skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
In fairness to the article, it was written in 2001, before git or darcs existed, and while subversion development and awareness was still at an early stage. CVS was the reasonable free choice at that time.
Hackers, please. Let's get real here. Why are Finns so smart? It probably has very little to do with culture, teaching methods, or economics. These can all be limitations (I suspect oppressive teaching hinders Japanese kids), but Finland's secret is not related to any of these. It's related to biology. Finland's secret is brain size.

Mother nature doesn't fuck around. If your brain and its activity costs you anywhere from a fifth to a third of your metabolic energy, it's for a reason. This essentially amounts to all the discretionary spending your body has. That brain had better pull its weight, and it does. Skull size correlates with brain weight; brain weight determines surface area; surface area determines processor power.

Again, if your brain could be a smaller part of your metabolism, it would be. Mother nature squeezes every calorie for all it's worth. So there is an advantage in having a larger brain. And that advantage translates to being smarter. "Smarter" isn't a particularly mysterious quality either; in biology, it's basically how good you are at deciding what to do with your muscles. In the scheme of things, balance doesn't require much processing power; neither does homeostasis. What is really resource intensive is good old thinking. Writing requires forming markov chains. Memorizing is hard too. Understanding physics is also hard. Thinking--just plain old thinking--is very resource intensive.

So, why are Finnish kids so smart? Well, the PISA test doesn't convince me they're that smart. They strike me as being about as smart as white American kids. Thing is, the intelligence of Finns is not averaged out with the intelligence of people of other ethnic groups, who, regrettably, have smaller brains.

And before you call me racist, keep this in mind that the argument for different intelligence levels across races is borne out by a data set comprising millions of standardized test-score results, tens of thousands of autopsies, across many different countries, spanning centuries. The correlations have R-values in the .8 and above range. Don't call me racist; call Reality racist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain#Brain_energy_consumption
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_D._Watson#Statement_claim...
http://www.americancivilrightsreview.com/africanfailure.html
of course women are sadder, most of them spend their 20s-30s getting by solely because of their looks. Then they hit 35-40 bam, looks go down the crapper, which means you no longer get free drinks, noone hits on you and takes you out on dates.

Men on the other hand spend 20s/30s on their careers, they mature, start making decent money, and then they get their pick of desperate women...but they no longer want them, instead they want the fit tight 20 year old who is impressed by the bimmer.

Basically its a role reversal, at 20 its the guy going after girls, and at 30 its the girls going after the guys.
delicious.com has redirected to del.icio.us for several years now.

I never changed it because the most active part of the userbase liked it.
> People who are very talented can do a better job even at things other people are willing to do free

However, that doesn't necessarily mean that people doing things for free are not very talented. Linus Torvalds, for example, is very talented, and initially did Linux for free, and of course still releases his work under a free license, even if he gets paid well to do it. In those cases where you have very talented people doing things for free, getting paid for doing something similar for pay is going to be difficult.

I don't think the last word has been written on this, though... it's a fascinating phenomenon that is rapidly transforming industries like ours, and I have a feeling that it will take some time to reach the right equilibrium where producers get compensated adequately for their time, and people still get relatively open access to their work.
I'm horrified and I honestly hope my stock portfolio won't be affected tomorrow at morning call.
John G raped and murdered my wife.
It's as if a previously thought extinct animal has just been spotted alive again.
A Facebook News Flash From Some of Seattle's Finest
Nuclear reactors. See above.
It did, and met its fate.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080701-campus-copyrig...
Yeah, maybe there's two periods when a site like Slashdot or Digg is good - before the masses arrive and after they leave.. It's the bell curve upside down :)
sounds like csrf to me.
Say So Long to an Old Companion, Cassette Tapes
Just a guess: does readwriteweb take on "sponsored" articles quite frequently?
:/

When will pirates learn that you need to host in a secure country?
Alexa - since June, most sites have been on a downward spiral
Opinion: Microsoft must move fast to realize its online future
This is a reference to the movie "Memento", however misplaced it may be.
I feel IBM hasnt really taken Cell to its full potential and it will probably lose the performance crown to x86 in 2-3 years unless IBM gives the performance a badly needed performance boost. GPUs can also beat cell in some tasks.
Dear idiots: it's summer in the northern hemisphere. People are outside, or on vacation.
Yes, or install python-uno for a nicer API:

http://udk.openoffice.org/python/python-bridge.html
Chess boxing: you can win by K.O. or checkmate
Not sure about standalone OOXML converters, but there's a widely ported command-line utility called antiword for converting .doc format to text:

http://www.winfield.demon.nl/

OO.o 3.0 is supposed to have OOXML import included (it's a separate extension in 2.x), so using the UNO bindings or possibly some command-line flags, OpenOffice.org may be able to do some justice to .docx.

But if all you want is the text from an OOXML file, formatting be damned, it's actually straightforward to code (just like ODF):

1. Unzip the file to get its component XML files

2. Read content.xml (or whatever the OOXML equivalent is)

3. Parse the XML and extract the text content of every node (e.g. make a list of the strings).

4. Spit that back out, search it, etc.
This is the most ambitious startup that I can remember seeing out of YCombinator. That may increase their chances of failure (I'm not sure if this is true), but it also raises the maximum level of success. These guys already have a revenue plan and they could get really big really fast.
what's bothering you? if you would be so kind: james at thesixtyone dot com
The headline isn't what the author concluded.
Anatomy of the Linux file system
i'd also chime in and say that you caught us right in the middle of a redesign of our music miniplayer. things should be a bit clearer in a week or so. thanks for taking the time to leave your thoughts!
Read down to the end of the article =)

If DRM is priced competitively to the cost of "renting" a used book, then DRM could work.
Best place to find Enterprise Web App Co-Founder / Founding Developer?
What is the best way to attract an entrepreneurial programmer as a co-founder / lead-engineer when most sites require compensation information to pique even passing curiosity?

Atlanta-based serial-startup entrepreneur with a suite of Web Apps developed based on experience with what ISN'T in the market / affordable. I have posted on Startuply / Craigslist / etc. and just launched our blog:

www.SaveStaff.blogspot.com

Architecture / Design / Marketing / Sales skill sets here as well as proven track record building innovative companies.

Any advice would be helpful!
You should have probably read more closely before writin this diatribe: they specifically note in several places that they do not use TCP and can also max out on 4x Infiniband as well as 10GigE. They use UDP as their transport for ZeroMQ messages.
That is false. I tell reporters stuff off the record all the time, and if anything what I tell them that way is truer, in the sense that I'm willing to tell them more.

I suspect if you asked reporters they'd say it was this way with most of the people they talk to. In fact, I have some evidence already that it is. Steven Levy told me that he hated it when people told him stuff off the record, because he couldn't use it. If it wasn't the truth, he wouldn't care.
We use the console more. I have a gvim window running continuously, split a few ways, and then one or two console sessions doing whatever's needed (repl, ssh, general shelling).

Using focus-follows-mouse without raising windows is a big help, I've noticed -- type a few commands into the REPL without raising the window, see what happens, code some more without changing the window layout. Wrapping with readline (rlwrap) helps improves the REPL, too, since the keybindings for vim's insert mode are close to readline's.

PG mentioned once in a comment that the console on OS X allows drag-and-drop between a REPL session and vi. I'm picturing a wall of console sessions, possibly with screen involved. Elegant weapons, for a more... civilized age.
Palringo's new pr firm is very well-liked and respected. Expect to see a lot about them in the coming months...
We are not really in a recession btw, and as Fred Wilson pointed out in the comments, there are indeed many companies that are building for the long-term. Those companies just don't generate that much buzz because they are focused on making their customers happy instead of hyping their service.
Charles Ju's Blog: Web 2.0 Microfinance Roundup
Makes sense. I worked in Python quite a lot a few years back, and after a while found myself using the REPL a lot for experimental development...but it was never core to my process. It was just something I'd start up when I had a particularly tricky bug or wanted to make sure I had the syntax right or something.

I've noticed that the GHC REPL is extremely limited...pretty much just for "does this actually work" kind of usage, which is what I always used the Python REPL for (though IPython arrived midway through my years with Python, and made it a more obvious experimental platform). So, I didn't find it particularly uncomfortable to tinker with Haskell using vim. Sounds like Limp goes much farther than anything I've ever wished for...but might make trying out SBCL more fun. I've been meaning to spend a little time with Lisp.
What am I missing that lands a dice.com link on the front page of HN?
Right, corn ethanol won't save us. In fact it's not doing anything but pushing up the price of corn, with all the bad effects we are currently seeing.

However, methanol produced from 'biomass', sugar cane, other plant matter, etc., does have a pretty good shot at saving us. Brazil have done great using sugar cane to produce fuel.
Note that a "shot across the bow" implies a direct affront. Clearly Reuters Live! writers are not very familiar and _jealous_ of YC hackers.
But the material isn't changing, which then begs the question as to why the hell the professors and teachers believe that using a brand new edition is a good idea. That's the key point. Homework problems don't need to be changed, unless you're worried about people cheating from folks who've taken the class before - in which case, change the exams, and change which homework problems are being assigned. Even then it's their loss/problem if they decide to cheat. And it's not that the problems were incorrectly written - corrections are usually minimal - it's that if the problems change, what happens is that it's fundamentally the same question except numbered differently.

I've seen this happen so many times and I'm sick of it because the likes of all my intro classes from chem and physics and bio to calc and CS have not fundamentally changed SO much that it is impossible to use a text that is a couple years old.
Software company,with a hardware device idea, begin research on building device?
I work for a software company, and all we have ever done is write web based software for companies. We have an idea for a hardware device that will be a companion to an internal software product one of our employees has written. The device isnt anything spectacular, and has been 3d modeled some some components sources.<p>My question: How do you begin research on finding companies or services which assist in bringing something like this to life? We have a good deal of capital backing us so this wouldnt be a garage type thing.<p>Any and all ideas would be helpful.<p>Thank you.
Yes, I think we've all seen articles where a dignitary drives the Honda FCX concept car, or other fuel cell vehicle up to a lone hydrogen pump, promised as the 'first of many'.

Meanwhile, a thousand engineers pray that it doesn't pick that moment succumb to metal fatigue and explode.
Software company, with a hardware device idea, begin research on building device?
I work for a software company, and all we have ever done is write web based software for companies. We have an idea for a hardware device that will be a companion to an internal software product one of our employees has written. The device isnt anything spectacular, and has been 3d modeled some some components sources.<p>My question: How do you begin research on finding companies or services which assist in bringing something like this to life? We have a good deal of capital backing us so this wouldnt be a garage type thing.<p>Any and all ideas would be helpful.<p>Thank you.
I appreciate the information everyone - thanks.

The thing about nuclear power is that errors such as these have more serious consequences than for other sources of power. Or so it would appear.

But all this is relative: if nuclear power is the safest source of power, is there another source of power that is more dangerous than it?
I think there are legitimate reasons for privacy and keeping things off the record. Not implying anything about Steve Job's condition, but I can imagine a hypothetical situation in which a CEO has just been diagnosed HIV positive and want it kept off the record. This is not necessarily a life threatening condition anymore, but yet still comes with a strong negative connotations and horrible social stigmas.
Now that you mention it:

http://www.slate.com/id/2188684/?from=rss

Summary: Game theory predicts the phenomenon that decent single men in their 30s and older are so much more scarce than similarly qualified women. Dating is compared to an auction, where women are bidding on men. Surprisingly, "strong bidders" (those with more resources) don't snatch up all the best items; "weak bidders" do. So attractive, confident, motivated hold out during their 20s while lesser women snatch up the best men, leaving single women in their 30s in a situation resembling "Sex and the City".
Depends, I guess, on what it's in.

Traditional tempeh is fermented, and so is generally quite friendly. Tofu, as I mentioned, is basically soy milk curd.

But most instances, in US groceries, where something contains "soy protein" it's going to be in the form of soy flour, or soy milk (which is generally soy flour, water, sugar), which, unless fermented for soy sauce and tempeh or made into tofu, has phytoestrogens to one degree or another.

I've never actually found good data on this topic, and it's an area of interest since I'm vegetarian. I enjoy some of the soy-based meat alternatives (Boca Burgers, Morning Star Farms products, etc.), but many contain soy (as well as wheat gluten) in forms that are poorly defined, so I suspect they are subject to this problem. I generally avoid them for that reason. I'd be curious to know what processes do break down those compounds, if any others besides fermentation and turning into tofu do. Simply cooking seemingly does not, however.
Russia, The Final Frontier For Data Centers?
None of those colors really match my luggage or living room decor well. :P
When Will A Comment Be Treated Like A Post On Techmeme?
Leftover Ad Space? Exchanges Handle the Remnants
"...Then they hit 35-40 bam, looks go down the crapper...."

I'm just guessing that you're not middle-aged and married? Cause bam, upside your head with the old frying pan (or if that's too un-pc, perhaps a notebook computer or a physics textbook)
Here's a nice list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Comparison_w...

Several of those disasters, of scales arguably larger than Chernobyl, were caused by attempts to generate power. And although I do not have any evidence to back this, I suspect the total number of casualties resulting from burning fossil fuels over the past century far exceeds that from nuclear power related accidents.

The one aspect of nuclear accidents I'd be willing to concede is the long-term contamination of the area, but while rendering chunks of land unusable, it is not a direct threat to life.
That's what's crazy about HN. You have to be careful what you say, because even the founders of sites as big as delicious post here...

Anyway, I think you misread the comment. How come just
"icio.us" (no del subdomain) doesn't redirect to the full del.icio.us?
>Corollary: The less talented the founders of a company are, the more they should focus on things that are not fun or prestigious.

Would it be a good idea for a founder to focus on boring/lame things anyway, if only as a way to improve his/her odds? Which viable ideas strike you as the most boring?
Toys of a Software Developer
How? Cut the bureaucracy. Build a medium-sized team away from the bureaucracy and levels of the company at large, to give it the agility of a startup, but still have it integrated into the Microsoft company structure.

Microsoft's problem is no doubt bureaucracy. Microsoft's Mac Business Unit (MBU) puts out decent software and works pretty well. The MBU apparently have more freedoms than the other divisions of Microsoft.

If they make their web force more like a startup within a business, in the sense that they build a department that more or less governs itself, they will move much faster within the web space.

Edit: a friend of mine just showed me this. http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2008/06/3... "Microsoft Corp. is reinventing itself, and it's looking to One Memorial Drive for a dose of innovation. That will be the home of Microsoft's Boston Concept Development Center, a first-of-its-kind research unit that's assembling dozens of engineers and designers and sniffing out technologies with the aim of incubating new Internet businesses within the company."

Looks like they're going in the right direction.
I didn't think the question of continuous versus discontinuous universes has ever really been resolved in a convincing way. Do you have any references?
I am. I've just bought some stockoptions from a few mortgage banks. They rock!
How does latency affect users in other countries? Worth worrying about?
Not all businesses need to be long-term. For example, one of the possible goals of a startup is to build technology that offers a lot of value, and then find an exit that makes sense. One of those exits is to be purchased by a company that can utilize your developed technology, or that can further create value and/or revenue for that acquiring company.

Where do we see this? MySQL by Sun. Flektor by Fox. WebEx by Cisco. Virtual Ubiquity/Buzzword by Adobe. Zimbra by Yahoo!.

Therefore, building a long-term business is not as important as building a lot of value for the market.
I read a story a while back that mentioned a system like this being used for old people in the early stages of Alzheimer's or whose memories were growing weaker from age. Apparently wearing something like this and viewing the images in a quick slideshow at the end of the day helped improve memory as a whole.

I think I would like to have something like this to be reminded what I've done in the day. Sort of an exercise in mindfulness.
If my understanding of the commercial malware industry is accurate, operating a data center in Russia would be great, until you're muscled into being a spam operation by local organized crime.
No Secret Software!
A recession is defined as two or more consecutive quarters of negative real GDP growth. According to the official figures, GDP has been just a little above flat (~0.5%) for well over a year now.

But, everyone knows that inflation is really far greater than the official ~2.5%/year though. Depending on which methodology you accept, the actual number is closer to 10% and possibly as high as 15% (http://www.shadowstats.com/article/56 is a decent primer on some of the problems with the government stats).

Using a more accurate GDP deflator shows that we've actually been in a recession for a few years now.
The Dark Knight and Game Theory
Do most men really want a much younger woman who is only interested in his money as a life partner? It seems like I encounter this odd perspective often online, but in reality, I know maybe two men who have married women more than 4 years their junior. Everyone else seems quite content dating or marrying women in their age group.

This abstract suggests that only 8% of marriages include an age gap of > 10 years: http://www.jstor.org/pss/352258
I belive that just like WallStreet was driving/encouraging increase in housing prices and spending habits of Americans, Silicon Valley VCs of late have been encouraging build-to-flip ventures.
Task based search - using the right tool for finding the right information.
Tab Usability Guidelines
Great Apps Using The CrunchBase API
> Really? Dangerous? Like loaded gun in the hands of an angry monkey dangerous, or just riding a bike while wearing flip flops dangerous?

Neither. More like making generalisations dangerous (Although I am sure you will be able to pick apart my post to find plenty of generalisations, too).

> The average American diet is, to use your inflammatory language, "outright suicidal for an average middle-American". It's high fat, high sugar, low fiber, and low in nutrients (unless "fortified" with artificial concentrations of vitamins and minerals), and it is nothing like previous American generations diet.

I did not at any point advocate that Americans eat the average American diet. Nor did I mean any offense to America, merely to the diet. I don't eat such a diet, nor do I eat the average Russian diet since leaving that region. The point I am making is that accepting any extreme view on dietary requirements is a strange thing to do considering how little we understand about the workings of our metabolism, regardless of how many cultures have enjoyed such a diet for countless millennia. [edit: I realise you did not advocate such a position, either. But plenty of people misinterpret statements like the one I quoted to do just that.]

I am sure tofu is great, and has lots of science behind it. So does consuming red meat. Or milk. They also have lots of science pointing to the contrary. But most of those scientific arguments apply to extreme cases. In the right environment, eating an occasional steak will not give you a heart attack or colon cancer, just as eating a few soy beans will not make you impotent. But excluding foods on the basis of current scientific understanding strikes me as more damaging, if it turns out that those foods carried nutrients we previously did not understand. Of course, dietary requirements based on religious or moral principles are something else entirely.

Seems like we agree on the general principles, the devil is in the implementation details, and one's risk profile.
I didn't say a life partner, but if you spent your 20s and 30s investing into yourself, chances are for a hook up you'd much rather go with a 25 year old than a 35 year old.

But even for life partner, at 35 as a guy you have complete choice in whom to pick, as a 20 year old guy, you have to settle for the fugly chick.
Of the ones I included in that recent list

http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html

the most boring is probably 5 (enterprise 2.0), preferably in the form of 7 (something your company needs that doesn't exist).

21 (finance software) and 29 (site builders) are also promisingly boring.