). You've touched on some of the benefits but let's make those more explicit. I don't think you have really any idea of the costs.

After carefully considering this issue, if you come to the conclusion that people being born with genetic disorders is a desirable aspect of life then there are immediate ways you can show everyone you aren't full of shit. For example you could adopt several children with severe mental retardation who require 24hr care and will for the rest of their lives. There are many children out there who are desperately in need of loving families and you could make a tremendous impact on their lives _right now_.
Anonymous Stuxnet worm
Boylan Cane Cola. It's available more widely than a lot of the other really good sodas.
I attended a talk by one of the designers. Some of Watson's 'wrong' answers he described were pretty funny. There was one where the clue (paraphrasing) was 'Punch below the beltline that rhymes' and the right answer was 'Low blow', but Watson came up with 'Wang bang'. In another one the clue was something like 'The end of this had an exclamation mark in headlines in 1919', with the right answer being 'World war I', whereas Watson answered 'Sentence'.
Algeria's government is too scared to shut down their internet
You've made some very good points. We'll strive to improve over time, and you comments/questions here will help guide us. Any and all comments are welcomed to devsupport@getinPulse.com

I encourage you to try out the hardware, throw it on your wrist and wait for the amazed looks from passersby. It's quite awesome having a net-connected terminal (I pair my inPulse with my Blackberry) right on your wrist.
I upvoted you, but I disagree that Wave didn't solve a useful problem. In my opinion, it solved some key collaboration problems. The problem was that it was marketed as an engineering project, instead of a consumer product.

Google positioned Wave as a new communication platform that would replace email, and that was just too much for users to wrap their heads around. Nobody could find a good reason to stop using email and switch to Wave. Google should have targeted the much smaller use case of document collaboration, even if the technology was capable of handling more, just to show people how they can start using the technology right away without having to change too much of their existing workflow.

It's a classic example of the engineers letting their dreams get too big and forgetting to focus on the immediate problem they started with. Wave could have easily been saved by a better marketing team.

Ironically, it seems Google has too many smart engineers, and has lost touch with what the average user needs or wants.
Only if you jailbreak it
Animal behaviour: Clever hounds
Sintomas del colesterol alto
As long as http://crashie8.com/ crashes IE9, it shouldn't be considered a modern browser. A modern browser requires a development team that is responsive to large bugs (analogous to PHP and Java being modern languages because they quickly responded to the big-magic-number bug). None of the other "modern browsers" (e.g. Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera) have any crash-the-computer bugs anywhere near the scale that IE9 still has.
I think in the end, deciding to not support something is really a power they have, since this decision will influence the developers in not using that something. If IE won't support websockets, we won't use websockets because of lacking support in IE, so it's not really that big of a deal to them (the average end user doesn't decide what browser to use based on what support it has for web sockets)
What I would do in response is make iOS editions with a few extra 'features', charge ticket master style connivence fees or use some other artificial marketing editioning (consumer vs "enterprise" editions with few differences). Or I'll separate out the main service and smartphone service, somewhat like instapaper, charging more saying that the iOS service tier is a different user experience that has a higher price.
This recipe was published years ago in the book For God, Country and Coca-Cola by Mark Prendergast. He found it in the archives while researching the book. It is not the current recipe, as some changes have been made.

Its an excellent book too, with the history of the new coke fiasco and the early years.
Didn't know Newell was a Harvard dropout. What's it with Harvard C.S. students dropping out and making it rich?
I'm puzzled to see such resoundingly positive feedback here. Props for the hard work on building this product out.

However, in a world of smart phones I can't imagine ever using a watch like this.

Watches have been relegated to primarily fashion items, I can't imagine why you'd want one that runs code.

Sorry for the harsh review, best of luck.
Or simply invite the whole world.
Apple using Hadoop
Poll: Can / Should IE be killed?
Following http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2221831 and the countless other complaints about Internet Explorer, I was curious what the general feeling here was about whether it was possible / desirable actually to work towards dramatically reducing its usage.

Just to be clear, I don't mean IE6. I mean the entire IE brand, including IE9.

Possible arguments for: Even though they are working towards greater compliance with standards, IE9 is still far behind the other browsers. Moreover, there's no reason to think that remedying this situation is a high priority for the IE team. Bringing IE usage down to a small fraction of users would save countless hours of web design time.

Possible arguments against: Losing IE would give too much control of the market to a small number of actors, particularly Google. Even though IE has many flaws, this is preferable to a single actor having that much control, particularly given their high market share for search. Moreover, IE9 is good enough now, so it's not as much as a problem.

Please do leave comments outlining reasons (either way) and, if you think it's something that can and should be done, possible ways to do it. Let's not just keep bitching about it - let's make it happen!
IE can and should be killed
IE should be killed but there's no way to do it
IE should not be killed
Actually, according to arstechnica, that lack of hesitation was before the segment was reshot.

A human had answered "missing a hand," which created context that means "What is a leg" could be interpreted as "he was missing a leg". Initially Alex did give him credit, before realizing that Wattson couldn't have been using that context.

http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2011/02/ibms-watson-tied-f...
Haha. That's the problem with new ideas.

If they take off, you're heralded as a genius.

If the flop, they question why you even started in the first place.

Wave was spin to try and reinvent internet communication. It wanted to merge email and IM and all these other communication forms together. Perhaps it was way too ahead of its time. Perhaps the execution was not as well thought out as it should have been. But the overarching concept is not ridiculous.
Any and all feedback would be appreciated! In return, please use the coupon code "hackernews" during checkout for $2 off.

(If you'd like a shirt and we share similar circumstances — e.g. you're in San Francisco, or even California — please let me know as I would be happy to accommodate.)
I don't see a problem comparing the capability of Microsoft's unreleased browser with a browser released two years ago. Although it's much more telling to compare it to Mozilla's unreleased browser. Or Chrome.
I've been using Hybir Backup for online + offline backup, which I found out about on HN. The application can backup to multiple locations, including their online service. So I have a local ioMega NAS plus the online backup service. They keep your data as long as you pay.

Plus, Hybir does an image backup so you can use a boot CD to restore your HDD to the exact state it was in at the time of the backup. They de-dupe across all their clients so for online backup you only have to upload a small percent of your total data as much if (like Windows 7 files) will already be in their repository.

I certainly feel a lot better about having BOTH an online backup and a local offline backup. I believe CrashPlan offers the same option, but without the image-style backup/restore.
And this is usually explained by Pepsi being sweeter, so it seems to be more pleasant for the first few sips.
IIRC, each video-game console manufacturer charges royalties to all games that are compatible with its hardware.
How'd you end up focusing on that industry? Boring, but solid industries make for excellent profit margins.
Take note fellow hackers:

We're witnessing a truly monumental event in human history and technological development.

Computers competing with humans on gameshows as if they are intellectually equivalent...

We live in the freaking future now, man.
I don't think Pepsi is a "generic" cola.

Pepsi is its own brand unto itself, and in fact turned down an offer of Coca-Cola trade secrets before[1].

[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/5152740.stm
Given the right amount of time looking at the assembly of firefox isn't an impossible way to find out what it is doing.

A good counter example is the assembly of old nes games. I have read through some of them and you can even find nice commented versions of the main games source like mario, mario3, super mario etc. Reading the source is really eye opening. Some features in the game are very hard coded and fundamental to the code base changing it would be extremely hard. Other times you find fantastically elegant code. If anyone is interested in a treat go read the level loading asm for smb1.
It doesn't feel like it's a fair fight otherwise, since it means he's exploiting a weakness intrinsic to his competitors

Late in the first round you can see Jennings change his strategy a bit -- he starts ringing in before he knows the answer. Jennings is exploiting the fact that Watson won't ring in until it has confidence in an answer.
I don't know about rigorous studies, but it seems like common sense to me (though you might get that 10k down to 5k or 3k in some situations)

Most people take at least 5 years to get a PhD, pro athletes take at least that long to get established, even Justin Bieber worked really hard at making music when he was a little kid. 10k hours is also roughly the timescale involved with children learning language.

You can certainly see people who seem come out of the blue, like Sylvester Stallone's success with Rocky, you usually find that there was a lot of hard work in the background. Stallone was playing bit parts, writing scripts, and lifting weights for a few years before he got his break. Certainly his acting, writing, directing, and bodybuilding progressed considerably after he got big.
Thanks for not downvoting (and explanation). I certainly wasn't trolling with my comment.
Yeah, Epic probably gets a lot more money from engine licenses than Valve does. Valve definitely makes a large portion of its money through Steam.
just made http://gradethepresident.com public. I built it as an exercise in forcing myself to do tdd/bdd with rspec and steak.

doesn't quite have 100% test coverage so would love any bug reports if you come across some.

Thanks!
I also put together the full game stats: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2220667
Any time someone lists WebGL I usually assume they're blowing smoke. These people aren't providing the context of their rants, and instead "HEY LOOK I FOUND STUFF IE9 DOESN'T SUPPORT, IT'S NOT STANDARDS-BASED!"

The reality is, HTML5 isn't even a standard yet.
The title of the submission is the spoiler.
Apparently he actually initially declared that as correct before realizing that Watson didn't have the context to be going off of Ken's incorrect answer. Hurrah for editing.
Right, but they also have to charge that rate everywhere else.

So if a subscription without Apple is $10 (an easy round number) its not matter of upping the rate to $15 so you can still get your $10 to pay for the content since you now have to also charge that $15 to Amazon users and other subscribers.

That 1/3 price hike is pretty substantial to pass onto the reader, so it bites into the publishers margin instead. The rate remains at $10 or $12 so the publisher is getting much less that they'd like.

With talk of paywalls/subscriptions on web sites of news orgs there is a lot of chatter about people not wanting to pay for news in the first place. So subscription sales aren't a sure thing when it comes to a revenue stream for a publisher and also now Apple wants 30% of that...
I look at it as a waste of talent. Microsoft has plenty of software that needs improvement; if the entire IE team went to work on Windows, I think it would do more good than implementing another browser (when at least 2 superior browsers exist for Windows).
Patriot Act extension passes House
Nokia also talked to RIM before jumping into Redmond’s arms
This article is correct, except it omits one important point... writing programs is harder than writing a proof. Especially security code. With sufficiently complex proofs it is often hard to find holes in the proof, but with security code (and code in general) there are ways to attack it, that just isn't doable with standard math proofs. There's no notion of "fuzzing" with proofs.

But in any case, the gist of the article is correct -- the rigor used in math proofs is the MIN bar for security code.
It may have been crystal clear, but it wasn't in 1080p. It was either 1080i or 720p. 1080p over-the-air broadcasts still do not exist.
Making a big decision is always a simple matter when you have only 2 people left to talk to.
"why we routinely trust non-kin (an evolutionary puzzle, to be sure), how the majority of us are honest, and that a minority of us are dishonest. That dishonest minority are the free riders of societal systems, and security is how we protect society from them. I will model the fundamental trade-off of societal security -- individual self-interest vs. societal group interest -- as a group prisoner's dilemma problem, and use that metaphor to examine the basic mechanics of societal security."

Some of these ideas remind me of a book I read recently: "The Selfish Gene". In it, Richard Dawkins approaches these same questions from the gene standpoint, and uses game theory to explain how good / bad behavior evolves in an ecosystem, and why free-riding is not always the evolutionarily stable strategy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionarily_stable_strategy
Once there is solid statistical data showing that a computer driver is safer and cheaper than a human, the phase-out of the human drivers will be pretty swift

I'm not so sure. Solid statistical data won't deter lawyers filing frivolous suits over every accident. "If only Big Faceless Co. didn't employ faceless robots, this sympathetic human might have lived! You should award lots of punitive damages."

Not to mention the teamsters would probably have a law against robot drivers passed...
I am not sure that I buy this. There are plenty of people who have internalized a painstaking and rigorous approach to problem solving, often from a young age. While many of these are also those who would excel in a mathematical environment, a mathematical education fails to capture any of the specific details of security.
Check out QML.
Is there nothing to be done about this situation? I have a poll up and would be interested to hear your views: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2222351
The closest approximation to this is how many people are watching a project. Sometimes when I can't figure out which fork is the main one, I use this.
Apple Starts Subscription Payment Service in App Store
Python is a scripting language used on the receiving end of the messages, not on the watch. The language for code you run on the watch seems to be C
I'd say Oracle: most developers are already primed to hate them, and Sonatype is mostly seen as a side-dish/complicit. They also are pretty much unknown, so I'd expect most people to forget them soon-ish.

Van Zyl himself may be in a different position, personal dislike sticks a lot more.
I have no idea what it's like at Yale, but I have known people in colleges in Ireland who are not allowed to do any maintenance on their own machines for IT union reasons.
Nokia 1616 Mobile Review,Specifications and Price | TECHGADGETSITE
Measuring any "Random Tech Company" versus Apple on the metric of Revenue Per Employee is always going to be skewed in Apple's disfavor. Everyone always forgets the thousands of retail employees at Apple Stores which are obviously going to generate much less revenue than say Johnny Ive or the programmer's writing the next version of OSX.
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The "secret recipe" is simply marketing. It gets them in the news every so often, and makes the public believe it can't be replicated by competitors.

IMHO Coke tastes horrible. Can't stand the stuff. Only Pepsi Max will do.
that's a fun metric, but is it useful? i ask in seriousness. granted i'm no economist, but i'm not sure it's actually telling us much. Google and Apple, unless i'm mistaken, have way more product diversity in much larger markets; that Valve should have lower overhead per employee doesn't come as a surprise to me.

is there some non-obvious (or perhaps it is obvious, but not to the lay-person) reason why this is an impressive or telling metric?
I like the idea. I have two quick questions:

- what happens when my site is experiencing issues and you receive massive volumes of complaint/problem emails

- how do I continue to integrate support in our product/feature management workflow, to ensure that the voice of the customer is heard?

- are you hoping to introduce phone calls and other support methods?

Thanks!
I'm a little upset it's not alien slug feces.
>writing programs is harder than writing a proof

Which programs and which proofs?
Videocon V1308 dual Sim Mobile Review,Price | TECHGADGETSITE
The _state_ of battery technology is the biggest issue _for_ inPulse. There's not much they can do, given the lack of viable battery technology available.

They _might_ be able to save a decent amount of battery life by using e-paper, but you lose color, and I'm not sure in practice you'd end up saving much power over the OLEDs they're currently using.
Create Online Resume
of the last 5 investments we've made, 3 have come via intro's by angel list. we love it!
I don't think the "jet engine" example is an exaggeration at all.

There are days when I'm inspired by Seth Godin and there are days when I think he personifies everything that's wrong with our civilization.

If we all had "lynchpin" jobs that were transforming the economy continuously, we'd have no food at the supermarket and no electricity at the plug. The disappearance of dependable jobs for dependable people is a prelude to the disappearance of everything else.
Kinect and Windows Phone 7 integration
Even aside from their Steam distribution system I think Valve probably does better than most game companies at producing hit games while keeping their teams small. If you look at titles such as Left 4 Dead and Portal it's clear that there's not a whole lot of feature bullet points. These hit games are short, well crafted, tight experiences. In contrast many other AAA titles out there offer a massive array of features and options to the player. Grand Theft Auto, Mass Effect, Fallout, and Halo are all massive games that require massive teams to create.
This is a separate argument but one I am so very tired of hearing so sorry if I come across as a bit terse.

The notion that because its electronic delivery then its cheap, or cheaper than print...

That is called an Assumption. And its a bad one too.

Print is expensive and labor intensive. It involves presses, unions, skill, delivery and distribution. However the big costs of that are offset by advertising in the pages.

Digital distribution is expensive but cheaper than print. It involves programmers, sys admins, dbas, CMS developers, web dev, consultants, support, hosting, ec2, bandwidth and more. However the big costs of this are not as easily offset by advertising on web pages because web advertising is dirt cheap.