skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I've never heard of anyone learning thermodynamics/static/mechanical design/fluid dynamics/heat transfer/etc from a group of people gathering to discuss, challenge and support each other (other than in a school).

Technological advancement has a lot to do with "improving the human condition" and the majority of significant advances come from those who have been through higher education.
Trademark is primarily consumer protection.
What is the startup?
This is great news for MyGengo (http://mygengo.com/). They have a free machine translation API which can be upgraded to (paid) human translation by toggling a flag.

Granted, they support a lot less languages, but for the supported ones, MyGengo sounds like a much better option, unless Google manages to improve their translation and beat MyGengo pricing.

The quality of the Google Translate is awesome, considering it's automatic, but still falls short of the human doing the job. Also, it'll be interesting to see what Duolingo (http://duolingo.com/) can do, once it launches.
That's true; although my friends do not use HN to the best of my knowledge, and they don't have my taste in games. I know this argument comes up every time social discovery is brought up, however I feel that it's valid.
the 10%+ breakage is not "pure gravy" given that the coupons are governed by the credit card act of 2009. They are valid for up to five years. Unlikely to be redeemed, but they are a liability on the books.
Apple now worth more than Microsoft and Intel... combined
Fwiw I never check my Groupon emails, but I check every Groupon notification on my Android. Dunno if I'm a representative data point or not, but something to keep in mind.
The big difference is Amazon has always sold tangible goods to actual consumers.

Even though they operated at a loss while taking investment, they weren't using the investment to pay out older investors. They had a solid plan for generating profit, which Groupon doesn't seem to have.
Colorado Free Online Newspapers
That's not really true, of course. IP law isn't a physical law, so if your conscience is clear and you accept the risks, you're permitted to do whatever seems needful or fun. The only "risk" here is the author suing you, and by my estimate (that risk) * (potential damages) is a really really tiny number.

I've used lots of projects on github that aren't formally licensed and I intend to continue to do so, and I would guarantee through money bets that any negative consequences will be overwhelmingly outweighed by the benefits. And to be clear, I expect negative consequences to be precisely zero.

Incidentally, the licensing culture that's sprung up in the wake of the open source movement is pretentious and self-righteous. It claims that everywhere is deathly threats and that we need to build up a bulwark of legal defenses to protect us from the ever present dreadnaughts of closed-sourcedness, that we must be adhere to a prissy and ultraconservative standard of conduct in hacker circles to be vigilant against the enemy. But that's dumb. People are mostly good.

More, it's smugly eager to defend its place as the champion and one true defender of open source and, in doing so, often trades reasonableness for silliness when it thinks reasonableness threatens its stature.

My favorite example is when I came across an open source license proponent[1] who insisted that declaring your work public domain is worse than using a license, even though it's clearly just as good (actually, better). The claim against public domain is that some jurisdictions don't have it as a concept, which neglects the fact that the vast majority of active developers are in jurisdictions that do, and that it's extremely unlikely that anyone in one of these rare ambiguous jurisdictions will benefit from violation, or care to, or be able to materially or spiritually harm the original author in any way.

And, no, I don't think vanishingly likely technically possible scenarios matter. Public domain is clear and obvious, and that's a big benefit. No matter how permissive the license, you immediately make someone have to care and possibly look up the license terms. Moreover, you continue to reinforce the notion that the forces behind the most common open source licenses are mostly right, when they aren't. A perfectly legitimate way to open source software, public domain, existed long before they did and it doesn't carry with it the tacky stain of anti-competitive, anti-corporate smearing.

[1] I've come to find out that this is license proponents' standard argument.
I have tried HayZap before but I don't think I checked in. Have you guys considered doing away with signups at first, and just using my location? Then you could recommend games based on how many users around you play it (or just in general) without having to get my friends involved and for me to think I'm leaving the game I played to sign up.
Why So Serious?
XCode 3.2 defaults to GCC 4.2 with LLVM optionally available and IIRC XCode 4 too (can't check as I downgraded for various reasons).

Xcode 4 defaults to llvm-gcc, not gcc-4.2.
I agree with you, but you have to admit, U.S. dollars themselves are a bit of a Ponzi scheme.
Thanks for listening! (I'm assuming some relevant Google folk will be passing by here.)

A personal qualification: I may be unusual, but my personal concern (as opposed to professional needs) is use by tools such as the Firefox Babelfish extension.

At times, I spend significant time in communities speaking any number of languages. Being able to drag-to-translate various items, pretty much instantaneously (and without forcing the entire page through a single translation), makes participation fluid. It also props up my sometimes dormant, if not non-existent, understanding of those languages.

I hope there is room within the new model to support this, at reasonable cost, whether through being simultaneously signed in to a Google account (hopefully with adequate security filtering for the submitted fragments), or other means.

I can't help thinking there's also an educational aspect to similar scenarios. Always good for a little PR!

P.S. As long as I'm asking, how about HTTPS support?
Apple hires developer who hacked together better notification system for iOS
Ironically, the guys who maintain rubygems also wrote http://rubyhitsquad.com/, in which they vocally slam another mainstream Ruby project.
I don't agree that youtube is about amateur content. Sometimes my friends upload interesting videos to youtube or someone links to a mildly amusing clip like MyDrunkKitchen. However, most of the youtube links I see go to professionally produced content such as music videos, news clips, or comedy shows.
Most of the people who go on SF, are people downloading popular open source software binaries. See http://sourceforge.net/top/toplist.php?type=downloads_week

And those people are not the educated demographic that have adblock...
Are they banning these words from all radio and TV? Or simply not allowing government broadcasts from telling people to follow them on Twitter and Facebook? There is a huge difference between the two.

The article states "If Facebook or Twitter make the news, they can be mentioned on a strictly “information” basis. But no urging the audience to connect via Facebook or Twitter to learn more, ask questions, give their opinions, and so on."

That is quite a bit different than the impression conveyed by the headline claiming these words are completely banned.

If this regulation applies to private broadcasts too, it is wrong.
>Granted, they support a lot less languages, but for the supported ones, MyGengo sounds like a much better option, unless Google manages to improve their translation and beat MyGengo pricing.

As far as I know, MyGengo doesn't do in house manchine translations. Am I wrong?
> As for DHH's opinions, they are his own. I may or may not share them, but we're both grown ups and we respect each other no matter what.

I've got some bad news for you, friend.
The announcement says:
Lucy is a "loose C" port of Apache Lucene, a search engine library for Java -- it is similar in purpose to Lucene, but designed to take advantage of C's unique capabilities.

I'm wondering what these unique capabilities are. Speed? Smaller memory footprint? And I wonder what the reason is behind doing this. I'm all for C project but very curious as to why when Lucene was very well done.
Yes! Path is the one I'm referring to. I thought it was very innovative as well- and it ties in well to the concept of path. It mimics the real life emotions that your friends might have if they see how your life unfolds. I don't think that their emoticons could work with just any other site.

Real life conversations are valuable- sometimes it just feels like there's too much spam going on. I have a fully functional comment section, but just not sure if I want to keep it. I'm looking for a better way to improve engagement rates by making the comments somehow more interactive with maybe some kind of alternative.

Thanks for the thoughtful answer.
I totally forgot they were goons. These guys could quite possibly be the first goons in history who actually finished a project.
I thought MyGengo was in the business of real translations, not machine translations. How is this relevant?
That might have been why it was created, but it's not how it's primarily used today, nor do I think it does that good a job combating "customer confusion". (Remember, even without Ubuntu calling their OS "Windows", Dell customers still sent back Ubuntu laptops complaining they thought they were getting Windows.) Just like copyrights and patents were created to encourage innovators to innovate and share with society--the goal was improving society--that original purpose is lost in the primary uses of IP laws today.
"“We’re not going to have faster processors,” says Katherine Yelick, a computer scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California."

Seems a little premature, I wouldn't rule out some big leap forward in processor technology. Very good article though.
I think it is only natural to have favorite technologies, whether it's an OS, editor, language, or even automobile brand. I think it is also fine to point out advantages of one solution over another because it helps others when they need to make a choice. I think all of this can be done in a rational manner without fanboyism.

I would like to see more rational discourse, not only in the realm of technology, but also in politics. It is seldom a question of A is awesome and B is crap. Often the comparisons are complex, and the right choice may have some dependence on circumstance. Or in the case of politics, party A may have a good position on some issues, and a bad position on others.

People have a tendency to choose a side and fight all-out for their side as right and all others as wrong. We used to do this with race or religion, and now we're doing it with other things. However, to successfully deal with the problems in our world, we need to rise above such simplistic thinking and realize that in our big complicated world, there is often a need for multiple approaches. And even if one alternative is truly superior to another, we have to realize that the superiority might not be clear to everyone, so we need to learn patience with those who may for whatever reason make the inferior choice. We also need to have the humility to admit that there might even be something we can learn from the other side.
That is a really excellent quote, one that needs to get used a whole lot more. I've had a lot of fun recently describing the difference to friends.
I'm not sure whether they do it in-house or outsource, but they do provide it. From http://mygengo.com/services/api/#benefits page:

You can also get free machine translation through our API - so no need to switch between services. Just pick and choose which of your content you want done by humans, and which by machines. It’s easy and free to start with machine translation, and then upgrade for popular content.
But the FCC never banned the phrase French Fries.
Inflammatory headline... "Groupon is not sustainable" might be more accurate.
I think so too. Path that was mentioned is a very unique and original idea to promote further interaction as an alternative to commenting. It saves a ton of time allowing you more time to explore.

HN is fantastic. It doesn't feel bulky because commenting is integrated with the original idea of the site. In fact, you can't do anything but read and leave comments.

For another site though, like a blog, or a photo sharing site, or even a news article you read online- there aren't a lot of alternative to comments.
Being part of Google changes things as (1) Google can finance a money losing operation for quite some time and (2) Google offers integration into its huge ecosystem, especially its existing robust advertising network.

Thus Google brought a lot to the table in such acquisition which would increase Groupon's value.
Just a friendly reminder to all the bloggers out there: You can be sued for these kinds of statements.
Surprisingly good article on how someone learned to program.
I build mostly consumer apps. I suppose I hadn't thought about there being multiple approaches.
Not yet; however I appreciate the reply!

You're right, no one has time to try every game released; however don't you feel that the generic store rankings already do a pretty good job filtering out the noise? I'm not saying your product will have no value, just that for me personally I can't see it being a huge improvement over the existing filtering mechanism (genre specific app store ranking).
> And if we don't want people to invent smart phones, cures for cancer and televisions, we should eliminate patents.

I reject this. Software, which is a component of all of the things you mention, didn't always have patents, and it flourished without them.
Python's Functional Training Wheels
Wait, wait, wait.

SF has a" monopoly" and a "chilling effect" that makes you "angry", because their completely free service was not good enough for someone?

What does Sourceforge owe anyone?
All of a sudden, there's some drama concerning RubyGems. For me, it's one of the best things about the Ruby ecosystem. That and the fabulous gems for web development. There's a lot of bleeding edge development of the Ruby language and the ecosystem, but that's also a downside in a lot of breakage due to api changes. Ruby was supposed to make my life as a programmer easier. I need more stability. I think I'm too old for this stuff.
I think people freak out over Ping because it has a lameness to it that people would have expected to originate from Microsoft or even Google -- but not from Apple.

Its entire approach is actually anti-social. It's not web-based, it's locked into iTunes and is meant for customers. Customers are busy buying, they want "Give it to me and let me go enjoy it now." They connect with other people on the Internet, outside of a commercial setting.

Apple's own support forums are more social even though the purpose is to solve customer problems. You don't need iTunes to use them.
Intellectual Property is a concept that tries to put ownership on ideas/abstract concepts. How does one 'own' and idea? In the physical sense, one can 'own' a physical object through possession.
Sorry, sarcasm doesn't translate into a text box well; I'd never heard the term 'Ponzi scheme' until a few days ago and suddenly it's all over the front page of HN.
Yeah but i would assume that they would still have a fairly large, overlapping customer base?

Also see comment above, about machine translation support at mygengo.
> "Semantics" have nothing to do with it. Commodities [0] != currencies [1]

Semantics have everything to do with it, as I will demonstrate below.

> One exists as a medium of exchange, while the other is a good with no differentiation between sources.

Well, as long as the USD is not fake, you don't care what the source is :) Similarly, for non-fake gold.

> Currencies are differentiated by the trustworthiness of the governments that issue them.

Today, that is true. However, the Chumash people had a currency that -- like bitcoin -- was not centrally managed, and reflected work put into something, rather than any fiat or backing store of value. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chumash_people#Culture - I can't remember where I read a more detailed account. Basically, you could sit on the beach all day and make money -- and it took slightly longer than the equivalent exchange rate would get you in food (so you could hunt/gather food, or make money, with comparable time expenditure, and exchange them). The whole system broke down when European drills (as manufacturing tools) were introduced and made money making simple.

> First: I admit I wasn't aware that retailers accepted bitcoins when I posted that comment. I've discovered otherwise now, so the "hill of beans" comment is wrong. Sorry.

So - let's get back to semantics: do you agree bitcoin is currency? (exists as a medium of exchange), or commodity? (a good with no differentiation between sources) because it has both properties, thus showing that the definitions are not mutually exclusive. A USD is currency but not commodity; Beans are commodity but not currency. Gold, Chumash beads and bitcoin are both.

> Name a first-world country where gold is widely accepted as currency.

In NYC where I live, hundreds of stores will accept your gold in exchange for other merchandise (at a bad exchange rate for you...). You can identify them by the sign "We buy gold". You must have seen them in other places too.

> but it's not backed by a central body

True, but ....

> nor does it carry a relatively stable value (unlike fiat money)

Wrong, and if you truly believe that you might be beyond help. The US devalued the USD by 50% in 1931. Belarus did it to their fiat currency last week. Between 2002 and 2006, the EUR/USD exchange rate went from 0.8 to 1.5 (almost 100%) - "stable"?

In fact, up until 1971, the backing for the USD (and most other currencies) was gold - it only became a true fiat currency in 1971! Before that, it was a claim on some amount of gold in fort knox, and value was derived from that.
German Internet companies - where are they?
Hackers: How They Get In, How They Got In
Python is written in C and the time consuming parts of this algorithm are delegated to C modules (random, sha256, long int bitshifts, etc). Also, the space efficiency (which directly related to effective use of high-speed cache) is language independent.

If you care about the cost of the Python glue code, the PyPy project nicely optimizes that away. Unless you're writing for a Google production server, the programmer time writing this in C will likely never be paid back in saved CPU cycles.
There are three possible reasons for incorrect statements:

1) Stupid but honest - doesn't know the truth and doesn't realize he is wrong.

2) Ignorant and dishonest - realizes he doesn't know and tries to cover it up.

3) Liar - knows the truth but lies anyway.
:) true. Hence I work full-time on a research funded job at Cornell University.
Are there any decent alternatives to w3schools? I have to introduce somebody to very basic web-development and would hate to have to point them to a resource as bad as w3schools.

Edit: I just found this excellent SO link on the topic: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4662304/online-html-css-j...
Windows Mobile was the first to decline due to its obsolescence. Now it appears that the BlackBerry is following suit. Is a mix of enterprise and personal usage of smartphones the cause of this?
The devolution of MySpace has many factors, one of which was forcing people with older and less expensive (which, for the targeted audience, could have meant hand-me-down from parents) computers to upgrade their browsers, which just slowed everything down and ruined the aura of excitement it once had. Another factor was the intrusion of commerce-like Bulletins from "friends," asking you to leave the site to vote for them in some contest or other. There was a lot less social there than people give it credit for.
This dichotomy is incorrect. We shouldn't be focusing on professionals vs. amateurs.

I think it's more useful to realise that Apple is controlling .. the web is (largely) open. Or to put it another way; Apple want to set norms .. the web wants crowds to set norms.
We just got the following response for an Ad trying to recruit for this job http://webnographer.theresumator.com/apply/ie1n7s/Remote-Use... in Portugal from a French internet site.

The response........

Unfortunately we can not publish it for the following reasons:
- It is illegal in France to publish a job written in a language other than French

Meanwhile France has a high youth unemployment, etc etc
If you rely on genre specific ranking won't you only end up exploring genres that you recognize and are already familiar with? What if it could expose you to games that you actually enjoy but are in genres that you wouldn't have considered exploring.
Thanks for taking the trouble to look that up! Archive.org is indeed awesome.

And I think I can make archive.org fit into the pocket universe of my rant quite easily: Archive.org doesn't suck because it makes copies. It copies everything, along with the links. It's the content that makes it great. The links are just metadata, which is fine as far as it goes, so long as it continues to lead to the actual data which is what I want.

There are organizations who simply publish their stuff directly to archive.org. This is perhaps unstylish but it strikes me as eminently sensible. It's going to end up there anyway, or it's probably going to be lost to history, so why not cut out the middleman?
Congratulations Ilya. I first saw postrank (aiderss) at an Amazon AWS meetup years ago and grabbing a beer with you guys. Google's a great company of super smart people and you guys will fit right in.

And please continue blogging!
The Way I Work: David Karp of Tumblr
Spideroak (https://spideroak.com) is also a secure option.
1998 Gates: I can’t figure out why Jobs is even trying; he knows he can’t win
OK, I freely admit that I'm not an expert in this area, so I'll rescind my "silly" comment.

But, "drastically weaker" than what? If the password is strong, JD doesn't make it weak. JD just doesn't make it as strong as it should/could? Is this correct?
"...when you consider that better than 60 percent of Amazon's sales come from repeat customers--which implies that they're loyal..."

That seems to be the key figure missing from the Groupon discussion. If they are buying loyal users and customers, their mad-dash growth strategy would seem rational. If their retention is poor, it would seem more like a Ponzi scheme.
I'm french, and I grew up with this law. So it doesn't sound absurd to me, but my opinion is biased. This has always existed (well apparently since 1992), and for every brand. But you are making a point that we cannot cite other brand, in fact, the law state that, if you cite one brand of the domain (here social network), you should also cite the others.
And finally, I was watching french shows this week, and they frequently bypass the law by citing facebook and twitter.
>I'm wondering what these unique capabilities are.

easy bindings for every dynamic language. they start with perl
Well... Groupon has always sold tangible goods and services to actual customers, too. Customers that are every bit as fickle as the ones Amazon had to win over a decade ago. They may succeed or fail at this, but it's not like they're still looking for a business model.
How about the word verb "to google" ? Shouldn't this be forbidden too, according to the french reasoning?
Or do they not use it at all?