skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Former Michigander here as well. I miss the Michigan Left because it's great for keeping traffic moving with a right on red. However, I am starting to enjoy the ability to U-Turn in most California intersections.
I need some help with database design and a few queries. Any part-time freelancer welcome. E-mail is in my profile.
This is an excellent step forward, especially since they're sending all of this data to Google for review.

Ideally I'd like to see this just rolled-into the default signed-in search interface, but this will be a good test to see how such a service could work.
This is a great infographic for an overview of the prominent colors of the web: http://static.colourlovers.com.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/imag...
The correct answers are already known. Watson presumably gets the same answer the host has in front of him.

Someone would have to transcribe what the other contestants are saying only if Watson would also get their incorrect answers which doesn’t seem to be the case.
How do I get a startup noticed?
I was just wondering how people get their startups noticed? I've been tweeting and marketing my startup (currently just a landing page) for the past week and have only had 20 signups. Similar startups (only a landing page) get 500+ signups on the first day.

Should I be doing anything specific to get my startup noticed?
Would many DOT workers say their systems are stupid? Michigan DOT people probably justify the Michigan Left as safe/efficient/etc, and other places use roundabouts (Camden seems to have removed their roundabout(s) last time I was there).

Also, forcing people to drive an extra 3-4 miles because they missed a turn is probably not very good for the environment. Just sayin'
As a little addendum to this piece, I now realise that WordPress does exactly the kind of horrible validation I was talking about in the article, and apologise for it.
JP Morgan's "Twitter" fund is overhyped
When I first read the headline, I assumed it meant blocking all of Google's sites from the SERPs (Youtube, blogger, etc). Perhaps this would be a nice way to rule out any potential nepotism.
I have to add your email. Whats your email?
Email me railsnoob at yahoo dot com.
I imagine that's where the "we will study" bit comes in.
you are right! we found out a bug with HN.
ehow, experts-exchange, questionhub/efreedom/etc
Observations on film art: Watching you watch There Will Be Blood
Why make this a Chrome extension rather than a google labs type feature?
I don't understand the comic. Can someone explain?
Not only does working with a PR agency cost the company money, but it allows employees and founders to get lazy on the continuous selling that needs to occur.

Everyone in the company should be able to pitch and sell the startup and should to everyone, including the press and media.
Introducing "IronBee" Open Source Web App Firewall Project
Did you even read the snippet that you quoted? They will "study the resulting feedback and explore using it as a potential ranking signal for our search results."

They are well aware of the ways in which such a signal could be gamed. That's why they will "study" and "explore" ways to use the new data as a "potential" signal.
1. http://bit.ly/gTADhE

2. Click Install, close page

3. Open each of the links below in a new tab, click block on the first result

4. Win.

http://www.google.com/search?q=Mahalo

http://www.google.com/search?q=ehow

http://www.google.com/search?q=experts-exchange

http://www.google.com/search?q=livestrong.com

http://www.google.com/search?q=answerbag

http://www.google.com/search?q=bills.com

http://www.google.com/search?q=chacha.com

http://www.google.com/search?q=associated+content

http://www.google.com/search?q=efreedom

http://www.google.com/search?q=questionhub

http://www.google.com/search?q=squidoo.com

http://www.google.com/search?q=about.com

http://www.google.com/search?q=yellowpages.com

----

Edits: fixed formatting, added suggestions

This method is fine. The actual data sent to Google when you block a domain does not contain the search query (or the referrer).

This is what gets sent when you block a domain:

http://www.google.com/gen_204?atyp=i&oi=site_blocker&ct=addToBlocklist&ei=[CSRF-cookie]&cad=mattcutts.com

and unblock:

http://www.google.com/gen_204?atyp=i&oi=site_blocker&ct=deleteFromBlocklist&ei=undefined&cad=mattcutts.com

(Interestingly the CSRF token is broken when unblocking.)
I think that the commenter is implying that these planning conventions (and the overall mentality of prioritizing car traffic far ahead of pedestrian and bike traffic) go hand in hand with the eight-lane mega-road.
Minimalist for Gmail
Right now, you'll see only three results. We'll look at refreshing, but in answer to #2, we're also looking at putting this more directly into Google's search results.

I think having block options directly on Google's search results is the right long-term answer. But this extension lets people clean up their personal results while sending block data to Google that we might be able to use as a signal to improve overall search quality.

Thanks to everyone at HN who poked us by asking for this, by the way.
The light, muted blue gives a relaxed and calm impression of the interface.

I always hated the reddish brown Ubuntu interface.
The color was very intense, and after several hours of real work I could feel flash burns :)

Blue is also cold and is also associated with "clean", making associations with the "future" natural (e.g. ultraviolet lights, robots, etc...); in contrast red is associated with getting help, humans or feelings.
Congrats, Chris! It was a blast grabbing dinner with you a while back and I look forward to seeing what you've got in store.

All, Chris is the real deal; bright, motivated, and a real "product" guy.

Excited to potentially room with you in the future :)
Looks promising, but I'm unsure about the security angle. Google has just added a way for anyone to "DDos" competing websites into oblivion. I hope there are measures in place to prevent that.
People tried to talk me out of it too. They all thought I was crazy (maybe I am). But I know I would regret not seizing the opportunity. Thank you for your comment.
I presume that Chomsky is not impressed with his own brain, since it is just a "bigger steamroller" than other primate brains.
Always share the same NERD Tree across all Vim tabs
There's lots of pages on Wikipedia that are basically self-promotion, or descriptions of inconsequential "news" events, or "micro-celebrities," or moderately rich people, or other stuff that will have no relevance in 10 years, except to people with OCPD who like to hoard information.
Windows Phone 7's future revealed: multitasking, IE9, Twitter
The Chrome extension was faster to roll out and lets us iterate faster as well because it's outside of front-end pushes. We're looking at offering block links in the search results too, but that code takes longer to write, test, and launch.
Good luck.
I'm working my notice. Only question now is whether I start to build before or during travel. Better to try and fail than never try at all.
Well... where's the risk anymore at FB. And where's the meaningful equity upside for new hires there now? I'd say it qualifies as "cushy".
Another formula for love:

(NSFW)

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=pi%5Epi%2A%28exp%28-x%5...
High school, like everything else in life, is what you make of it.

I focused much of my time in high school on electronics projects (I wanted to be an EE at the time) and being in classes or "assistant" periods where I had access to the school computers & VAX system. The rest of my classes, I did enough to get by. Although I later gained an immense love for the two classes I hated the most in HS (math & history).

(Ethically) exploit your environment, resources, and options to reach your particular goals.

Also, don't act so grown up. Use this time to enjoy your youth. Time drifts faster and faster as you get older.
This is all style with no substance.

Looking at the icon, I have no clue what it's for.
Google Crowdsources Content Farm Detection With A Chrome Extension
I imagine releasing server-side changes to Google's core search functionality is quite a bit harder than releasing an extension. If nothing else, there are tons of tests that need to pass and there's probably constraints on speed regressions and such. This is a much quicker way to get the same data so that they can determine whether the data is actually useful as a ranking signal.
We'll look at offering this as a more direct option over time, depending on how popular the extension is and whether the data from it looks good.
"Microsoft technical support, how may I help you?"

"Yeah, one of our light bulbs just went out."

"Have you tried selling your house, and moving into a new one?"
Checklist for a powerful brand:

1) An icon where the name of the object depicted in the icon is the name of the company or product.
2) A company/product name that's also a common noun, but not so common that search results for the noun overpower search results for the company/product. Depends on the prominence of the product/company, of course.
3) A domain name that is the exact company/product name.

Eg: Apple.

Good luck finding something that matches these requirements!

I'm half-joking, of course. In all seriousness, I 100% agree with you. Icons should be graphic, not textual. They should be expressive, not descriptive.
Microsoft bought Nokia for $0? Nokia Says It Will Get Billions From Microsoft
I wouldn't be surprised if the AfD nomination spurred some people to add more info to the article, and Google's cache was updated after that but before it was deleted.
Same as in the US. Try craigslist, kijiji, linkedin, and facebook

You can also contact universities or colleges in order to hire their graduates or co-op students.
Problems with Yahoo Mail.
I am getting the following error message when loggin to Yahoo Mail:

Ouch!
The error, LaunchEmptyResponse, occurred when trying to connect to Yahoo! Mail.

Anyone else?
Please install the extension and let us know what sites are annoying you. You're exactly the sort of person we want that feedback from. In the process, you'll keep them from showing up for you again.
Here's my comment below with direct quotations from that article. If you're going to argue that I'm being nebulous, then you should perhaps have read the article a little more carefully. As for "scoring political points", I'm pointing out what I understood to be a matter of public record and common knowledge. Having had to look into it more to satisfy commenters here today has not revealed much evidence to the contrary.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2217424
I disagree. Geography, history and literature take up a rather significant part of this "old guy's" hobby time.

The seeds for these were planted by particularly good teachers in HS.
Free karma points to whoever creates a corresponding Firefox extension...
Discussion is here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2218382
Wikipedia says left on red from one-way to one-way is legal in 37 states, so you should be good in most places doing that. Alaska, Idaho, Michigan, Oregon, Washington, and B.C. (Canada) allow the left turn from two-way onto one-way as an added bonus.
No magic bullets, unfortunately, but you'll get more useful feedback if you show us what you've made.
No, it isn't :). Shoot me an email if you'd like some help.
New Android Trojan 'ADRD" Was Found in the Wild by Aegislab
Style with no substance: isn't that what's "hot" right now?
google cache around the pay wall...

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&q=cac...
I made the screenshots this weekend, so I threw that in there. http://thecontentfarm.tumblr.com/ is pretty funny.
> We'll look at refreshing, but in answer to #2, we're also looking at putting this more directly into Google's search results.

Don't worry about refreshing -- I'd much rather see three good results than 7 bad ones. The idea of being able to block content farms entirely is literally making me giggle at my desk. Focus on that!

Thank you, thank you, thank you x1000 for this.
They aren't yet using the data for ranking.
Good article. I like that it was more approachable than a journal paper -- as a developer, I am interested in these kind of algorithms but sometimes I don't even know where to begin searching. And as someone without a math PhD, I appreciate the simplifications and real-world applications.

I don't know what you have planned for the next article in the series, but I would recommend adding code snippets in a language of your choice. I would have liked to see your example implemented in python or ruby to make it more concrete.
What have you made? You'll only get useful advice if we can see what it is.
In reverse-chronological order:

http://memify.me/
http://leftright.me/
http://mugshotwars.com/
http://brainerdcustody.com/

There are more but these are the apps I've made in the past month or two. I've tried to experiment with a variety of viral techniques and range my projects from local to universal context. The only one that got any notable traffic was Mugshot Wars, but it's tapered off to a few visits a day now.
I've gotten so used to these, I don't understand why every city with overpasses doesn't have them.
Craigslist.
e-commerce sites that don't ship to your country.
Reddit/Digg
What's the difference in Google censoring spam and users censoring spam?
Yeah, that always bothered me when I played Frogger too.
That turns Wikipedia into geocities, which is not its role or purpose. There have to be criteria for inclusion. If you have a bunch of articles with unverifiable information, you aren't doing your job as an encyclopedia. Quality matters.
You're welcome to use content from https://bitbucket.org/pypy/compatibility. There is a growing list of dependencies at https://bitbucket.org/pypy/compatibility/wiki/depends.yaml.
Isn't the square root of x squared just x?
I'm sure you can come up with a similar number of contrived examples where one of the named signs is similarly a "valid" practice.

For example, there are positions where yelling loudly is imperative. For example, do you want the manager of a construction site to quietly state that a beam looks unstable?

There are also jobs where sickness is common even if you're the best boss in the world. Kindergarten teachers get sick because children are icky, germ-ridden little things, not because their boss is a jerk.

I think measuring inappropriate things is one of the biggest problems with bad management. It's the best way to ensure that your employees are either mediocre or pathological.

However, it's not a sign of bad management. That list is literally meant to be a list of things you can notice about the place you're managing and say, "Holy cow, these are warning signs! I should examine the situation closely." If the manager knows his benchmarks are broken beyond use but persists in using them, he likely doesn't care about anything in this article.
Don't forget about http://www.google.com/search?q=about.com
You can block google.com in the extension if you want (we didn't put in any code to prevent that), but your search results might behave in weird/unexpected ways if you do.
The lemming suicide myth wasn't created by Disney, but it was certainly popularized by them. Various stories about the behavior of lemmings date to the 1500's.
Having algorithms that learn is nothing new. Steamrollers (neural networks, genetic algorithms, etc.) have been learning from their mistakes for a long time. I think chubot (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2217740) explained best the problem Chomsky seems to have with Watson.
Thanks man. Best of luck to you and Ains!
It certainly is. It's very nearly the same strategy that took Sun to the dizzying heights it enjoys today.
SQLAlchemy is ported at least, don't know about all the low-level drivers though.
sqrt(-1^2) => 1
|x|
Ever try to get catch a cab in Brooklyn? Half the time they won't even let me in the car if I don't say I'm going to Manhattan.
Not if x is negative.
What skateboarding teaches you about business
Yes. But you might not get the Silicon Valley buzz like some "answers" websites are getting.
When you square root things they become + or -
Some people may prefer a "beautiful" icon to a clever icon. I sure don't.

Unity3D is a great example. Their logo isn't especially pretty, but it's iconic and it fits the product perfectly. And, it doesn't seem especially trendy, or dated — I guess that means it's timeless. http://unity3d.com/
Quora: Which are the best startup homepages?
3D Printing Fixes Art Treasures
It's worth noting that an average price of $6 is a fantastic result for the band. I don't know what their overheads were for the digital distribution, but they were almost certainly much less than what they'd have paid a major label for a traditional CD release, where bands are reckoned to get about 10% of the profits. 10% of $12 is much less than 50% (say) of $6.
Why not? I enjoyed the movie.
I've been using it for a few weeks while we tested it, and it really does feel nice to block a site that you never want to see again. :)
Just in case anybody didn't know already of this gem:
http://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machine...
Not for negative numbers. You could also just use the absolute value: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=x^2%2B(y-|x|)^2%3D1

EDIT: Woah. You got your answer at least.
Why I got off the career treadmill and joined a startup
Before turning it off and back on again? What tech support manual are you reading from? ;)
Sorry for not presenting a magical unicorn for you on demand.

You're suggesting that this kind of deletionism is constructive in the long run. The onus is on you here.
I can't remember where I first saw Kick Ass, but I immediately implemented it as a Konami Code easter egg on my company's website.
Unfortunately, Valentine's Day is a little late to run a Valentine's Day promotion unless you're in a brick-and-mortar mall.
Doesn't this tell Google "Mahalo is a spam result if I search for 'Mahalo'"?

Seems like you should do this when you get one of these and you wanted Stackoverflow.
And ofcourse: 1 + 1 = 1 ;)
Nice. My first target - every local restaurant result I get that appears before either (1) the official restaurant website or (2) Yelp. Local search results are always gunked up with yellowpages.com and local newspaper spam. Also, I find it highly suspicious that urbanspoon has consistently better placement than Yelp, despite having consistently weaker content.
USB Flash Drives for Long Term Data Backup
Why do I need to use Chrome and then an extension if this is being offered by Google?

Make this a google labs feature directly for Google itself in the personalization options.

(also please make it available via a URL option, not just cookies or javascript)
Arch Linux uses Python3 as the default system Python, which I found a bit daft as almost every Python library I use relies on Python 2.x.
I didn't understand why NetMarketShare's Internet Explorer market share numbers were so much higher than other sources. Then I found this page - http://marketshare.hitslink.com/weighting.aspx - which says "...We now weight Chinese traffic proportionally higher in our global reports".

China has a LOT of IE6 users because of historical issues related to SSL export restrictions. NetMarketShare's 11% number for IE6 is higher than IE7 (8%), which is ridiculous. So unless you have a lot of Chinese users, the number from StatCounter (5%) is probably closer to the truth - http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-monthly-201001...
Mathworld has some better ones:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/HeartCurve.html
Absolutely agree with that. Sales is an enormously underrated skill set that all startups employees should focus on.

Also it promotes bad habits like just pushing and forwarding emails to PR companies. I can't stand waiting around for a PR firm when I know the employee has read my message.
"Python 3 is unarguably a better language than Python 2."

I would say that's unarguably marginally better. What provides Python 3 that I miss in Python 2? For me nothing at all. Ok, dealing with Unicode it's easier. So what? Optional type annotations, that's something I would miss.
sorry, server went down. google cache here: http://bit.ly/gPjVr9
Apache UIMA is one of the building blocks of Watson -- https://cwiki.apache.org/UIMA/powered-by-apache-uima.html
And UIMA is written in Java and C++.
I don't think it records which search first resulted in the block, only that a block exists
One is censorship. other is free-will.
if it was everyone I wouldn't really care, but when you see 3 people go through in front of you without getting carded, it gets a little annoying.
I'll pass along an anecdote from Gmail, which also uses explicit user feedback to label spam emails. Some people come to Gmail and say "Why did you block the [mass low-quality] email that I sent?" It's a pretty good answer if the reply is "Enough people marked your emails as spam that the emails were considered spam."

The hope is that users are savvy enough that we can get a good signal out of the block signal.
Steve Jobs: "I'll just sue you" (2010)
I'd put 'osdir' on that list...
He nominated them for an open discussion to be decided by an admin.

And the open discussion clearly showed a consensus not to delete the articles.

The process, even if followed, is broken. This debacle is a joke.

Chris should have edited the articles, or ignored them, instead he flagged them for deletion. He positively asserted that they did not belong in wikipedia. None of the respondents to the AfD agreed with him. Yet they were deleted. Semantically, flagging them as AfD was the same as deleting them since that was the outcome in every case.

I agree that he doesn't deserve the entirety of the blame, the horrendously broken editorial process of Wikipedia does. It's so bad that it's virtually impossible to become a new contributor to wikipedia in any meaningful way without become immediately embroiled in WP's editorial shenanigans.
Weighing the Options: To Franchise or Self-Start
I used to write for eHow and the like, and I fully endorse blocking them. Thanks for the list!
It means "we can cut staff and save billions"
Recently I keep hearing pundits opine that the "open source" movement hasn't gone anywhere and is basically irrelevant.

IMO that is a great sign that it's a good time to be getting into Free Software. The Affero GPL is probably the only thing that can realize the potential of cloud computing, and keep the cloud bubble from popping and a major swing back to locally hosted IT systems.

PS - Also, I am very glad that "open source" became unfashionable because it made Eric Raymond go away.
Loved Founder and CTO of Krux Digital: “When you apply to a startup, you need to be prepared to talk about your ability to wear multiple hats and get sh*t done."
Some context to back the authoritativeness of Colin's statement:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=745858

http://spreadsong.com/icon_driven_development_on_the_app_sto...
Q: Just how many Q&A websites are out there? A: Too many.
Since the human heart looks nothing like the "heart shape" we all know and use, I wonder where that originated...

Dang, wikipedia knows it all:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_%28symbol%29

The seed of the silphium plant, used in ancient times as an herbal contraceptive, has been suggested as the source of the heart symbol.

Oh, also http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28x^2%2By^2-1%29^3-x^2...
It doesnt matter whether they are phenomenon or epiphenomenon. The assertion was that they are undocumented and unreliable. Do you believe that there is no documentation on the thermal properties (epi or not) of a light bulb? If there is no such documentation then I imagine that the designers of light bulb fixtures and shades cant sleep easy..
I was lying in bed last night think about how to do it. Im thinking of cutting the end off of old iPhone buds and then soldering the mic, and headset together with that on the end. Fun times! Thanks for the encouragement.