skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There are some architectural diagrams and other info in the Quora thread here: http://www.quora.com/IBM-Watson/Whats-the-system-architectur...
Plan M is the superior one. I don't think you can top that one.
Congratulations girl!
I wasn't aware that Apple announced the iPad in 2007.
Computing needs to coalesce around a new big project like this. The web could be a distributed programming environment if we wanted it to be.
Carnivorous Furniture
E-Mails Hacked By 'Anonymous' Raise Concerns
You do realize you've given enough details to be fully identifiable by your co-founder and probably some others?

Anyway, I think the major problem here is that you think you can't say the exact same thing you typed here to your partner and then resolve the issue. You may be right about that, but from the post we can't draw any conclusions. If you feel this bad about the current state of affairs, you should be able to sit down with him and explain (without making accusations, because you are definitely also to blame for having letting it come this far) how you feel and how you think the problems can be resolved. If that is not possible, then the question is: why not?
This forthcoming book ("Design for Hackers") might be helpful: http://www.kadavy.net/blog/posts/d4h-the-book/
A Phone That’s the Life of a Laptop
Apple Waves at Evil, Heads toward Diabolical
> Why is there never any blame put on those on "main street" who took the loans that they couldn't repay?

While I agree that people should have known better, I still blame the mortgage brokers, banks and realtors. The average American barely has the math skills for "12*12=144". There's a principal-agent issue here in my mind. The average American thought that the broker/bank wouldn't offer a clearly unpayable loan, because they would lose money on it. Not to mention that they don't look like sketchy auto body shops or something, but they look like legitimate businesses. So when this guy who's clearly a mortgage/finance expert says "Great news, because of assorted financial wizardry that's WAY, WAY over your head, we can put you in your dream home for about what you're paying in rent right now", people are going to believe him, because (a) they're primed to trust this guy, and (b) they badly want it to be true. There's a lot of resemblance to a con in that way. To add to this, Joe Schmoe is seeing his coworkers, friends, and neighbors getting into these deals as well - it can't be a trick if everyone's doing it, right? Not to mention that I've read standard MERs mortgage documents, and they are ludicrously opaque. So while I agree that "main street" people screwed up and should shoulder some blame, I can certainly see their perspective.
Shebang. It's called a shebang.
Check out djangobook.com its online and free to everyone. It will give you a good understanding of the fundamentals as well as a few advanced topics. Other than that the best advice I could give you is to jump in feet first and don't look back.
Such a redirect isn't slow? It's near instant if done right.
Here's twitter doing it: http://twitter.com/bjorntipling

It's absolutely super fast for me. How is that a 'kicker'?

Large JS files only need to be downloaded once and are cached.

There's no problem here.
Funny, that particular code from the same video inspired this own post of mine: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2219801
> What Watson doesn't do is attempt to mimic the human ability to use common sense, make leaps of logic or imagine the future....

Pretty much sums up why I'm disillusioned about Watson and all the hype it's receiving. Don't get me wrong, it is a huge engineering feat, and pretty incredible, but doesn't seem as "revolutionary" as it's made out to be.

Am I missing something?
Im really impressed to see a person who wont give up and try even if it means to learn something new and not being in the part that they like the most.
sidenote: you have inspired me to keep going. I hope you have a bright future in your road.
I'm going to give this a whirl, but I don't see any integration with the tasks GMail already has, built-in, so I can't get them to my phone. If you can sync tasks with GMail, then the android app I bought will take care of that sync step, right?

Also, if I do end up sticking with this, please don't sell this and shut down the service, like etacts did (the last YC company to do a gmail add-on, IIRC), although I never used that much.
Ahh...Looks like Apple/Gawker. If so, really cool of you!
All the best @ Catch!
Firefox 4 already runs plugins in separate processes. Running each tab in its own process is codenamed "electrolysis" for reasons beyond my ken: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis

I'm guessing Electrolysis will get some more loving once the panic of shipping Firefox 4 has abated.
threadbird.com does awesome printing. They used to be Storenvy printing when I've used them - but they've branched off just for printing now it looks like. But they are based out of the US. Maybe drop them a line.

BTW, I don't know if your startup is just a temporary t-shirt store, but here is my 2 cents from my brief experience selling shirts: Spend a little more for the better quality shirts, you will get repeat customers. I highly recommend the American Apparel shirts. It really does make a difference. Also, if customers know that the shirt is AA, they are definitely more likely to buy if you list it for a moderate price. The quality is far superior and in my opinion, just feel better wearing them.
Top Man vs. Machine Moments
I had a Russian professor (teaching the language, and from the country) in college who mentioned one day in class (I forget how we got onto the subject) that Americans smile a lot more than Russian people, and that it generally seemed false and insincere to her. I've had other Russians confirm this, though they generally tend to be older.
>had nothing to do with the greater causes.

It has everything to do with the greater causes. The reason it's happening is to try to cover up the fact that in many cases, mortgages were improperly transferred along the chain from the lender to the REMIC trusts. This means that (a) the banks selling MBS to investors lied when they said they had properly transferred the notes, and (b) in some states, the screw-ups jeopardize the securitization of the debt. Had there not been such a mortgage bubble, this probably wouldn't have happened.
The Story of WordLens [video]
We celebrate their anniversaries with the company at the closest company meeting to that date. There are increasingly cool company shwag presented with the acknowledgment, starting with sweaters and progressing through nice jackets, skateboards, framed photos etc. It feels great to see people still really happy with their job after 4 years and having to earn the nice shwag makes it mean more.
Thanks for the kind words, dmix.

I was the first engineer aschobel brought on board after he founded. Now I'm heading up Catch's mobile dev efforts.

The Catch Android client is my baby, so I'm glad you're finding it compelling. Please don't hesitate to use the built-in feedback links to send us comments or criticisms!
Unless they want any kind of DRM.
What an interesting update for me. I met you (or your cofounder I would guess) at TED a few years ago, and installed your app. I didn't "get" it at the time. I used to look at it on my iphone all the time, but never used it. I would have thought that was the end of the story.

Great to see that you persisted. Keep after it!
I don't understand this. It's very easy and cheap to get ssh access to a linux box setup somewhere. git over ssh is easy and has the same basic setup as the instructions in this link and it doesn't have the problems mentioned in the link.
The Facebook picture in the article is taken from this page:

http://areweprettyyet.com/5/desktopApps/

...which links to bug 605222, "add support for .website shortcuts, msapplication meta information in Windows 7":

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=605222

...which links to the exact MSDN page you're talking about.
agh - can retrospectively lock them up
should be
cannot retrospectively lock them up.

I wish I could blame iphone but just bad typing
You shouldn't loose faith because of yet another silly example of what can be patented. The main problem is that it can be defended in court to the extent where most people can't take on a wealthy patentholder, no matter how ridiculous the patent.
The difference between a web site and a web application isn't binary. Modern web sites increasingly blur the lines between the two.

Hashbang URLs are bad because they damage the addressability of the Web. If I can't take a URL, telnet to port 80, run GET /path and get back a representation of the thing that the URL points to, that URL isn't really part of the Web - it's part of a JavaScript application delivery engine that happens to run over HTTP.
Whoah! Settle down there. "Normal" is not an offensive term, unless you yourself deem geeks to be superior.
This is nerd crack: enjoyable and reinforcing, but not necessarily deep. Its recommendations seem, prima facie, to be limited to a small subset of the population. Is "giving up in frustration" measured? What about "fuck it, I have better things to do"? I'll agree that experts are better off with a command line, but I don't think the conclusions can be extended to the population at large.
>-No customer support at all

Hi, may we help? :)
We also do have forums that are actively monitored.

Also if anyone is interested, checkout is present in these countries:
http://goo.gl/I49QQ
... or even bodies for that matter.
If you liked this article and enjoy Andy Kessler's writing, you'll probably be happy to know that he wrote a novel called "Grumby":

http://www.amazon.com/dp/098271632X

It's about a hacker who reprograms a Furby, finds that he's created the New New Thing, and then hangs on for dear life as his startup rises and falls.

It's "creative destruction", as told through a work of fiction.
You obviously didn't read the article. The SEC didn't just turn it's back on insider trading. And that is not the only "crimes" here that Taibbi catalogues by the AIG, Goldman Sachs, Bear Sterns, Citigroup, Fanny Mae. There was widespread mis-reporting earnings to investors, using phony accounting techniques to jack-up bonuses, concealing billions of dollars in loans from their balance sheets like Lehman did. Those are crimes, and Taibbi gave example after example of such misdeeds.

Tons of specifics that I guess you missed. Great piece yet again by Matt Taibbi on the shameful practices of Wall Street banks while the SEC looked the other way.
They also seem to be making money from inserting amazon affiliate tags to links pointing to amazon.

Example: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/90924/what-is-the-best-ph...
It's a neat idea, and I like your simple design.

I'm really not crazy about the verifying with my Facebook friends though. I would feel much better about it if you told me what your app is going to do - is it going to send them an email, a Facebook message, post on their wall now? Basically, is it going to spam them?

Probably the best thing would be a screen shot of what you are going to send them.
Much of the speed increase (assuming fast and properly cached server) can come from the decreased need to repaint the entire DOM. For my site, this is a big deal.
I saw those but I am wondering if those aren't at the level needed for an implementation, especially for an imbecile such as myself. :)

I'm going to start with information retreival book I found at stanford but something tells me I need much more than just that!
I guess the difference is, Watson can easily retain the learning that is built up through a category, even if he hops around the board the entire round. For humans, the context switch is a lot more costly and a category change can catch you by surprise.
Does anyone know if they make money off branded tags? (see their android, flash, visualstudio tags)
The bold helps, it calls attention to the link, but is still a little unconventional. Have you tried #007, it's a subtle dark blue, might not be too obnoxious.
> Such a redirect isn't slow? It's near instant if done right. Here's twitter doing it: http://twitter.com/bjorntipling

On slower devices (such as mobile phones) redirecting can be more noticeable. You're right though, in general it's not really a problem, but might be more so than a larger-than-normal JS file.

> Large JS files only need to be downloaded once and are cached.

Yeah, I was trying to say that. Larger JS files aren't a problem at all; load them once and they're cached.
No, you're spot on. However, this sort of thing in the past (previously chess, the engine vs. a horse, etc) has sparked a wave of this kind of thing, which perhaps draws attention to automated logic reasoning in a way that is away from the traditional public tendency to lump all of those things (common sense, leaps of logic, imagination) in with automated reasoning. That could be beneficial, especially if we want to explore it as a tool. It is a stunt, but if anyone would be able to start these kinds of conversations, it would be IBM.
Everyone smiles, but for slightly different reasons. North Americans often smile to appear polite, which makes the rest of the world think we're weird (cause forced smiles never reach the eyes).

Spontaneous smiles activate the major cheek muscles (pulling the lips up), as well as the muscles just around the eye. Forced smiles only activate the cheek muscles (it's apparently nearly impossible to consciously activate those eye muscles).

There's also questions of degrees of smiling, as in amount of teeth.
Just do it. Keeping someone around who doesn't pull his weight AND has a bad attitude is poison. Cut the losses (yours and his) and get it over with.

Also, don't give advance warning and don't give reasons. Warning just creates risk for you and stress for him. Giving reasons is legally problematic, and he's not going to believe what you tell him anyway.

Just tell him that it's not working out, that you wish him the best, and hand him a final paycheck. Severance might be nice, if you can afford it.
Here's the thing: I don't hate hashbang URLs, I hate [site]'s use of hashbangs URLs. One example of [site] that stands out in particular is lifehacker. Why in the world does a blog need that? There isn't a good reason.

I don't think anybody opposes it in cases where it actually makes sense, but I assert that the dividing line is pretty clear.
Strange, are you using the paid version of Google Apps? And are you the admin for the domain? Shoot me an email at courtland@taskforceapp.com, I'll give you a hand.
"The AI crowd, too, was pleased with the result and the attention,
but dismayed by the fact that Deep Blue was hardly what their
predecessors had imagined decades earlier when they dreamed of
creating a machine to defeat the world chess champion. Instead of
a computer that thought and played chess like a human, with human
creativity and intuition, they got one that played like a machine,
systematically evaluating 200 million possible moves on the chess
board per second and winning with brute number-crunching force."

The Chess Master and the Computer
by Garry Kasparov

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/feb/11/the-che...

What you describe is a very similar situation to that of the one IBM had after creating Deep Blue. They got the results that they had aimed for, but reached it by means that they hadn't expected (or even wanted). The implications of this are the effects it has on the potential applications and projects based off of it. Using brute force to solve these projects will not always work - at some point, this method will have to be replaced by another one. Instead of bringing computers closer to the human brain, these projects are revealing the large gap between them.

In my opinion, the "Next Big Thing" should be a proper merge of the intelligence between computers and humans. Each has their own strengths, and trying to recreate and incorporate the complexities of the human brain into our computers may not be possible. Instead we should put the efforts into finding a way to connect the two and discovering a common interface between them.
"will be among the attendees of President Obama's event with business leaders in San Francisco Thursday evening" is quite different from "to meet with Obama Thursday".
…find a way to best unlock the value of this asset.

That's the kind of phrase that makes me shudder.
Within git, branches are super-lightweight and easy to create. If you're coordinating with other developers (or finding yourself needing to shuttle code around between machines frequently) it would be worth creating a remote dev branch in your repo.

With a dev branch, you have the flexibility to just what you describe-- commit broken or half-completed code in order to move to another box-- and still clean up the commit or merge it with others before you move it to your "master" branch for deployment or sharing.
You must be well-funded.
ATrackt - Solid Aluminum Tray for Magic Trackpad & Keyboard
I'm starting to get disillusioned with the general community thoughts these days. When it's clear that the surest way to a popular article is to blame 'Wall St' for all your problems, to me this is a sign that the actual original thinking entreprenuers are being outnumbered by ordinary employees holding mainstream political views. Populism is a poor form of argument.

Note I'm not exclupating 'Wall St' from blame, merely expressing regret that 'piling on' takes more of a front seat to trying to work out what went wrong, where the opportunities now are, and what lessons can be learnt.
I use git and dropbox together every day, but not like any of those people do. I keep my code dir with all my projects in my (personal) dropbox. So that's where my local 'working copy' repos live.

This way I can hack at work, hack at home, and hack on the plane... and I am never tempted to push one of those shitty "not done but committing because my flight to china is boarding" commits to the central repo (which is on a server accessed via ssh like normal).

It also saves my time because I don't have to git pull every time I switch computers in order to keep hacking where I left off.

That's a big, big win in my opinion, but it is just the same big win that Dropbox provides for various kinds of work. I don't see anything magical about the git+dropbox combo.
I remember similar physics puzzle from high school days. Given a cup of hot tea and few spoons of sugar how does one go about sweetening the tea so that it would cool off the most in the process.
Some people in our society are not fully equipped to properly evaluate all of the risks that they take (even on a daily basis). When you get into a car, you are placing a lot of trust in the 'professionals' (i.e. the engineers, the safety inspectors, the government regulators, Consumer Reports, etc) that the car is safe, why is a mortgage that much different? To many in our society the inner workings of mortgages (and personal finance in general) are just as transparent as how their car works. You can claim that if they should have educated themselves until you are blue in the face, but (1) we live in a society that doesn't exactly promote/reward that very well, and (2) the mortgage brokers probably pretty heavily tried to convince the consumers that there was no need to even 'shop around' to other brokers let alone spend the time to educate themselves on how their mortgage was going to work (hell, I'm sure some of the mortgage brokers probably didn't even know this; just how to fill out the paperwork to get the mortgage going).
I wonder if anyone has tried this: suppose that to make page transitions faster, you strip out everything from each page other than the data itself? The page should just contain the main content (which would have to be fetched via AJAX anyway), and JavaScript can fill in things like sidebars and navigation.
Trying To start TryingTo
Any questions email me at okeyoe@gmail.com; will be glad to answer your questions. Thanks.
Do you mean the dividing line between web sites and web applications?

How would you categorise Flickr, or YouTube, or Wikipedia, or Yelp, or Lanyrd, or Craigslist - or pretty much any other UGC site? I'd argue that all of them could be described as both.
This should do it, assuming you're on development:

git checkout -b tmp
git commit -a -m "throwaway"
git push wherever tmp
#switch machines
git checkout development
git fetch wherever
git merge wherever/tmp --no-ff
git reset HEAD^
git push wherever :tmp

and you could automate that with a pair of scripts.
Copypasta: reader powered edits
Well, he did search Google with the Jeopardy questions and showed that very often the answer to the question was Google's first result. I think that's not only indicative of the difficulty of the problem at hand, but also shows that Watson is no different than established A. I. systems such as search engines. I had never seen Jeopardy before (not being from the States) and expected the game to be slightly more challenging; too many clues are included to the question asked and they make it too easy to determine the type of the expected answer ("this" appears almost in every single question). All three players seem to know the answer to any given question, and it's just a game of who presses the button first.
No fair enough. I guess it is all in the field of search or natural language processing. For NLP I recommend the NLTK tutorial for Python as an intro, and for search I would recommend checking out Apache Lucene. Perhaps to implement you need to tear concepts from those fields into your own ideas tailored for the task at hand. If you choose Hadoop as job management and distribution, it would scale wide, to a threshold of overhead. If you just want highly specialized on a smaller dataset, and traceable, and I might get shunned for this, heh, but I recommend looking at RDFS and OWL as a somewhat approachable something in the realm of description logic, but that's too formal, maybe. Creating ngrams and other NLP techniques may be pretty neat to play around with, but at smaller scales, it is hard for me to envision something simple that is really any better than just free text search.
7 more.
This is a fabulous idea. I was actually thinking of something similar a week or two ago when there were a few posts about TechCrunch alternatives. I meant to offer up the idea in a thread, but don't think that I ever did.

If you did it right, the content would be extremely valuable... and probably pretty easy to monetize.
The state of your projects folder can change pretty rapidly when you check out different branches. For some reason I'm not a fan of my dropbox folder constantly trying to keep up with my branch changes.

I do like the idea of having a viewable copy of my git repo available, but to be honest I don't ever want to touch code if I can't git diff/commit
What Google Can Potentially Do With Your Privacy To Add Another Billion $
He is the author of the article.
I'm probably being a bit too pedantic.

I just don't see why the author would choose to use the loaded term 'normal people' instead of just 'people'.

edit: Unless he was being lazy and hanging his argument on an unfair caricature.

Which I believe he was.
No, I'm not sure what everyone's so excited about. Basically, they did a televised demo of a natural language search interface.

I'd be curious to know more about how the system works, and how they trained it and/or curated the knowledge base it worked from. Maybe they'll write a more informative paper or something. But as it is, this wasn't a particularly surprising or impressive technology demo.
Let hope history continues to repeat itself again and again when it comes to creating new jobs to replace the old.
I am still not sure what the target market for Kal-El is. Nvidia seems to be having an identity crisis where they're using an architecture normally reserved for lower power mobile operations and ramping it up to try & make it compete with desktop offerings. It's not powerful enough, nor does it have the compatibility to compete with x86. At the same time it probably uses too much power to stick in a phone or possibly even a tablet.