skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
While I have seen plenty of news reports that mangle scientific findings, in all the internet debates I've witnessed on vaccines and global warming, I've never seen someone attack the scientific conclusions on the basis that they're being misreported by media. The attacks I've run across have generally been ad hominem (accusing the scientists of being motivated by something other pursuit of truth), with some direct questioning of evidence / methodology.

You present an interesting idea, but I believe the reason this issue is missing from the debate is that there just aren't very many people who feel that way. Or if there are, they are remarkably unvocal about it.
The article likens the building of a skyscraper to the design of software. I think that the analogy here may be wrong (having made the same incorrect analogy myself).

Perhaps the correct analogy is that the building of a skyscraper is akin to copying software (i.e., building a new replica of a design). In this regard software is the ultimate engineering. Once you have the blueprint (the final source code), stamping out copies is perfectly reproducible. The program applies to many more environments than a skyscraper design.

On the other hand, designing a skyscraper is alot like writing software. The designer doesn't know what the building will look like. There is an iterative process where ideas are thrown around, design errors identified and fixed, etc.

In terms of quality measurements, the same measurements don't apply to software since each copy is a perfect replica. There is little need to measure how closely a copy reproduces the design, it is often perfect. The design may have flaws, but so may a building design.

Having said this though, it sure seems that software is alot more unreliable than most bridges and buildings, so the question is, "Why?"
"I spent $59M of my exit on hookers and blow, and then wasted the rest."
Not to mention that there were not much information in his possession that isn't in someone else's. If there really were anything that hadn't be told yet about all those "CIA operations", I don't see how his death would prevent their release.

Whether anybody has been listening (yet) is another matter.
Stakato Developer Preview - Python and Perl Enterprise Cloud Platform
Used to be? Don't tell that to my milkman! :)

I still get milk and eggs (and sometimes some pretty bad knock-off Irn Bru) from ours. We're in the semi-countryside just outside of Leeds, and it's not at all unusual around here. Wonderful service!
No. But it's inspired by Tumblr's simplicity spirit.
Most tech startups are not built around university-based research discoveries
Dropbox was as much about the market being right as good execution. If 90% of people only use one device, there's little need for synchronization. Dropbox did sync right, but also coincidentally at the same time that netbooks and smartphones were making sync a valuable mass-market product.
Now, if pointing out syntax errors on a commercial frontpage doesn't help the author, then I don't know, guys.
Free Software Licenses: Why I Like the BSD
Right. I imagine under 10 minutes of 'initial action', another 10 of securing the building completely from all side, and the other 20 minutes just picking up what they needed and searching.
I can't remember when I actually used a scrollbar for scrolling. I instead scroll with two fingers on the trackpad, or with arrow keys.

So for me traditional scrollbars are a waste of space. But I still like to have an indication of where I am in the document, which is what almost every mobile platform out there does.

Here is an example how they redid scrollbars in latest Ubuntu: http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/615
The most thorough accounting I've ever read of the story is in The New Yorker, here: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/08/28/060828fa_fact2

Read the article and draw your own conclusions, but it seemed to me that Perelman simply wanted nothing to do with other mathematicians. He seemed to think that accepting the Millenium Prize, the Fields Medal, or a professorship would mean that he would have to participate in a more traditional practice of mathematics, complete with politics and whatnot, and he had no interest in doing so.

More specifically, the article discusses the efforts of Yau to examine Perelman's proof, with a view to finding a flaw, fixing it, and ultimately taking credit for the One True Correct Proof of Poincare's conjecture. Whether this is a fair characterization is beyond me, but I would say that Perelman is probably justified in his perception that had he joined mainstream mathematics he would have to spend time defending his ideas from other mathematicians, and I can understand why someone wouldn't want to do that.

But a million bucks? I think I'd take the money.
Show HN: Simple as A/B -- pay-as-you-go A/B testing app
Hi hackers,

I've been working on this app in the evenings and on the weekends for about 3 months (on and off).

How it's unique:

- Pay-as-you-go: No subscriptions. Buy credit packages (starting at $10 for 2000). 1 credit = 1 visit tested

- Works on dynamic pages: most A/B testing apps make a copy of your page and host variations on their servers. Simple as A/B injects variations into your pages using JS.

- Simple: no visual editor. Just copy & paste your HTML into variations.

You set variations as HTML, eg:

<button class="red">Buy now</button>

and

<button class="blue">Buy now</button>

When you sign up you'll get a 1000 credits for free.

http://simpleasab.com/

I'd love to hear your opinion.
Clicky: http://simpleasab.com/
It wasn't a real study, it was some sort of survey done by The Nielsen Company (the ones who measure TV viewership):

http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/u-s-smartp...

It doesn't describe the selection method, the numbers of interviewees or even the margin of error. And the "desirability difference" is 1%.
Point #3 has nothing to do with large companies being evil - I don't think they are intrinsically evil or good, much like startups, as you point out.

What is certainly true about work in large corporations is that there is a lot of waste and politics, so much so that I think it's fair to say that a large percentage of the average job in a corporation is basically waste. If you're particularly unlucky (as I was on some of my projects), you can even end up doing a project which is a complete waste of time, where everyone knows that it's a complete waste of time, but it needs to be done in order to score someone somewhere some political points that will advance their career.

To me, that is soul-destroying. I can't work unless I care, and forcing myself to care when there is no reason to grinds away at an important part of who I am.
With the built in 1080p h.264 high profile decode[1] for £15 this could be the world's cheapest media centre. It might not be enough to run boxee, but should this go to market at that price, a lightweight media centre distro would definitely make this something else.

I think I'd probably buy two or three for hacking on.
I worked with Derek on a few websites years ago, and though I've never met him in person (we lived in different parts of the country), he made a definite impression on me as a genuinely good and thoughtful person. Funny how some people just stand out in your memory, even after years have passed. My heart goes out to his family and friends right now. He will be missed by many of us.
So does this mean that you will not be able to use a regular mouse with Lion? I guess a Mighty Mouse will work but what about people who want to use 3rd party mice with multiple buttons? Gamers and designer are SOL?
That may be, but it's been a blissful 10+ years. :)

Ribbing aside, the OS X security model is, generally speaking, the Unix security model, which has been around a lot longer than Windows. Henry Spencer is attributed with saying "Those who do not understand UNIX are condemned to reinvent it -- badly." Perhaps OS X has done it badly, but perhaps not as badly as others.

I agree that lack of security problems is not indicative of good security, but Apple does seem to be making good decisions. As I said earlier, they've got some super smart security people working for them and letting them drive the security model.
I believe "desired" in that report means intends to purchase in the next 12 months. So devices that are priced to sell would have an advantage. Whether that's an unfair advantage is a bit of a philosophical conundrum, particularly as people might "desire" something more if it's less attainable.

It reminds me of the TED talk by Benjamin Wallace where he sought out ridiculously expensive steak, champagne, jeans etc. to see if they were worth the price:

http://www.ted.com/talks/benjamin_wallace_on_the_price_of_ha...
Always nice to read an article that recommends your website :)

I've already added all of the cheat sheets from this article to http://DevCheatSheet.com/
That's true of a lot of the "science" that makes its way into the media spotlight. Much of that is actually just PR: "Hershey's scientists find chocolate is better than sex!", etc. I don't think you'll find that true at all of serious, impactful papers that actually have an influence on consensus in a field.

If that were true, then the figure for scientific consensus being true would be much lower than 90%. But I don't believe that. I'd have to wonder what these scientists were doing, that I could just waltz in and blow them away with my wits and reason. I mean, what are the other scientists in this hypothetical field _doing_? Are they that incompetent or corrupt, that I can just blow a hole in their field based on casual observation? Why can't they see the same things I can?

This brings me back to that journal benchmark. Do you think you could write a summary paper discounting a substantial body of research for exhibiting various flaws? If so, do you think it would be accepted? I suggest there are few fields where it's really that easy.
This is my biggest problem with the iPad Twitter application, which stays at the last point you used it. If that point was two days ago it can take a while to scroll through the backlog to get to now.

It does seem easily solvable though, either with a "jump to now" button, or maybe a two finger flick taking you to the top of a list.
I do the same, and I think that's the best approach. Your email password is just too important for anyone to have it. Just remember two strong passwords (email + LastPass), and you're reasonably secure.
Hey guys, I was thinking about my implementation of Sass (apparently, it's not supposed to be in all caps) and came to the conclusion that it's not simple enough. I wrote a version that obviates the need for a bunch of the parentheses. You can check it out here:

https://gist.github.com/957123

The example above can now be written thusly:

(make-css
'(("body.loading"
font-size "12px"
color "#fff"
(" ul#sidenav"
(" li"
blah "blah")))))

Have a nice day!
Instead of doing work, I got stuck modding this to get better behavior for Mac. First I tried to figure out what the $restartNetworkingCommand mac equivalent was (dscacheutil -flushcache for those who are curious). This works pretty well for non-Chrome browsers (i.e. browsers that don't have absurd caching behavior). Then, given that Chrome (which maintains its own DNS cache-- a decidedly not absurd caching behavior, I acknowledge) is my browser of choice, I also set out to fix it so I didn't need to restart Chrome. This endeavor I have accomplished using one of my favorite jank-tastic tactics: running applescript from the command line.

So here is my (Mac OS X 10.6+?) change:

$restartNetworkingCommand = 'dscacheutil -flushcache; osascript <<EOF
tell application "Google Chrome"
make new tab at end of tabs of window 1 with properties {URL:"chrome://net-internals/#dns"}
activate
delay .5
set URL of active tab of window 1 to "javascript:document.getElementById(\'clearHostResolverCache\').click()"
end tell
delay .5
tell application "System Events" to keystroke "w" using {command down}
EOF';

This, of course is made even more jank-tastic by manually sending command-w to close the window-- googling the proper command was more difficult than just doing it live :).

So yeah-- clearly I needed this script before reading this post, but if I had it probably would have done some terrible things to the space-time continuum... I guess I'll just amortize the one-time cost by actually using the script. Starting now.
ruby/rails, unless you have anything specific in mind.

everything you've heard about it is true. its great, and the learning curve for someone who isn't a cut-and-paste coder is small. i made the same switch a while ago, java/c to ruby, and it was like a weight lifted off my shoulders.
Maybe they should ask their doctor, given the recent spate of articles on ineffectiveness of medical treatment:

http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/294/2/218.abstract
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/02/the-ideology-of-hea...
(If someone could find a British metastudy containing a nice graph indicating ~50% of current standard medical treatments has no evidence of effectiveness, I would appreciate it - have had much trouble locating it.)

But of course, doctors are not scientists.
This is a great post. It covers the "you just have to ask" approach made famous by Feynman (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1196928) and elaborated upon by Mystery (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game:_Penetrating_the_Secre...), which was initially developed for picking up women but is also devastatingly effective in raising investment and entrepreneurship in general.

But the post goes waay beyond that. His sympathy for the investor who turned him down and his reasons were moving. Read this one, then go back and read the "The Last Post" on HN yesterday (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2514270). Then, go grab a cup of tea/coffee and stare out the window for 10 minutes and think.

That's what I'm going to do now.
When I remember correctly Gerrit mentioned that his homebrewn code is mostly written in VisualBasic. As far as I know, he studied business informatics.

However, they are also using other software like http://www.railware.com. I visited the Miniaturwunderland this year and it was quite fun to watch the operator team writing down RailWare bugs into their own excel sheets.

The Miniaturwunderland model railroad is definitely worth a visit for every programmer! Then you can imagine how difficult it is to change things in large complex systems without breaking something.
World's Science Data Moving to the Cloud | Big Think
They do cost a lot, but my Armani fart and flashlight apps are simply divine.
Ask HN: Startups building a culture? Why, How and When?
There are many testimonials from startups on the imporance of culture:

- Wealthfront[1]

- Netflix[2]

- Facebook[3]

- Github [4]

- Derek Sivers' startup [5]

- PayPall [6]

My question is: how, when and why should a startup start cultivate a culture? I'd like not only founder's perspective, but also from those who work at a startup.

[1] http://eng.wealthfront.com/2011/02/culture-is-key.html

[2] http://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664

[3] Brief statement on http://gaborcselle.posterous.com/the-best-quotes-from-startup-school: Values are worthless unless they're controversial

[4] http://schacon.github.com/ddd/#1

[5] http://sivers.org/delegate

[6] http://primitus.com/blog/why-did-so-many-successful-entrepreneurs-and-startups-come-out-of-paypal-answered-by-insiders/
Tips on how to optimize your web design workflow
"Desired" doesn't say anything more than "plan to purchase" in that article, which doesn't immediately include or exclude price (though it's clearly important to purchasing plans).

On the flip side, when given a choice without considering purchasing and the burden of a contract, this is an interesting microcosm:
http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/04/07/clorox.shows.s...
Noted iPhone hacker reportedly jailbreaking iPad 2
They absolutely do. Focusing on investment banks (I assume you have no problem justifying the existence of retail banks and insurers, the other two giant topics in financial services), what they do is effectively make the allocation of capital more efficient.

Without efficient capital allocation, most enterprise becomes extremely difficult. Without banks, there would be no stock market. There would be no way for companies to raise large sums of money to grow faster. There would be no one keeping markets liquid, which would encourage people to stick their money under the mattress rather than invest it. There would be no way for startups to exit, and so there would be no VCs, and no angels either (or at least, much more limited ones, making maybe one or two investments to help out a friend). All of this would massively reduce the amount of capital available to work with, and decimate the business world.

Now, you might take the view that "you don't need capital to do business", but that's just a very limited viewpoint that applies in very narrow circumstances, like some small percentage of internet startups. Almost all businesses need capital to get started. There's a good reason why microloans are so successful - they provide capital that helps enterprise. Think of the banking system as an equivalent of microloans for people who need more than $100 (for example, because they need to design and sell new products, build new factories, buy stock, make strategic acquisitions, etc).
You accuse people of being too lazy, but as you pointed out, science does change because flaws in research do eventually get pointed out. In fact, there is an entire profession devoted to making sure that they do get pointed out: scientists. The scientific establishment has plenty of flaws in its reasoning, but it is, by design, self correcting. I don't think it's laziness to allow people who have devoted their entire lives to work out fantastically complicated problems to do their work without polluting the debate with my generally uninformed opinion. That way, not only do they get to do their work, I can focus on doing mine.
Bear in mind that Labour offered AV with no referendum necessary, but did not have the seats to form a majority with the Lib Dems alone. Had they upped their offer to (a referendum on) PR it would have had the support of the minor parties and likely would've passed; however, all other issues would face severe compromise and difficulty, so being in opposition benefits Labour (a party that doesn't need PR, even if it desires it) in the long-term.

Minority governments do not last very long and with Labour on the wane there was a significant possibility of a subsequent election giving the Conservatives a majority; at best, there would be an opportunity for a Lib-Lab majority. The Liberals' power is often overstated by principled idealists, but for pragmatists it was a good choice: 75% of their manifesto is becoming Government policy, compared to 60% of the Conservative manifesto (http://guildfordlibdems.org.uk/en/article/2011/486213/75-of-...). Of course, the remaining 25% matters a lot more to many people than the 75% they implemented...
Puppy Linux: Small, Fast and Friendly.
I didn't intend to claim that evidence was not necessary. It is not sufficient however to have evidence and not reason about it.
CAPTCHA's are always annoying, no matter what. So why not make some money. Lots of new companies out there offering CAPTCHA ads.
Looking back at the computing lessons I had in secondary school, I learnt a lot but I think that having access to something like this would have been much more beneficial than using Access and VB6 for coursework (in 2007).

I hope they can actually get the cost down to something close to the £15 they say. Good luck to them.
It was an honest mistake. I did not realize that a team was involved in the building. I've seen stories about single guys building a yacht out of popsicle sticks, etc. and thought from the article that this was a single maker too. Sorry if the headline was misleading.
Does this mean there's nothing to 'grab' with a mouse and drag to scroll? Surely a step backwards.
Voters get polarized. In fact that's what All the candidates try to do. Are any elections normal?
This is true, I live in Sheffield so attending means at minimum 1 valuable day lost in crunch time at uni so not sure if it is worth the risk.......

booking train ticket tonight then.
One of my biggest pet peeves with webOS - no scroll bar or indicator
This story floating around in a bunch of places -- irks me. It's not a good buy. Too expensive unless RIM drops pricetag a ton. And the incompatibilties in vision and platform/development seem way too much hassle for MS which just got into the Nokia thing
"When we disagree we consult others"

Yes Mark Shuttleworth really exemplifies this perfectly! </sarcasm>
I'm confused - he said its good for children who might not have a computer at home, but there is only an HDMI connection. What is the likelihood of a family not owning a PC - but does own a TV advanced enough for HDMI?
> I've never seen someone attack the scientific conclusions on the basis that they're being misreported by media

Well I've seen examples of bad, exaggerated, sometimes completely misleading media reporting of scientific findings nearly everywhere. Now I have a scientific background and I can tell that those reports should be taken with a grain of salt, but how can people without such background filter out the signal from the noise?

I bet that many people assume that a reporter publishing something in "The Daily Galaxy" is actually the scientist. How would they ever trust him or her?
I'm thinking of going even though I'm not graduating until next year. Would you be interested in meeting people who aren't immediately available but are looking to get familiar with the scene?
I'm curious what HN users prefer when it comes to licensing. Is there a difference between what a startup vs. a larger business should license a library under? How much does the type of license play a part in whether or not you'll clone that repo off of github (assuming you see a BSD vs. GPL, etc)? Is freedom of the code or the user more important?
This is typical of Yes campaigns for vote reform in Canada as well (at the provincial level). They tend to be poorly funded, and afraid to tackle it head on out of fear of scaring people away (might be true). And the No campaigns tend to be pure fearmongering and misdirection, but well funded. There are sometimes allegations that the Yes campaigns are sabotaged by No supporters working for the Yes campaign (rumour level allegation).
LastPass teaches Sony how to handle a data breach
When LastPass, the popular and respected online password vault, saw an anomaly in its network traffic, it jumped. When it couldn't ascertain why there was slightly more output than input, it issued an alert for users to change their master passwords. It also installed better security measures like PBKDF2 and SHA-256.
The notification happened in less than a day and its fast tracking the crypto roll outs.
So Sony (and Epsilon), what's your defence now?
Creative Suite 5.5: Worth the hype?
Why not use KeePass/Keepassx it is a little more functional than a flat file at least.
So, still confused. How is the voter ballot simulated? From a point on a normal distribution? How does that translate to their vote? Especially with some of the esoteric schemes - is their any attempt to distribute the voters' comprehension of the candidate position? Or is that folded into the voter position in the distribution? What is the width of the distribution?
You misunderstand the meaning of the word "hacker" in this context. If you wish to understand, it is explained in this essay from the founder of this site: http://www.paulgraham.com/gba.html

This site focuses on interesting and clever use of technology as well as on business, typically with respect to technology start-ups. I have no doubt that there are members of this community who are capable of "hacking" in the sense that you mean, but unlikely to help you. Furthermore, there is probably not a simple piece of software you can just point at what you want and have it "hacked".
Skeptics - Is the Ballmer Peak real?