skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This could be a nice option, but I would prefer a dedicated feature, maybe even save the big ones to read in the weekend...

I sometimes use my "patented"(kidding just my way of organizing myself) Gmail priority box tagging to task system to save the best ones for later, but It's not nice to have to e-mail 20 things a day to yourself.
What would the draw of a highly volatile pension investment be?

I would think that pension managers would be encouraged to keep something that would generally have a stable (but not necessarily particularly high) yield.

I don't doubt that this sort of thing happens for various reasons, but those managers would, by definition, be taking somewhat unusual risks.
Your first point is fair enough.

As for "anonymity is not the beginning and end of free speech", I don't think the comment you were responding to said anything to that effect. It only said that taking away anonymity would also take away free speech. By admitting that "anonymity is sometimes necessary", you're basically agreeing with that comment. Anonymity surely isn't all there is to free speech, but without it, free speech would be severely hampered.
>I'd counter with: Natural selection in the classic sense ceases to have any meaning in an environment where all members of a species survive into adolescence, and reproduce.

That just even more shifts the weight of human species selection machinery from r-selection (muliple, and thus more diverse, offsprinfgs, i.e. selection mainly by the best static fit) to K-selection - selection mainly by the best ability for behavioral adaptation. Ie. the natural selection, in the classical sense, is still there. It is the most important traits for defining best fit that are changing.
the OCR would be nearly perfect since there's very little variation in the way the text is displayed. The voice part wouldn't matter since the all top level players use the visual clue to determine the answer long before Trebek finishes reading it.
Yes, I've read the post several times, both the original and your many reposts of it. The trouble is is that it's not clear at all.

How does Apple do any inventory management or "shipping" given we're talking about digital goods? By having a counter for number of downloads? When have they ever done advertising or promotion the 99% of apps not lucky to be featured on in the ads? I'll agree they do some distribution and payment processing, but that's about it.

And I never said I had an expectation to get my money back. But when I paid money for hardware, I expect to be whatever I please with that hardware. I didn't pay $600 just to get access to Apple's app store on a 10" screen. I paid $600 to be able to take advantage of the capabilities of the iPad. Things like netflix and Kindle were a big factor in that decision (and honestly are some of the best things you can do with it).

Apple has blocked out any way of doing anything other than the app store, so it is a big deal. The fact that they sold me hardware doesn't entitle them to 30% of revenues from everything anyone wants to use that for.
Some people, when confronted with a problem, think “I know, I'll buy a pizza joint.”
Microsoft burning the Open Source bridge
It's reasonable to conclude that HN had a significant influence on Quora: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1197146

That doesn't mean it's "just" HN though. It's clearly aiming to be very different in the long term. At this point they're not really successful at being any one thing yet.
Because it's really hard to make a market-reactive product that is more powerful and featureful than the preceding product it is catching up to clone.

Apple just happened to have caught the entire planet with it's pants down when they introduced the i-Devices. I mean, look at what Google was working on[1] after Apple introduced the original iPhone. Google was chasing the market leader in style and interface at the time (Blackberry). When Apple introduced iPhone 3G, all bets were off and Google went back to the drawing board.

iPod Touch is introduced, and the only real competitor that comes to the fore is Microsoft, with the Zune (RIP) brand that mimics the Touch to no end and barely does anything better (yes, I'm taking the soon-to-be-dead Zune Pass into account).

Now it's tablets, and again, the rest of the industry reacts. I'm certainly surprised MS hasn't tried to hook up with a HW vendor to make a Phone 7 tablet.

Apple is on a hot streak. First with seriously consumer-friendly smartphones, then with software and media ecosystems, now with disruptive computing platforms.

It'll eventually run out of steam, but will the rest of the industry kill itself trying to keep up in the meantime?

[1] http://news.cnet.com/2300-1037_3-6230132.html
Well, right, that wouldn't be Jeopardy, but ultimately, I don't really care about Jeopardy, thus my question. What I (and most of us here, I think) would find interesting is how Watson's language processing abilities compares to that of (very smart) people. I don't really care how fast Watson can ring a buzzer. If there was a way to gauge that, I'd find it interesting.
How about just leave it at no dogma at all.

The technologies like HBase, Voldermort, CouchDB, and a huge list of others (each designed for a particular scenario) made me believe; that my favorite RDBMS MySQL has grown old and it can’t handle my data anymore.

Know yourself and know your data. Then just filter out what tools don't fit your needs. Don't blame others if you follow the crowds.
Maybe he just sporked his business?
Somewhat ironic commentary considering they were just as unable to ship the CrunchPad. And what did ship (the JooJoo) got completely panned in the reviews.

Really the issue is that hardware is hard to get right and requires a lot of resources, resources that Apple has and many other companies do not.
Hey Google: I know how to solve your paid links problem
It sounds like you want to find developers to solve your business problem. Isn't that what job boards are for?
Minor thing, could we have the link go to http://code.google.com/intl/nl/appengine/articles/django-non... instead of http://code.google.com/intl/nl/appengine/articles/django-non... ?
But I think this argument with respect to Java is flawed anyway, or was for a long time. EJB 3 and JPA is enormously much better, but back in the bad old days of J2EE you had these 'no go areas' anyway. You kind of slapped a couple of interfaces down, and then hoped that the magic code generator of the App Server would do the right thing (if configured properly).

How is that any different from having a "if you don't know what you're doing, don't mess with these bits" area for the Scala stuff to sit in?

J2EE isn't the only example of this. Plenty of frameworks had their 'here be dragons' sections, the fiddling with which was considered a dark art.
Intel looking for new MeeGo partners — good luck with that
In the future, with HTML becoming unversioned, this will be SOP

I find it odd that no one seems to realize how broken this is.

Every other browser vendor seems to have no problems implementing standards as they emerge

That's just wrong. Take FF4, for example, there is a lot of stuff that it doesn't implement still. It only looks good in comparison to IE9. It looks a lot less good if you compare it to every draft that's out there.

more likely to be what a standard is supposed to be: a codification of what everyone is already doing. This is far more useful than some sort of proclamation from upon high.

This is contradictory. The way standards for HTML5 have generally worked is that a smaller set of web vendors have made a proclamation from upon high that this is the now the web (albeit in flux). "What everyone is already doing" apparently is Opera (who appears to be the furthest out front), and not IE. That's like WebOS defining the new appstore standard and telling Apple to get in line.

I so hope IE10 comes out with a whole bunch of new features that no one else has and then pushes those into the standard. Just to hear everyone whine about how they're now rushing to market with features that haven't been fully ratified.
GeoCities was $3.57 billion. I'm not sure how that stacks up against Facebooks $50 billion. Facebook has a different business model, larger market, and people use it more intensively.
I disagree- Knowing it's a bubble doesn't mean you aren't contributing to it. In any bubble there are people who know it's a bubble but think they can make a ton of money in the meantime and then shrug their shoulders when it pops.
MS has submitted theirs to the W3C. Mozilla (and everyone else) should do the same.
On a related note, we're looking for a student to help us with our startup on the LAUNCH PAD. The third person we had for our team can't make it to SF and we're hoping to fill her place with someone who wants to be a part of the action.

So if you're just starting out, in school or just learning to program or design on your own, and you'd like to help out the people launching the Windsoc Unified Social API, please let me know (regan@windsoc.co).

We have a ticket for you, and we'd pay for your food and drink and something for the help. We're also hoping that if the event goes well, you might consider helping us again in future.

And Jason, let me know if you have a problem with this type of recruitment. Thanks!
Standing In The Unemployment Line? Startup Hour.ly Might Have Work For You.
> but this title aggrandizes what's actually happening.

Hey, I toned it down. Jamie's headline was "Wherein the Empire Expands"... Jamie has always been a good read over the years and I am amazed as well that he has stuck through all of the regulatory hurdles put in his way.
Forgive my cynicism - because of course I agree with the idea that you should aim for "building an experience" - but isn't this infinitely easier said than done? It seems like saying "you should make something disruptive and amazing." I'd be interested in a conversation of the best ways to go about this.
This doesn't affect member data we pulled directly from our DB or Quantcast.

We're looking into upgrading the public counter in a future update as well.
Doesn't this already exist?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_over_Ethernet
New York is also an attractive enough city that there may be a decent amount of successful startup founders moving there out of preference for the city.
5.25 DD was 360 KB, and HD was 1.2 MB. However, there were also QD 5.25 disks which held 720 KB. But there were no 750 KB disks.

Man, I feel so old right now just for knowing that...
Stephenson himself said that Mac OS X is the spiritual successor to BeOS, and would be described as such in any future revisions of the essay.
Wow, kind of makes you wonder what really sparked off the revolutions in the Arab world, doesn't it?
I used to count the limos passing by in downtown SF (there were many). It's nothing like that anymore and hasn't been for some time.
Yes, bubble. Apple worth $100 billion more than MS or Google? That's a bubble.
I did something similiar by switching on and off (with BASIC code) the relay in a BBC B, which turns the tape machine on or off. It kind of goes clickety click very rapidly.
Is the valuation of FB, Twitter reasonable or is there a lot of money moving in based on self-fulfilling speculation that this is "the next big thing"?
"You can’t be thrown into prison or fined for saying the wrong thing in the US."

I'm not so sure that's true.

First, many people have found themselves at the receiving end of lawsuits and harassment because they wrote a bad review of a restaurant or said that someone was a skank. This is civil not criminal, but the results are the same, you can lose your house, your money and have years taken up in courts assuming you have the money to finance a defense.

On the criminal side you can get tossed in jail. How that works is you point out on your blog that the local police chief is taking bribes from drug dealers. Then, if you are not anonymous, the police raid your house and find rubber gloves, plastic sandwich bags, carburetor cleaner, ammonia, fish tank tubing, cold tablets, and aluminum foil. You say "What's the big deal I have all those things in my house." That's right, we all do. They are also proof you are a meth manufacturer and possession of them is proof your are guilty, the possession itself of "precursors" is criminal. Since everyone has these things, anyone can be legitimately convicted of running a meth lab, which is a useful tool for silencing dissent.

Or let's talk Julian Assange for example. His identity is known as is who those he critiques. He is up for "rape by surprise" charges and leaders in the US have called for the death penalty against him. This is free speech?
Right on. Seems like polishing the prototype isn't the only hard part. Operations/supply/etc. are not trivial processes.
This is the first time that I've heard about "Persona Management Software", and I think it raises some serious questions. Taken to its logical conclusion systems like this could be used to influence the outcomes of elections and other kinds of collective decision making, so there's a debate to be had over whether use of this kind of software should be legal or to what extent it should be regulated if it's used by companies or government agencies.
I was with you until you mentioned 4,000,000 jobs lost over 10 years on a $2B mix of taxes and inflaton. $5k per job? You sure about that?
So let me get this straight - if I run custom software on my device, provided by someone I don't know, and my credit card number is stored on that device, it's possible for the unknown software provider to READ MY DATA?!

Amazing.
From first hand experience, it takes up two years to ship a new product that is of a decent quality.
Assuming a lot of the hardware OEM started working on a tablet device around second half of 2009 when the iPad rumors started, then the later half of 2011 is when the tablets will start shipping.

It just not that simple as slaping few components together, put some software on top and you are done.

My guess on the age of engaget, or "i build an web app in two weeks" posts, people expect that manufactures can come with great new devices overnight.

Also when you are working with hardware you have to consider supply chain capacity, component quality, etc.

Hardware is just a lot harder to build and harder to scale(and maybe thats why PG advocates startups to steer away from it as much as they can).
I specified that the testers be people that worked in team oriented environments. That was a hand written requirement.
Facebook From Mobile Simcard
A good answer, though I sense a bit of sarcasm/contempt in there!

Yes, I tend to be a bit sarcastic by nature. Too much time spent watching British television and hanging out with Brits, I suppose. Or maybe it's just genetic, who can say about such things.

Actually the original post struck me as almost a bit trollish itself, although maybe I just misread it. So yeah, maybe my response a bit snippier than usual. <shrug />

FWIW, I'm bootstrapping my own startup at the moment, and am very leery of taking outside capital. But I'm certainly open to the possibility if the situation dictates it. The thing that would be nice, would be being able to work on the project full-time, not just nights and weekends (outside of the $DAYJOB.) That's the one area - in particular - that makes it very tempting to start trying to raise money.
Y Combinator founder: there is no tech bubble
I've found that in the last couple of years, I keep expecting the internet to be one way and it keeps being another.

So for instance, they say if you want people to read your work, concentrate on quality. But that's bullshit, what you need to concentrate on is popularity. On any given day, boards all over the place are full of high-ranking articles that are crap that people vote on simply because the author is popular.

Then they say that the wisdom of the crowds will help pick clear winners. But the wisdom part begins to look like mob rule and crowds can be easily gamed, as this article shows.

I could go on, but I think I'm not alone in realizing that the cool interconnected internet that I wanted and the one we're actually getting are two completely different things.

So on one hand I congratulate this author -- we critically need to get this information out and emphasize it. But on the other hand, it's just another in a long series of "So, you thought it worked this way? Boy were you wrong." kind of things.

So I'm left wondering: do we all just sit around and whine about how things aren't turning out the right way? Go out and "fight the system" Adapt? Make the most of it? What? While you can fight the system if it's the local town government putting up a stoplight, fighting the system effectively and honorably where the system is billions of people of hundreds of cultures all interacting randomly is a bit too much to fit in my head.

Apologies for the rant. Just seemed like a pattern I've noticed of late.
"Really the issue is that hardware is hard to get right and requires a lot of resources, resources that Apple has and many other companies do not."

More than just that, Apple also has the considerable advantage of owning almost all of their stack. They make their own chips to power their hardware which runs their OS which uses their applications and their infrastructure. Apple has aggressively taken control of the entire top to bottom stack (eg App Store reviews, acquiring PA Semi) like nobody else has been willing and/or able to.
All the tests have been given to the W3C. Once they've been added to the test suite, you'll be able to compare them to whatever browser you like, whever you like. The current W3C suite is here:
http://test.w3.org/html/tests/reporting/report.htm

More tests need to be added. If you have some tests, please submit. Please help to make this suite robust. Otherwise its just inactive complaining.
A quote from "When Computers Beat Humans on Jeopardy" by Ray Kurzwell in the WSJ. Search Google for non-paywalled access.

The fact that millions of farmers in China can access most of human knowledge with devices they carry in their pockets ...

It's not just Chinese farmers. There are now tens and soon hundreds of millions of people walking around with most of human knowledge available at their fingertips.

The next big thing will be what enables them to make use of that information.
Not to mention that A) they might go through your CV there and then, and it's easier for you to answer questions if you have a copy and B) recruitment agencies tend to mangle CVs, I like to turn up with a nice LaTeX produced CV to replace the pasted-into-Word monstrosity they usually have before them.
Steve Jobs was always vocally opposed to DRM. He said the main competitors for the Music Store were CDs and piracy, and neither hassled you with DRM, so he saw it as a competitive disadvantage. The labels required DRM because Napster had left them gunshy, but Apple always seemed to be giving in grudgingly. (This is different for movies, of course, where the main alternative is DRM-encumbered.)

The lock-in was iTunes, not the DRM.
Hacking a bill together - how to approach the senate
I'm forwarding your link to some friends who work consistently rotating shifts and need to be accessible. It seems like doctors, nurses, and sysadmins would be potential users. I'll ping you if they have any feedback.
Here is a summary :)

1. Wisconsin governor wants to pass a bill - that among other things drastically cuts state workers benefits and strips unions of collective bargaining rights etc.

2. Bill contains exemption for police union and a couple of other unions that endorsed the Republicans in last year's elections (all other unions endorsed the Democrats)

3. Democrats block the bill by walking out of the senate - denying the senate a quorum

4. Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald says law enforcement officers were searching for Democrats after they were ordered to attend the Senate session.

5. Democrat state senators in hiding to stop the police from rounding them up.

6. The state patrol chief was appointed by the Republican governor. Coincidentally (or not) he happens to be the father of the (Republican) state majority leader.
I’m a Start-up CEO, And I Didn’t Learn S#&t in College
Bypassing the RequestPolicy Firefox Addon
The thing is, publishers and distributors can make better deals with Amazon, because Amazon will carry a wider array of stuff including physical books, including books that don't make sense as ebooks such as pop-up books, or the books that come with accessories like tree seedlings to plant or meditation beads or whatnot.
Why can't the blogoechochamber just fucking relax? It's been less than a year since the iPad launched, tablets haven't made it to most people's radars yet and the market will play out over the next 5-10 years.

In the grand scheme of things, who actually cares whether the Xoom ships on Feb 17 or gets "delayed" to Feb 22, or that RIM announced March availability for the PlayBook and will instead ship it in April?
"Something's going on and it's likely going to have pretty significant (negative) consequences" -- I feel like this is the best answer b/c much of the problem has happened behind closed doors. The real estate boondoggle and the dot-com bust required a tremendous amount of public participation to grow to the scale that each did. I hope investors (both professional and hobbyist) are very careful with each of these soon-to-be public companies. If not... then def "Yes we're in another bubble".
|How does Apple do any inventory management or "shipping" given we're talking about digital goods? By having a counter for number of downloads? When have they ever done advertising or promotion the 99% of apps not lucky to be featured on in the ads? I'll agree they do some distribution and payment processing, but that's about it.

It's on their servers and using their bandwidth isn't it?

|Apple has blocked out any way of doing anything other than the app store, so it is a big deal. The fact that they sold me hardware doesn't entitle them to 30% of revenues from everything anyone wants to use that for.

Jailbreak it then, you have alternatives, Apple just doesn't have to support them. Your complaints are without merit.

And you were lecturing me for telling someone that they clearly don't know the definition of a monopoly when you're the one being the condescending asshole: Yes, I've read the post several times, both the original and your many reposts of it. The trouble is is that it's not clear at all.

Many reposts? I reposted it here twice, in reply to you and only because you clearly don't understand it and haven't given it any thought since you're still complaining about paying for something you have every option not to pay for.
> "I like to point out that taking $2B out of the economy will prevent the creation of- in my estimation- 4,000,000 jobs over the next 10 years."

That's quite an estimate. I'm not quite sure how you got to this figure, but this seems to say that each $500 of additional taxes reduces job creation by one ($2B/4M). Inverting this logic would mean that the recent $120 billion reduction in payroll taxes, which was only part of the package extending the Bush tax cut, should allow for the creation of 240,000,000 jobs. Way to go Obama...although now we need to find a couple hundred million more Americans to fill all these awesome jobs you created!

I'm surprised there are such wild claims in such a highly rated post.
But shouldn't companies like Motorola, Samsung, Palm, et al have those resources at their disposal? They are consumer electronics companies, after all.
This is exactly the kind of site I've been looking for as a freelance writer. A place like Mechanical Turk that lets me do short tasks, but actually pays something.
This is amazing. I'd like to hear more about this, specifically what gave you the idea and how you did it.
I think the layperson would not know the word "lossy" to begin with, and would just know that doing X allows him to play his music.
Apple and the Rise of the Subscription Economy