skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
My favorite quote from those released emails:

"Let's hope we are all wealthy and retired by the time this house of cards falters."

Yep, no fraud here.
JVM is written in C/C++ so technically Java cannot be faster than C/C++ because everything in Java are (direct / indirect) products of C/C++. :)
Comments, on iPhone 4. Probably wouldn't have wanted that on any device before the 960x640 Retina Display.
Anyone taking bets on whether these features will have any compatibility with Microsoft's msSiteMode API in IE9?

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg131029.aspx
It seems like a smile is pretty close to universal, though. Maybe you can tell me in which cultures it means something different?
IE was available for Mac until Safari came out. MS knows all about crushing the competition by bundling your browser with the OS, so they just skipped to the endgame and canceled IE.
Firefox has done some amazing work with 4.0 and the planned 5.0 release. It seems they were caught napping by Chrome for a while but now have gotten their act together.
Real bioinformaticians write code
I'll bite: were you on the show?
Why should Firefox have to comply with a Microsoft specific API?
Canadian Government Hacked
Is Yahoo Getting Close to Selling Its Lucrative Yahoo Japan Shares?
This is depressing. I know nothing beats the convenience of Amazon and Audible but browsing through a bookstore is an experience which just can't be replicated online... oh well.
Elementary, my Dear Watson: Man vs. Machine in the Digital Age
Did you actually read the article? He gives several examples.
Shy U.S. Intellectual Created Playbook Used in a Revolution
Indeed, talk is cheap. But no other team was even given a crack at this, nor have I heard of any research groups trying (and failing) at similar trivia tasks. Maybe we'll see that now.
any insight as to your YC interview? anything you'd do differently? was your lack of hacking experience part of why you were turned down? advice for those who get an interview on how to survive it?
"That is straight out of Gandhi," Mr. Sharp said. "If people are not afraid of the dictatorship, that dictatorship is in big trouble."

I wonder which country will find people losing their fear next?
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.

"Hire slowly, fire quickly" is an oft-repeated maxim for a good reason.

As for the most humane way to fire someone in a startup, I have a few thoughts (borne from several misfires earlier in life):

1. Sit down with your employee and give them a formal warning. "You're not performing up to our expectations, and if things don't improve within 14 days, we're going to have to replace you." Give them a list of specific items to work on.

2. On the day of the firing, always have two people from your company present in the room. This mitigates a surprising number of "he-said/he-said" type disputes, and also (surprisingly) leads to a less contentious conversation. If it's just the two of you, the odds of someone saying something they'll regret increase substantially.

3. Be generous with severance. I've never regretted giving an employee 4 full weeks of severance, no matter how junior.

4. Be direct. Resist the urge to treat it like a high-school breakup (i.e. "It's not you, it's me.") I have always been advised by HR professionals to never mention "cultural fit", as it's a gateway to wrongful termination suits. However, I have been ignoring this advice for about a decade. I believe an honest firing trumps a legally "safe" firing.

5. Most importantly: don't plan on doing anything else for the rest of the day. Take your team out and order drinks. If your other team members want to go home after lunch, by all means let them. In a small team, terminations can be very emotional for everyone, and nobody feels good about working right after their coworker got canned.
Smiling might be universal across humanity but the emotional state and intent of the smile is not. For example, in some cultures, smiling/grinning is a response to embarrassment. When I was travelling in China I asked a old man for directions (in mandarin)...he was so shocked that a foreigner was speaking with him he couldn't speak back. He grinned from ear to ear though.

Also, in primates, smiling is very closely related to baring of teeth. Smiling = 'let's be friends'. Baring teeth = 'come any closer and I'll kill you'. I would not like to make that kind of miscalculation when meeting an alien for the first time....
"the browser interface is planned to be more responsive"

So when does Mozilla get around to ripping Firefox wide open on an operating table and not letting the surgeons leave until each tab has it's own process?

Not switching back until I see a modern process architecture. Screw one tab being able to affect the responsiveness and stability of another or even worse... The browser's chrome. shudder
I don't see the win on top of github here, they're both "public" services, and github is designed specifically to host git repos. With dropbox you commit and wait for your code to sync; with git push you are synced as soon as the command completes.

ipad developers: Please give me a decent solution for code editing with git integration
Firewall iP - The Only iOS Firewall Hack Gets Even Better
It's also 'disrespectful' (I'm anthropomorphising wildly) to a lot of animals. Try staring a dominant dog in the eye and see what it gets you.
If you're fuzzy on this allow me to provide clarification. A truckload of assault weapons, bunker full of food and a couple of dozen like-minded compatriots are a hand-written invitation to get raided by the Feds. It's not possible for a citizen or group of citizens to arm themselves sufficiently to provide any kind of real check on the government.
Open Data Startup Factual Updates Its Datasets, Releases iPhone SDK
Guile also comes with a high quality manual ~ 800 pages long, thanks to the tireless work by Neil Jerram and others.
Depends on how many books these normal people have in their Kindle libraries. 15 or more and buying a Kindle seems the obvious choice.
Assume a spherical spoon...
In the sense that if you are unhappy with your iPad, your next tablet will be something else. New customers won't buy an iPad if it doesn't do what they want.

True, some users might have some switching pain, but that's true for most things. Windows to Mac, Xbox to PS3, Kindle to Nook. Lock in is real, but rarely determinative.

Consumers vote with their wallets. The free market is a powerful thing.
There's a hump where people associate the push as something magical in version control. While that may be true of some systems, in a distributed system the commit is actually what's important.

I find git+dropbox particularly useful for non-public projects I work on on my own. I used to use a private github unfuddle repository and do a remote push, but now I just forget about the push and commit from within the dropbox folder.

The nice thing about Dropbox, and why I'm actually surprised this needs to be asked, is that it's completely transparent..it's just a folder. Create a project, git init and commit like you normally would.
I was actually thinking of efreedom and the other StackOverflow clones that sometimes appeared ahead of StackOverflow.
Too few high-ranking bureaucrats have a real understanding of technology. Until they learn or cede power to those that do this sort of news will become more commonplace.

The problem is that the incentive just isn't there: a company with sensitive data will either have sufficient security or soon lose any edge in the marketplace, but the government can lose data again and again and nothing happens.
Have you thought about checking out Startup Digest (http://startupdigest.com)? They have a bunch of cities listed there.

If your city isn't listed there you could always search the name of your city in CrunchBase (http://www.crunchbase.com) and a you should find a bunch people that way.
Apple doesn't want to own everything. They're happy being the BMW of tech and generate massive profits.

Comparing this situation to monarchies and abuses of power is stupid. It's just an in-app subscription model for a mobile OS that nobody is being forced to use.
Yeah; I had a blast. At least that's my excuse for following Ken Jennings' forum so closely.

I ended up 72 victories short of Ken, though.

http://www.j-archive.com/showplayer.php?player_id=3965
Back when the government didn't know about the internet it was very nice. Then a bunch of folks decided this could be a great new method for selling stuff, distributing porn, etc, and now you see where we are.
'Muggles' I prefer, at least it's sincere. The problem I have with the term 'normal people' is that it is a polite way of referring to 'the unwashed masses'.

Which isn't a polite thing to say no matter how you phrase it.

In the context of this article in particular, in order to bolster a flawed argument, 'normal people' are presented as people so stupid as to be unable to comprehend a second brand of telephone.

This is simply untrue, and to imply that people don't have the power to choose between two products, because 'normal people' are too stupid to use more than one type of phone is absurd.

If you have a problem with Apple's 30% cut of in app purchases, that's fine. But please use something a little more substantive than a silent, and most likely non-existent, underclass of sub-humans as your justification.
Hear hear.

I can think of many cases where ajax loaded content and the attendant hashbang URLs are far preferable, like with twitter's web interface or with gmail. It just makes sense for web applications to work differently than static content, and persistent display of information often beats out clean looking URIs.

Plus the whole anti-hashbang thing has a reactionary air to it.
[...] my colleague MG Siegler did a thorough piece talking about why this makes sense for Apple and users [...]

How surprising...
Kasparov was pissed off about the human intervention to Deep Blue during the game. The scene where you see him jump out is where his frustration at knowing and realizing that humans had altered Deep Blue get the better of him.

He demanded a re-match, and IBM declined.
If another IBM engineer walked in on the Watson team and showed them his single-server (32 core, 512GB RAM) alternative that performed on par with the Big Iron approach, do you think IBM corporate's reaction would have been:

• "Great, now we can haul the unit to Jeopardy's Burbank studios for a showdown ASAP!" ...or...

• "Hold that thought for the future, we've already frozen the datasheets and shot lots of footage of the server room that's perfect for the show and B-rolls."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-surEvJXj34
Large/lots of javascript files can slow down the loading of the page, but that wasn't the real issue people were taking with JS-controlled sites (as I interpreted things).

The real delay cost was from the inevitable redirect to the root of the website. When you visit domain.com/user-name, a JS-controlled site will usually redirect you to domain.com#!/user-name, and then loading up the page. There is no avoiding this unless you want really ugly urls: domain.com/user-name#!/user-name...

So large JS files might increase the load speed slightly, but adding an entire redirect is the kicker.

Like most things, there's a time and a place. Using hashbang urls can increase response-time when navigating through a site and provide a really cool experience. On the other hand, it definitely doesn't work for all browsers and users.
> I don't think ET will be vastly more intelligent than us

I'm not so sure. In that scenario, there's something that we're communicating with, right? Given humanity's limited capacity in that regard, the mere fact that we've found something that can reciprocate would, to me, indicate that it's likely to be a little further along than we are.

It's really a matter of who goes to whom. If we meet aliens on our turf, well, they had to get here somehow. And since we can't really get there too easily, they must be a bit better off.
That's the thing. When you're making something on the web, you need to define to yourself whether it's a Web Application or a Web Site. The hashbang approach lends itself very well to the Application side of the browser.
I think the fact that he used "Toyota" as the alien was kind of a nod at the idea that they would probably be a self-designed sentience a la your "redesigning."

Also, re: "ability to have more children"--that is exactly what the evolutionary definition of fitness is. Your concept of fitness as an animal that's strong and smart and whatever else is purely a byproduct of that definition.
You'll probably end up corrupting the shared bare repo. This approach is only suitable for a small team (two in my case) where people can just shout over their cubicle walls: "Hey! Nobody push! I'm pushing now!". – Ates Goral Sep 13 '10 at 20:04
I am not confused about anything they where fined for civil fraud. They should have been charged with criminal fraud because they where culpable in allowing the racket to be structured.

http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2010/2010-59.htm

from the article:

Tourre structured the transaction, prepared the marketing materials, and communicated directly with investors. Tourre allegedly knew of Paulson & Co.'s undisclosed short interest and role in the collateral selection process.

Goldman Sachs did not disclose Paulson & Co.'s short position or its role in the collateral selection process in the term sheet, flip book, offering memorandum, or other marketing materials provided to investors.
Ask HN: How do you implement a Watson? 
I want to implement my own version, which will probably be very crappy. But I'd like to try anyways with the goal that I'll learn something.
Efficient auto-complete with a ternary search tree
That's generally not as likely as you'd think - since the names of the files are hashes of their content, the worst that can happen is you'll get dummy files. Bob's 8331a5b is just as good as Sam's 8331a5b. You could conflict refs (like where 'master' points to), but that window is generally pretty small.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000...
i just placed my projects folder within the dropbox folder, and use github as normal. perhaps i'm doing it incorrectly...
I've had great luck with using xmpp with pubsub as a method of client/server communication. It has a number of advantages in that once you've converted your commands to xml in an xmpp payload you can route to a variety of backend services that speak xmpp. You also get things like presence for free which can be useful in many cases.
This might be useful:
http://code.google.com/p/xmppframework/wiki/iPhone
Here's an excellent scalable xmpp server that's highly extensible:
http://ejabberd.im
Wow that's some story...
It is so awesome to know that you (one of us) actualy made his dream come true in such a short period of time...
I am sure we all get to hear "do the logical/right thing and take that job" strategy from their family/friends.

I know I do a lot.....

It's great to see you were in the same situation and chose otherwise....it's really hard to make that choice and stick with it....Kudos to you brother....

About me, I am still having to make this part time, since I felt lost after getting rejected twice for investments...and decided to take a job to stay in US and continue building my dream part time....
It is really really tought to do this part time....but I sure hope I won't give up, and come across stories like yours to keep me going, since I too feel my product's gonna touch many thousands, if not millions of lives (just like yours did?)

Thanks a lot for sharing your success story Sir, these are few and far between....

P.S. - just FYI, I was also not accepted October 2009, and have been trying to make my product....wow it;s been too long but I was really sick in between, so meh....another month might actually get my prototype going....
Show HN: Launched my side project: Goalfinch
http://goalfinch.com

I had the idea for Goalfinch while reading an article here on Hacker News about economic incentives and how effective they are. It got me thinking: What if there were an easy way to set up economic incentives for the goals I have in my own life?

A few months later, after working on it off and on in my spare hours, it's ready for prime time.

With Goalfinch, you define a goal and make a contribution of cash that acts as an incentive for you to complete the goal. Your Facebook friends confirm whether or not you've accomplished it. If you succeed before your deadline, you get the cash back. If you fail, it gets donated to the charity of your choice. The combination of money on the line and your friends breathing down your neck makes for a very powerful motivator.

It's a pretty simple idea that could go in many different directions, but I wanted to share it with this community in its first, fledgling stages. Please let me know what you think!

http://goalfinch.com
Clickable: http://goalfinch.com
ah. well said, i misunderstood your point. and agree. though i think the concern with "normal people" as a phrase specifically is still misdirected. it is a concept that warrants some word or phrase, and there is no harm intended.

in fact, i know several "normal people" who'd probably prefer considering themselves "normal people". at the very least, as opposed to "computer nerds". which incidentally is a term i've never found offensive.
Word Lens creator on how he conceived and built WL [video]
Paper: An Experimental Investigation Of The Akamai Adaptive Video Streaming
Given the impact of these new policies on music streaming services like Rhapsody et al and Apple's dominant share in the digital music and digital music player markets, I think antitrust will become part of the story sooner rather than later. Especially if Apple launches their own streaming service (as has been rumored).
Apple's Steve Jobs to meet with President Obama on Thursday
Probably start with a good knowledge representation. Facts need to be categorized and linked to one another. I assume a solid ontology would be key.

A way to process your training data to fit your knowledge graph needs to be unambiguous. No sense it teaching it anything if it becomes full of contradictions.

Finding a dataset for it to learn would be tough as well. Given the breadth of possible questions, you'll need to parse huge encyclopedias and/or wikipedia.

Finally, a way to efficiently query this massive amount of data. If it has to come up with an answer faster than its competitors, it better be able to lookup information pretty damn fast.
This is what I keep thinking as well. I think the difference is... when I want to switch to my laptop in a coffee shop, I have to push to github, regardless of what state the code is in. The build may be broken, a feature may be half implemented. I don't really like pushing with "sync to laptop" as the commit message.

So maybe dropbox is just meant to sync across your development area and github is still where the version control takes place?

If someone can elaborate on why they like this dual model, please let me know if I'm on the right track... or if there is a git-only solution that works as well.
Ken Jennings describes what it's like to play against a machine
I run a boutique consultancy primarily focussed on mobile apps(iOS, Android and Blackberry) and we currently charge $100/hr. I have a feeling that we undercharge, but so far our numbers are working out, so not complaining.
I smell an episode of Mythbusters coming on.
The presence of wealth and the presence of motivation do not entail the existence of the other in a person.
That's good to hear, especially since I have a number of my personal repos in my dropbox.
Additionally buying a house was considered a wise investment due to the ballooning home prices. This myth was perpetuated by the banks themselves.

It was also ingrained into the fabric of the American household. How many time has one heard, buy land they are not making any more of it or if you want to protect your money from inflation buy a house, they always go up. For 3 generations this has pretty much been a constant reality, one would have to go back to the depression to find wisdom that went against this reality.

I remember many friends saying we just have to get in before we get priced out of the market forever. People where so afraid of becoming renters for life that they where doing anything possible to secure a house before prices doubled again and they where permanently locked out of the market.

We are not talking about experienced investors here we are talking about people who just wanted to ensure they where not locked out of the American dream. Sure there where speculators, but the reality is speculators where only a fraction of the market and where some of the first to bail on their notes.

There where also many who used their house as an ATM, but with the shrinking job market can you really blame them many unwisely used it to maintain their standard of living and to put off the pain of adjustment to some point in the future, with the hope that better times would cover the call. which while unwise is not that out of the norm hell the government has been doing it for years.

To be clear, I am not making excuses for them but I think we are holding the consumer to a pretty high standard given the boom bust economy, the constant decline of jobs over the last decade, stagnant wages over the course of almost 2 decades, that has reduced real buying power and the financial shenanigans that have taken place. To blame the consumer after they have seen the middle class destroyed is really just rubbing salt in the wound.
No. That's all it ever was. You get a "basic critical thinking" merit badge for realizing it.
Roots, medicine, hangovers… adding more analogies to the conversation doesn't convince me of anything. If anything it throws up red flags that you're probably using a simplified model to analyze the problems. What takes root? What happens?

Where's the data? Ireland had a budget surplus before their current dilemma, was that a sign of health? Is a deficit a sign of weakness? I don't think printing money increases wealth; I've never even mentioned wealth.

You've clearly thought about this problem a lot because you care enough to post about it. The problem is that you still only understand about 5% of it (I sure as hell don't understand it as much as I would like to). You've filled in the rest with assumptions, wrapped a nice anecdote around it and are now going around smugly wagging your finger at people who say it's more complex than "surplus good/printing money bad". Drop the rhetoric and make me a convincing argument based on macroeconomics.
Creative destruction is a sign of great progress. There was a time when America was almost all factory workers and a time before that when America was mostly farmers.

While it is scary to be in the middle of a shifting trend in with a massive decline of old jobs, there will be a future that will take us completely by surprise. It will be unimaginable.

If you told someone from the industrial revolution that one day that people would pretend to be real people and then displayed in tiny little boxes and become the wealthy and elite of the world, they would think you were insane. The same would hold true if you told them that one day we would be able to all send our kids to schools and that they would start working in their mid 20's because their parents and the government could support and fund their development.
Hadoop Helps Watson Win 1 Million Dollars on Jeopardy
Jeopardy-Playing Watson Computer System Could Revolutionize Research
I found this step by step guide useful as well for setting up git & dropbox: http://blog.wekeroad.com/danger-danger/git-and-dropbox-sitti...
But it wasn't the DNS providers for those domains, was it? I'm pretty sure they got it changed on the master .com dns. So unless you mean you avoid all the US top level domains, you are still vulnerable.
I didn't say that they had to. But, having a single API is preferable to writing everything twice but in a slightly different way. Although, Microsoft aren't doing themselves any favours by not even trying a standardisation path.