skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Our research shows IE 6 at 4% of the market and our numbers take the most optimistic results. I have seen other at 3% with a more pessimistic model.

We recommend to out clients that they use the compounding development cost of chasing IE 5-6 and non-JS browsers and apply it to targeting mobile platforms. You get more bang for your buck doing so. By eliminating IE < 7 and none JS browsers you are walling yourself of from a little less than 10% of the market but the development effort to chase them increased development cost nearly 2x, targeting the iPhone (especially if your web was built with a REST backbone) is significantly cheaper 5K is the average app build, will net a better return on investment.

As well some assumptions can be made about older browser uses, they are either not early adopters or are using a corporate PC and may have access to a more modern environment at home or via a mobile device while not quantifiable, these factors will certainly work to reduce that total market size of non-modern browsers.

As I always say to clients, if you get to the point where you have to chase that < 10% for growth you have a good problem.
6 signs you may be dating a VC this valentine’s day
My dear friend, since it is Valentine's Day, I say this with a lot of "heart" and love for you and your partner/friend:

I am not a security expert but security is a very important issue. I am not sure what framework you're using (most likely no framework), but being anonymous AND able to post as ANYONE is a serious issue (well, your user list only goes up to about 6 people--0 being unknown and 1-5 are somewhat real users; user # 4 user is deleted perhaps). One thing you can do is to check if the user posting is actually authenticated and really who s/he claims to be.

Your infrastructure is too fragile and amateurish. Obviously, haters are gonna hate, but believe me when I say, this hurts me more than it hurts you. Take (all) your apps down and then do a security audit on all of them before you hurt yourself.

Happy Valentine's Day.
Also here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2206437

... with many, many comments.
It may be annoying to have to go into your email to confirm, but as someone who has her first name @ gmail.com, I'm very thankful for it. I get people signing up for random crap with my e-mail all the time; without e-mail account confirmation, it means I start getting random e-mails someone else signed up for.

Or sometimes I get no e-mails at all. When I installed Rapportive (<3!) I found out that "I" had a profile on hi5, which I promptly deleted.
For some reason, it doesn't seem to like anything I give it (Chrome and Firefox both). I finally got to see it with the imgur pic posted below.
I have no problem with displaying my full name (and address etc) but something irks me about forcing my full name to be displayed, it should be optional, if I want to use a username (which more people will recognise me by) why shouldn't I?
Why not require them to be on LinkedIn and verify through that? Or verify through Facebook? Granted there are trolls on both but it's better than requiring ppl to send a scan of their gov't ID.
OK, you get 1.75 points. :-)
Post some ads, dude - in it for the money or not, you'll make us all cry otherwise.
Google's Search Gold Mine Could Tap Out
There are lots of dull and simple programming jobs around like writing CRUD apps for a small department at a large government office in North Dakota. If you can manage to learn enough to get the hang of the basics of RoR or Visual Basic or whatever, you'll be able to find someone somewhere that is willing to pay something for your skills. Those sort of jobs just don't really exist within the sciences. Of course the question is if you actually want to do those jobs.
Respectful discussion is also a part of Quora's premise. It's hard to foster that discussion, though, when you've started giving users the runaround because their name doesn't look right to you.
Almost - the no daydreaming stuff is pretty important, and not really a well known problem.
Just as an example, Google has stopped supported IE6 in most of its major web apps and other big names have started doing it also. If Google is doing it, I have no shame dropping IE6 support altogether and spending all the time I save on debugging real problems and developping new features.
State Machines – Basics of Computer Science
#8 is my favorite software quote of all time, but it's incomplete:

The first method is far more difficult.
1. Buy a SIM card in your destination country. 2. Profit.
Kleiner Perkins Invests In Facebook At $52 Billion Valuation
Thank you, Chris. You did the right thing.
Facebook requires government ids too. My fake account is locked till I submit one.
Thanks for the article fat_tony - it was well-written and inspirational.

Regarding the fluffiness comments - sometimes it's good to read the same message over and over again until it sinks in or your mind finally gets it.

I look forward to the other articles!
In large corporations, there are often webapps that depend on ie6's buggy behavior, and break with anything else. And it may not even be under the company's own control --- I know of one SaaS player in the financial space that has a major bank pinned down to ie6, even though the bank would like to upgrade.

Chrome Frame is one way out of these situations, but convincing IT that it's a good idea is a struggle at best.
Much of success on Jeopardy is not just deciphering clues in the answers, but your timing on ringing in to give the question. I'd imagine a machine could get really good at getting the timing down. Does Jeopardy have a way of varying who rings in first to keep things more fair?
> but [Obama] doesn't have a free hand.

And yet Bush did....

> Now he himself is one of the powerful, but still risks a lot by going against the line, even as president.

Oh really? What? Be very specific.

You've "confused" Obama with your wishes and are now inventing excuses because the alternative is acknowledging that he isn't what you wanted him to be.

Or, as Glenn Reynolds puts it "They told me if I voted for McCain {insert bad thing} would happen." when he points out what Obama has actually done.
The Radiohead "pay what you want" model was a self-admitted publicity stunt. Fans paid whatever they decided to pay and received untagged, 160kbps MP3s. To quote Jonny Greenwood, "I don't know, we talked about it and we just wanted to make it a bit better than iTunes, which it is, so that's kind of good enough, really. It's never going to be CD quality, because that's what CD does."

And so many went on to buy the CD version, and some bought the deluxe edition, with a second disc of exclusive tracks -- which were only exclusive until they were later released as B-sides.

You can look at it as either a way for the band to accept tips from their fans, or more cynically, you can look at it as double or triple-dipping. Regardless, Radiohead weren't looking to pioneer some new business model when they did the pay-what-you-want In Rainbows download. They didn't share any information about their experiment with other artists.
>...18532.asp

I can see that you are.
Thanks for the reminder. DVR set.
10 Business Intelligence Tools for the iPad
Show HN: My Word Cloud (Valentine Edition).  Words + Heart = Art
Happy Valentine! I know it's a bit late but I just put together an app for Valentine's Day that takes a collection of words of your choice, and turn them into a neat word cloud in the shape of a heart.

http://www.mywordcloud.com

Some of you may find this familiar. Yes it is based on Tagxedo (http://www.tagxedo.com). Besides from bringing Tagxedo to feature complete, I took it one step further and make a server-side version available as well. So this app -- My Word Cloud -- works on IE/Firefox/Chrome/Safari/Opera, as well as smart phones and tablets. Not sure if it works on WP7.

Anyway, check it out, and let me know how you like it. If you don't mind, please help spread the love if you like it! You may even have some forgetful friends who would find this the most timely and unique gift for today :)
Yes, using OpenBTS ( http://openbts.sourceforge.net/ ) . It's quite a cool project. Unfortunately, it would be illegal to use here in Brazil.
Did you design your printers or buy them? You should write this up and submit to HN.
Watson won't ring in until it determines it has enough confidence in its answer that it is favorable to ring in.

If it rings in every time there's no way it will win.
Why Khan Academy would Fit with Texas' Educational Cost Lowering Program
The timing of when players are allowed to click in is controlled by a human. Someone backstage decides at what moment Alex is finished speaking and then opens the clickers. If you click too early, you get ~ 300ms delay penalty which gives the other players a chance to click in.

Click timing is indeed very important but I do not think Watson has any special advantage there.
Too bad their success case page needs Silverlight. I can't see it.

http://www.microsoft.com/business/success/Stories.aspx?Story...

Isn't it a bit odd that Microsoft makes no effort to show their victories to people who aren't already clients (and, thus, have Silverlight installed)?
One problem is that you kinda touched a "raw nerve" here. This isn't the first time this issue has come up, and a lot of people are very sensitive to it. There's a very strong strand of thought among some people that suggests that Wikipedia should change it's guidelines vis-a-vis software / programming langauges / etc. In fact, there has been an effort - at least once - to get a new guideline accepted. It failed, but my point is that this is a contentious subject that is still being actively debated, and where emotions are already flaring for some. Bring in the constant tension between deletionists and inclusionists, and any sort of concerted effort to start targeting tech related articles for deletion is almost bound to spark a shit-storm of controversy.

I'll allow that you might have been in the right on all of your AfD flags, under some interpretation of WP policies. But I think you were wrong to do what amounts to jabbing a stick into a hornet's nest, and then wonder why you're getting stung. You stuck a %!#@ng stick into a hornet's nest, that's why.
I think this doesn't take economics into consideration. most companies aren't that interested in sharing their data in an anonymous way.
If you're okay with waiting a few hours/days, The Pirate Bay seems to have a good selection of torrents of recent Jeopardy! episodes, though I've not yet tried it.

You'll also be able to see a full transcript of the board, as well as all questions provided by contestants, at www.j-archive.com.
Looking for a Solr + DB dev to help take www.cleanplates.com to the next level (MongoDB? JSON API? Rails/Python?).

Off-hour work is fine -- I plan to be in Austin most of next month, so we can meet in person to collaborate / co-work too. >> niles at cleanplates dot com
Ugh. I can respect their desire to force people to use real names in order to keep discourse civil and intelligent.

But that's an awfully big rathole to crawl into.

See also: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-b...
Have you heard the expression "It's better to have a piece of a bigger pie, than to have a small pie"?

Nokia wouldn't be a minor player in the Android ecosystem. That's ridiculous. If they executed quickly and release some good Android phones within a year, they'd become relevant again. With their power, they could even beat Samsung, which is going to become the biggest Android phone manufacturer.

Of course they'd still need to compete well hardware wise. This decision seems to me like they need software differentiation because they know they can't compete well enough on hardware anymore.

By the time Nokia makes a few WP7 phones and sells them, Samsung will sell a lot more Android phones. I expect Samsung to become the #1 phone manufacturer within 2-3 years. This won't happen only because Samsung is growing, but because Nokia will sell a lot less Symbian units, due to competition in the mid and low end from Asian manufacturers.
How One Man Decoded and Set Free the Human Genome
Practical Advice for Computer Science Students
personally I find this is very retarded...faking your name is easy.

All you have to do is make a new Facebook account with a real sounding name, and noone would be the wiser.

So whats the point of wasting valuable resources enforcing something this stupid?
The whole thing is ridiculous, but I want to point out something else the editor said that bugged me and seemed unnecessary: "...in order to use a site approximately as useful to the world as Yahoo! Answers."

Do people really think it's that bad? I really like Quora for the most part and think it's way more useful than Yahoo! Answers.
Yep. It's pretty crazy: part prices are actually almost tracking Moore's Law.

There are also newer processes that are much more expensive. If you're checking out something like an Objet machine, or something like EBM, you're still going to be looking at an upper 5 figures to a mid 6.
How can we break out of this vicious circle?

Decide you don't want the money the Enterprisey folks represent. Or, be so important to their business that they'd rather upgrade than do without you.
Something I wrote from a previous thread. The one piece of info that wasn't in this comment is that Watson can NOT anticipate when Trebek is about to finish the question. Watson must wait until it gets a signal that the buzzer is now available, and only then can it begin the process to physically depress the button.

Remember that Watson also has to depress a physical button (the same buzzer everyone else uses).
The eye to finger path for humans is about 200ms. It probably takes about 100ms for Watson to physically press the button. So Watson is about 100ms faster. But that also gives humans about a 100ms window in which to beat Watson. This means that you need to start your press 100-200ms before Trebek finishes his last word.

That's pretty good sized window for most people given you are reading the question along with Trebek. If the person who turns the light on is very consistent, I think a human who is good at this could consistently beat Watson.
Software development: dealing with awful estimates
Same here. I'd be a lot more active in editing Wikipedia if it weren't for the f@#!#ng deletionists. But as long as those pikers are running around deleting stuff left and right, I feel very little motivation to get involved on a regular basis.
A valentine's day gift for us single geeks
Related to your list that goes to eleven:

There are only two hard problems in Computer Science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2193505

This research concluded that women were not in STEM careers because of this "work" culture, choosing instead other career paths with a better work/life balance,
Oh totally. It's like the state of the art in the 80s, or something. And they're rapidly improving.

I'm excited to see what happens as the patents in this space expire. I'm expecting it to be similar to what happened with steam engines.
Oh yeah, totally, on both counts.
'Tatemae' and 'Honne' - White Lies and Honesty in Japanese Society
This is basically the main thesis of Zittrains 'The Future of the Internet: And how to stop it'

http://futureoftheinternet.org/

Agree that it is a problem. Quite brave, by the way, that he speaks out about this as a (former) Apple VP...
I worked in a semweb shop for ages, it's all over government where machine interoperability is key and also in complex data areas like pharma.
This is amusing. Quora might think that my real name is fake, but that's not a problem because I registered with a very ordinary sounding fake name.
Interesting, I'd always suspected that but never got around to tracking what times bugs were "created".
That’s Jeopardy. Whoever buzzes first gets to answer, I don’t see what’s unfair about that. Computers can react faster than humans, why should they be denied that advantage?
http://www.rdfabout.com/

I think this is a better intro for technical folk.
Performable Looks to Become the Salesforce.com of Online Marketing
Whartonites Fight Back (against Whartonite Seeks Code Monkey)
The biggest thing that people forget when dreaming about 3D printers is that it doesn't making something from nothing: the materials have to come from somewhere.

Even once we get a printer that's easy enough for 'normal' people to use (hard) and a way for them to design the prints that go in the machine (hard) and we make them small and reliable enough that it's acceptable for normal people (hard) you _still_ have to have a big vat of plastic or whatever lying around, and feed it into the machine.

We've got a long way to go before 'a printer in every home' is reality, if it ever does.

My thoughts: it's like water. A big pipe of raw materials. Just imagine how long that'd take...
FYI, Elder Scrolls actually did procedural content a while ago, in Daggerfall. I haven't played it, but I've heard very mixed things. Then again, it can be a polarizing series...
A Five-Step Process for Delegating Decisions (and Making Them Stick)
I sometimes put my email down as foobar@example.com, so I’m definitely not going to click your activation links. That’s probably not representative of most users though.
I registered with a completely fake name, though it sounds like a real name rather than a handle.

I have to wonder about a mother who names her kid "Quora" anyway, and I would like to point out that Quora isn't giving us her last name, yet she demands that we give her ours?

I learned my lesson with facebook, which promised privacy and then years later made the data public. That is the last site that got my real name. I've changed my name on facebook several times to completely obviously fake names, and while they claim that you have to use your real name and they claim to review them, no repercussions. I'm only keeping the account while I go back, and delete old status updates a few months at a time anyway.

And really, no website actually needs it. Trying to fight it is silly, as there is no mechanism whereby you can authenticate identity online. Faxing a passport doesn't even work, unless the business is tied into the government network, and if it is, then other businesses are as well and fake passports become easier.
Androidify yourself with the official mobile app
Building your own paypal mafia
I'll try to explain my point of view on this to the extent that I myself understand it.

First to me what you call "personhood", which you define as that which makes it wrong to kill (or I would assume as well cause suffering to) another human being, is based on the capacity of the being in question to experience suffering. I think that humans have a much higher capacity for suffering than most (if not all) other terrestrial animals due to their more complex nervous systems. Part of this increased capacity may be due to increased cognitive capacity per se (for example I will suffer if I think my life is in danger whereas an animal may not be able to conceptualize that danger and hence will not experience suffering in the same situation). Humans clearly have greater sapience than animals and this can lead to greater suffering. It is also possible that humans have a greater intrinsic capacity for subjective experience independently of any cognitive process. If this is true I would say that humans have greater sentience than animals. I don't know if it's true because I lack a conceptual model for understanding the nature of sentience and what physical processes may give rise to it.

In the absence of such a model, I can only guess and my guess is that sentience somehow arises from the interaction between information and matter.

I think it's likely that deterministic computers will achieve human level cognitive abilities in the relatively near future. I know of no cognitive function that humans perform which I can't imagine being executed on a sufficiently powerful computer. I would consider such machines to be sapient but as far as I can see they would have no sentience whatsoever (not even as much as lower animals).

As for your last question:

It seems to me that human beings are constantly falling into the same intellectual trap. That trap consists of believing that their scientific theories are not only accurate but also complete. At the end of the 19th century physicists believed they knew essentially everything there was to know about physics (except for a couple of pesky anomalies that could easily be swept under the rug). Ten years ago it was common wisdom that the majority of human DNA was junk which served no purpose. Only now are we beginning to understand the role that "junk" plays in regulating gene expression.

I think that current scientific theories are not capable of explaining the nature of sentience or of predicting which physical systems will be sentient and which not. I'm not sure if that makes me a supernaturalist or not.
Should we discard our clothes harden ourselves for the weather to become less dependent on clothing manufacturers?

Technology is what separates humans from the rest of the animals. As time goes by, we will become more and more dependent on our technology, and this is a good thing, because I with my smartphone or laptop can do things I wouldn't be able to do alone.
I see this as a UI problem, not a 'real' problem.
Ditto -- it seems that I read about Quora on HN nearly every day, but I've never actually been taken to the site for any real purpose, or seen any of its actual content linked on HN.
Ask HN, Ask PG: Is my URL banned?
This is the 2nd time I have noticed that my post doesn't appear in the 'new' column when other people browse it.

I submitted a blog post I had written titled 'Trends in recruitment tools' (http://blog.interviewstreet.com/2011/02/trends-in-recruitment-tools/). While it appears when I browse the 'new' column (http://awesomescreenshot.com/0a47ja5f3), at the same instant when my friend browsed (http://awesomescreenshot.com/0197ja019) it doesn't show up - except for that post everything else is the same.

This is the 2nd time it's happening and hence a little concerned - if there's something wrong I had done, please let me know.
RIM has already "leaked" most of their planned high-end phones for this year, and none of them look spectacular.
Sorry if the title seems sensationalist, but by nominating articles for AfD, he was, effectively, trying to get them deleted. He clearly stated his view that they didn't meet the notability guidelines and should be deleted.
If you and _djo_ are nitpicking over the use of my quantifier "entirely" I'll retract that. The evidence, though, is pretty clear:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_...
Those awesome Refcards are being published again.
At some point they stopped by I think it's back now.
Clickable link: http://www.mywordcloud.com

An example E-card: http://www.mywordcloud.com/cards/18694af4eaaf4748
I posted to a sibling of this comment, but here's the link again just in case you miss it:

If you are nitpicking over the use of my quantifier "entirely" I'll retract that. The evidence, though, is pretty clear:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_...