skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
When MS and firefox built pop up blockers into their browsers it became very hard to sell a pop up blocker. I'd be interested to see you move into this line of business now and explain why your efforts are best spent swimming upstream.

To paraphrase you: apologies for being a tool, but I can't help it. I bet you "know how to make Twitter scale," too. I love uninformed monday morning quarterbacks.
bonforte as adult supervision is infinitely hilarious.
Why is inequality considered a bad thing? What matters is whether the median wage is falling or not. Better to allow some people to earn massive amounts and have a rising median wage than to focus on inequality and have a stagnant or falling median wage.

It's plainly obvious that people have differing skills, and the whole communist experiment showed that you couldn't motivate people without rewarding them monetarily for their skills, risk and hard work (startups being a good example here).
The subsidy money has to come from somewhere (taxes and/or inflation), so you would add friction to the US economy elsewhere.
One of the benefits of the government-subsidized interstate highway system is that products can be moved cheaply by truck from ports of entry and factories to wholesalers and from there to retailers, no matter where in the country those wholesalers and retailers are located. Another benefit is that it's economically feasible for a family to live in the suburbs, work in the city, and shop in a more distant suburb.

I wouldn't give the government "credit for Walmart", but the government has created an infrastructure that Walmart used to its benefit.
That is awesome for the J2Play guys, but the sum they received is $250K - it's great to get that sum as no-strings-attached(?) money, but I'm not sure if it really justifies the breathless tone of the article.

See also:
http://www.startupnorth.ca/2008/07/23/j2play-scores-250k-gra...
TechJunk picking up steam
UI Porn: Audi's new MMI
"... 1024x768 is not uncommon on laptops ..."

good point I didn't think of.
"Europeans would look at our education system and be appalled by two things. One was that we were educating so many, which they considered to be highly wasteful. The other was that we were educating girls as much as boys."

I would have thought it was another two things: One, US high school education is poor; US graduates are one or two years behind the European graduate. Second, the US does not pay for college and university; preventing able individuals from getting a full education.

Maybe Goldin was confusing Europeans with the Church.
the caveat being that the complexity of computing the formula is at best on the order of preexisting techniques, so nifty deep math, but nothing new from a computational point of view (barring more insight happening)
I'm the editor of the History of Lisp web site at the Computer History Museum. I'm sorry about the 404s, but if you email me, I will be happy to answer questions, and help you get involved.

Paul McJones (paul at mcjones dot org)
re: maps, have you looked at OpenLayer?
Unit Test Boundaries
"... I used a laptop with 1024x768 as my primary computer until last year. Those that use the EEE PC or iPhone/iPod touch have an even smaller screen ..."

So is this a definitive trend ... more users on smaller screens? Or is this a tech-centric trend? It certainly puts a different spin on screen size and usability and not one that would have been easily picked up testing 5 users ~ http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000319.html
Yes, but it can be easily extended into a complete CMS through its support for pages ( http://codex.wordpress.org/Pages#WordPress_as_a_CMS ) and custom forms ( http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/cforms/ ).
Pittsburgh cancer center warns of cell phone risks
Not a bad idea considering some of those features are so inconvenient to maintain that it's almost better not to use them. However, can somebody explain what might be the logic behind removing query caches? Those typically increase performance.
Guess what OS North Korean Passport Control uses?
"... They're like property management companies run by madmen. Or more precisely, by Benjamin Graham's Mr. Market ..."

No references. More on Mr. Market here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Graham
Well I wouldn't call it priceless, considering there was an actual price involved in the payoff
F*cking (iPhone) NDA
ok so can i create community driven websites like yelp from it?
Cell phones + cancer = business opportunity?
Mossberg: Apple's MobileMe Is Far Too Flawed To Be Reliable
Scratch - A programming language for kids
Not sure I'd call it UI 'porn'. It's okay, but I expected more.
It was exceedingly breathless wasn't it... irritating to read.
It's not that they think that there's only one way to scale, but they only want one way in their company, so they can spend all their resources on optimizing that one architecture.
Holy shit. That lab is crazy.
Bluetooth could do this. Bluetooth proximity locks are available for computers, though I've not heard of one being used for doors. I suspect the Bluetooth "signature" (whatever it is) could be easily sniffed if someone knew about the lock, but it'd still be pretty cool.
Jeff Bonforte, CEO of Xobni, explains why Gabor left
That begs an important question: What's good design?

Good design in a magazine print ad is different from good design on a fashion blog is different from good design in a web app or a mail client.

So good design should be judged in terms of what it's supposed to do. In that light it seems the best design for Gmail is that which gets in the way least, because it's efficiency that counts when you're using it.
"Today’s web apps are generally written with frameworks like Ruby on Rails, Django and the like, all of which include things like sanitized database queries and more. So bother with prepared statements or other expensive (performance-wise) database server tools?"

Is it too much to ask that bloggers know what they are talking about?

Prepared statements are not expensive performance wise. In fact they usually result in a slight increase in speed because they factor out the time required to parse and plan the query and even if some performance is lost thorugh suboptimal planning (rare), the gains in security are well worth it.

For some reason, bloggers post excellent and insightful posts about everything CS until they hit databases where their common sense goes on vacation.
If Google can merely use its clout to bring it into the mainstream, however, they could do the same with far smaller Digg-like sites and for less money.

I think that if Google buys Digg for, say, $400 million, then Digg must actually be worth that. Okay, it might not have the revenues to warrant it, but it has a rampant audience, many of who treat Digg like a game and spend hours on it every day increasing their karma. That sort of support is what can fuel the site enough to drag it into the mainstream with Google's help, and why it's worth mega money.
It was prepared for an in-person talk at GUADEC (a Gnome conference). Documents don't work very well for presentations.
I think the problem lies in the fact that Knol exists squarely between "engineering design" (re: Gmail, Wikipedia) and pro design.

Both extremes work over the long-term, but the murky middle makes no sense. It's a half-attempt and the site looks worse for it.
Imagine the endgame, where web apps handle all user accounts, collaboration features, sharing, and permissions through Facebook. It's not this year or next year, but Facebook could become the equivalent of what Microsoft Windows is on the desktop (although much less valuable, since the Web is a more anarchic environment than the desktop).
Most of these are overpaid because of a labor cartel that limits supply, like in the case of orthodontists and longshoremen. They're worthy of an anti-trust case.
The gap is explained by the constant growth of human knowledge and the constant stasis (or even retrograde motion) of high school curricula. Thus, one must go to college to make a contribution to society.
That in no way explains why Gabor left.
Lexus nav ftw.
I had to laugh when I read the quoted students reponse to the wrong output. Just introduce a simple correction that fulfills the requirement for his particular test case. Why you'd wonder what the academic standards are in a univesity that even allows such people to enter the door, this modus operandi is even encouraged the 'industry' under the moniker of 'test-driven development'.
How mobile phones are changing the future of news
Off-topic, but it's interesting how he's reimplemented a substantial fraction of Haskell's Prelude (base library) in Mathematica, probably without knowing it: http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~erowland/programs/ListTricks.m.
I've hung out with Libertarian Party regulars in a few different cities. Take an evening sometime and try it yourself. You may reconsider the idea that libertarians are mostly part of a "high-status/high-reward niche".
Is the GFDL compatible with the Knol license?
Natural light is only available 10-12 hours a day, and most hackers' days are longer than that.
This was one of those "So what? ...oh." moments.

How did the NK government manage to get a (legitimate?) copy of Windows past embargos, and how did the photographer manage to sneak in a camera?

I'm guessing the government purchased from a distributor without NK trade sanctions.
Gates, Bloomberg pool riches to fight smoking
"In the wrong environment a year or two could be soul-crushing." - Very well put. That's the reason, I left the previous start-up I was working with. Honestly I think if you are not one of the co-founders of a startup, it's just not worth it, and not just for financial reasons.
Cancer chief sees cell phone risks
Well of course they use Windows... all the good software for monitoring/censoring net activity is written for Windows.
I doubt the government purchased anything. It's ridiculously easy to download a pirated version of Windows, or just jump across the border to China and buy a CD for 50 cents.
I was hoping that e-gold would subvert the status quo.

Looks like I will have to keep waiting:

http://stakeventures.com/articles/2008/07/22/the-man-finally...
The "Beyond REST" moniker is a little propaganda-ish. REST has its place and is a great architectural paradigm. Apart from that, the slideshow was pretty useful and informative. For me, it couldn't have come at a better time -- it pointed out a couple things about XMPP integration that no one had really clearly explained before. (For me, it helped clarify the distinction between XMPP itself and IM, and how one would build an app to leverage XMPP servers.)
Watch Out FriendFeed: Socialthing Is Even Easier to Use
Older article but interesting. Interested to see different approaches to aggregation (cf: friendfeed) of your "stuff". How many of these aggregation sites can a market support?
Triumph of the Idiots
Shht. computer 'scientists' are the ones that didn't make it into the physical sciences. No need to stoke their inferiority complex any further.
The formula (or rather the algorithm) is interesting, but rather impractical. First million of iterations generate only 36 primes, and these are not even sequential:

3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, 37, 47, 53,
101, 127, 163, 199, 233, 421, 443, 467, 577, 941,
1889, 3779, 7559, 15131, 30323, 60647, 121403,
242807, 486041, 972533, 1945649, 3891467, 7783541
Linkbait: It's not just for kids! Sometimes, respected scientists get into the act.

I'm impressed, though -- this is a much better article than the title would suggest. It does a good job of running down the evidence that this guy is being hysterical for no good reason. All the old data -- and there's quite a lot of it -- is inconclusive, and there's no new data:

Herberman is basing his alarm on early unpublished data. He says it takes too long to get answers from science and he believes people should take action now - especially when it comes to children.

"Early, unpublished data." Perhaps we should also design some cold-fusion power packs for our children.

Interesting how it's only the answers that agree with this guy's gut feeling that take such a long time to be found by science.
I didn't see the word wiki anywhere in that article.
And they do. He was a rockstar for them.
Agreed, sounds like just like the common "irreconcilable differences" Hollywood couples like to use.

Seems foolish to leave a hot startup without really good reasons.
In my opinion, you should only use a framework if you have a deep understanding of how it will benefit the specific problem you are trying to solve.

Good frameworks have a sweet spot. If you are outside of the sweet spot, then you will probably be better served writing code specific to your application. When you write your own solution for your specific problem, it is almost always smaller, faster and more flexible.

Bad frameworks try to be everything to everyone. Don't even consider a bloated, "general" solution.
After seeing this and other Pixar movies that include their workspaces, I've decided that any companies I start in the future will have a 'no white wall' policy. I'll give employees a budget to use as they wish, or if they don't, I'll bring in someone to "decorate".
AOL et all probably would have interconnected before long though. Look at the text messaging/SMS interconnect as an example.
This is very nearly a dupe of http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=255047

And, yeah, of course it's a business opportunity. Ask a homeopathics company.

My suggestion: Sell helmets like the one Magneto wears. Something really solid. Tinfoil is too cheap and fragile to support a high markup.

Of course, if you want to actually prevent some cancer, figure out how to get people to exercise, eat vegetables, or quit smoking.
Anonymous Crusader Takes On Pop-Up Ad Industry
Yet another dupe of http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=255047
How Hacker Top and Reddit Top Programs Were Made
Opposing Views: A New Debate Site Where Experts Go Head To Head
Y Combinator Challenge #3 - New News
>>> Seems foolish to leave a hot startup without really good reasons.

That presumes that one's overriding concern is job security.
The opposite sex represent a particular problem, I've found. I'm a writer primarily: my plan for a start-up is one that relies on writing, and I think that as much as I like designing sites, my skill currently lies far more in writing. Therefore, I can relate this particular paradox with some confidence:

If you read them poetry that ISN'T by you, they won't get it. Unless you explain it to them first.

If you read them poetry YOU wrote, it ONLY works if it's bad. The minute you write something decent, it doesn't interest them. This is because only in bad writing can you be as bland and generic as you need to be to woo women.

As for learning exercise: makes sense. You can also try writing them. Writing haiku makes for a FASCINATING mental exercise. There's so little room to work in, and so much you can do.
Seems like they need a technology section, "RoR vs. Django", "Emacs vs. Vim", etc.
This is not an uncommon perception. I run into way to many fundies who believe the Bible is some sort of magical text straight from the stone tablets of God. (They, of course, pick their favorite translation, or worse, paraphrase, to be this magic book).

Its closer to the truth to call the Bible a scrap-book of letters, personal accounts, advice for living, poetry, religious writings, and history spanning many centuries.

Those that have believed it have carefully assembled it over the millennia (yeah, some of it is that old!) in order to tell the story of God's relation to man.

Emptied of its religious context, (and sadly, modern connotative baggage that is has accumulated in the last few centuries), it is one of the most fascinating artifacts of ancient humans to be found anywhere. Its ubiquity belies the fact that it is well worth study in this regard.
The first comment: makes a little sense, I think. The second one: bleh. Theoretically, working with the Mac didn't give you experience with the iPhone. Two radically different interfaces, even with Leopard multitouch. It's the CONCEPT of computing that needs to be taught, not the INTERFACE.

If you see those critics anywhere, slap 'em for me or something.
The real story behind this: The top management at Xobni does not want to implement much needed changes to the flawed product. Gabor has been making suggestions, but the company has already become slow and sluggish, and there was a lot of conflict between the two. Some words were exchanged, and now Gabor is leaving. The real story is that internally, one other person (at least) is no longer actively involved in the project...
They could scroll down really, really fast... :-P

Couldn't they have used Present, or whatever that OpenOffice thing is?
Ha! When I did a visa run to Burma last week they were all running Windows Vista- if it weren't for the pissed off looking guy with a sub-machine gun leaning against the wall I would've taken a picture :)
I tried to leave the following comment at TechCrunch (hasn't been posted yet). Maybe it's written in a poor tone (more patient, perhaps?) but I didn't have time to rewrite it again.

"Why wouldn’t Cselle wait for his payday and then jump ship to start his own company" -- have you considered the possibility that the human spirit does not run on cash and reason alone? That it's not implausible to leave money on the table and gamble on something new, for the sake of happiness and passion?

"Cselle likely wants his own shot at glory, and because of Xobni’s quick rise to success, members of the team may believe that launching a startup is far easier than it really is." -- Why jump to conclude that this move is egotistical and naive?

I'm also leaving my present company (in a minority shareholder, VP role) just a couple weeks after Gabor -- mid-September. It's well-funded (not a tech company so not relevant to Techcrunch) and has excellent prospects in a massive and growing industry. When I leave, I am going to be rather poor -- none of my shares will have vested -- and with few obvious prospects. It's the most gut-wrenching decision I've ever made -- I spent two years full time pouring my sweat into this thing on both sides of the world, making countless sacrifices. And business-wise, my efforts were not in vain -- the business is poised to do very well... but over the past several months, I too have found myself deeply unhappy with where I am -- disconnected with the energy that caused me to enter business in the first place, which was to express myself creatively _in leadership_.

If he feels trapped rather than emboldened in his current role, then all the power to him to seize back control of his life and try to make his dream work. I'm sure it hasn't been an easy decision for him, because when it doesn't make sense to outsiders, it probably doesn't make sense to the rational part of him either. I've found it almost indescribably hard to leave a great team working on an exciting, successful project -- especially when I know that my decision will probably not make a lot of sense to outsiders. But sometimes you have to go beyond rational economic outcomes and listen to the part of you that gives you meaning.

Better that, than become one of the countless people in the herd who has goals where his heart used to be.
Video: Ruby on Bells
Watch out for the inflation rate! If inflation is at 4% your ING account is worthless and you're spending down your principal in real terms.

Believe me, I've been thinking a lot about that recently.

That said, your point is taken: There is some amount of money where you can set up some fairly risk-free, static investments and take out $X every year indefinitely. Just make sure you do a little more thinking upfront about how much money that is, and what static investments those are.
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Main_Page - pretty close to what is described in the post.
The summer school where this was conjectured was http://www.wolframscience.com/summerschool/2003/participants...

As one of the "live experiments" Stephen Wolfram decided to try to find the minimal recursive functions involving arithmetic type operations that produce complex behavior. The article glosses over this, but no one set out to find a function that produced only primes; it just so happened that when enumerating these minimal functions this one was discovered to have a peculiar regularity.

By the way, if you ever discover an efficient way to generate primes, you have a shot at claiming a 100k prize (http://www.eff.org/awards/coop)
I like the idea of making all the news have a more uniform format. Rss feeds do this, but only to a certain extent.

Also, if it got successful enough they could hire their own reporters. It would be great to do video clips as well as textual news articles as the site seems to imply, although this would involve a lot more work it seems.

In that same vein, I wonder how well a site that streamed talking heads doing news 24/7 could do if the anchors were professionals (i.e. at least up to the quality of cnn,msnbc, fox,bbc, not that they are always the best measure of quality).
I meant: you don't show markers after search. (Only after click.) But I think that clicking is rare. Users tend to think that clicking moves them off the page, so they avoid it. In any case, after clicking a result, you only show that one marker right? But then, why is the map so big? It could be much smaller if you're only showing one thing on it, IMO.
Facebook Connect. Thoughts from YC community?
Kinda weird... Haven't seen any discussion about this. Personally I am pretty stocked about it. I know its not anything new, there is OpenID and what not. Although, I really like the facebook implementation. I think it will really help startups/companies in all fronts, easy implementation, support, security, data portability and even generate marketing.

Thoughts?
Possibly - but I doubt it. Different mindsets.

Apple is all about focus. They hone in on little bitty details that require a single mind's perfectionist worldview. No compromises. And I can't think of any multi-man team that focuses that much, excepting the Coen brothers.

Google doesn't need airtight focus. Apple does.
This is just awesome. An hour ago I was at FOSCON 08 in Portland and one of the creators just demoed RAD. Really cool stuff.
http://rad.rubyforge.org/
No, no. Apple INSISTS on quality products. They don't care if YOU would compromise. They won't let you.

I'm guessing you don't use a Mac, or keep close with Mac users. The attitude is entirely one-sided: it's all about quality, period. Many Mac users eschew Firefox for Safari, because the one is so much better-made, even if it doesn't let you use StumbleUpon and whatnot. Word 2008 is attacked by Mac users for feeling too much like Windows. Even the App Store is being attacked right now for being too LOW-standards.

Apple's idea is this: if your idea is too poor to be displayed on their store, you should design for something that isn't working with Apple software. That's not a disadvantage. It's a mindset that ensures top-notch design, time and time again. It's why most people will pick up an Apple product and assume that it works well. It's because Apple controls everything, and because that's a good thing.
Thanks for the link - definite similarities in the end goal, but for me the big difference is that this doesn't capture the fun and excitement of a real newsroom. The ideal execution of this idea would be much closer to a social game than a collaborative tool.
So, could someone explain what this means and why it has (at the moment) 11 points?
But I imagine you learned a lot of important answers during that time.

I went through a similar situation, and I am still glad I did it. And these lessons are far cheaper in time learning when you can leave compared to when you have fully committed yourself.