skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Very good point. I assumed because they looked very similar that it was the same person, but quite possible that someone else did the designs. Definitely very similar elements in UI though.

"Hertzfeld, who has been working at Google since 2005, is indeed the one we can thank for the better-looking interface on Google+, as he’s the design lead on the project."

He was the lead for the design, not just the circles features.
How did you get started on building the actual product? Did you find a technical co-founder?
Zero load time file formats
The Colbert Report Season 1 Episode 82:
So allow us to describe the central character. Colbert for his half is sort of a “well-meaning, poorly-informed, and high-class idiot. that could be a character with a caricature of televised political pundits. the tv series has had cultural influence really during a myriad of how. Back in 2006, once Colbert inspired avid viewers to hit the keyboards ad vote on-line to call a Hungarian bridge once him, he won the primary spherical of voting with quite seventeen million votes. Even the ambassador of Hungary presented Colbert with a declaration that certifies him a winner of the second and final spherical of voting, even though it absolutely was later announced that the bridge instead be named the Megyeri Bride. such a lot for being a real record holder, watch The Colbert report Season one Episode 82: The Black Belles o
Easy - It's Mary Brown.
HN Feature Request: a filter that strips the word "amazing" out of all headlines.
I'm not sure how democratic things are at GCL, but I'm pretty sure other people have had a say in the creative process.

Ref: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/evolving-google-desig...
Focus on interface rather than object.

Embrace explicit state with state machines and events.
In the old Gmail interface, my eye goes straight to my inbox. In this new interface, it goes straight to the bold blue "Search Mail" in the header—which is proportionally much larger than necessary.

The new look for Google is a huge step up overall, but that's a huge usability violation to me.
Strauss-Kahn Case Seen As in Jeopardy: Major Holes in Housekeeper Credibility
In the US there's two very different sorts of internships.

The first is what you describe, scamming desperate people during a economic depression out of free skilled labor that has monetary value to the company.

The second is internships at places like magazines, newspapers and politicians offices. These ones are more interesting. Poor people and minorities can't afford to work for a year for free. But the children of the rich can. The internship provides cover to avoid having to hire minorities since hiring takes place from the internship pool.
This interface would be much more suited to tablet-sized screens.

Apart from information-density (which should be more forgiving on the tablet form factor when compared to PCs), the spacing also makes this a touch-friendly alternative to the Ajax-laden tablet interface.

For a PC screen, however, I'd say 'power users' quite like the higher information density on the current UI. It's much more efficient if you think about how far the eyes need to move and how much one needs to scroll to get to an element on the page. Navigation is not much of a problem currently with a precise device like the mouse and with keyboard shortcuts.
I completely agree that you shouldn't have to hover over the cards to figure out what email address they are associating with each card. That's a huge blunder.
Very good point, but computing devices don't have scaling problems that the other technologies you listed have. Nuclear would have had a similar generality if, for example, you could safely run a fission power device on your phone, for example -- but you can't; it just didn't scale down at the required safety level. Similarly, air travel doesn't scale down as people thought it would (still no flying cars) even though it works very well on large scale (airlines, combined, have near monopoly on long-distance travel). Computing scales both up (supercomputers) and down (cell phones). It may be that current silicon chips won't scale down to cellular level, but it also may be that (a) such scaling is not required for human-level AI (I believe it isn't), or that (b) other technologies such as graphene may replace silicon.
Yeah! I'll write a more in depth blog post about this, but the summary is that I learned to code well enough to build a rudimentary prototype. Then I met my cofounder Scott at a Hackers and Founders meetup, showed him the prototype, and, after a few meetings, he liked the idea enough to cofound this startup with me.
Some time later we applied to YC and the rest is history.
Speaking of which... am I crazy or is there a new black bar at the top of HN too?

(edit: removed second sentence after finding out actual reason)
Ah, alright, I see what mean. So the general idea is to create something that will help make other people's lives easier?
CA State Board of Equalization Still Going After Amazon
I agree, but I wonder if they keep it because it still gets lot of action for some reason (less computer savvy users see it and think 'great, I'll invite Bob!'?).
The problem is of course that people will believe what they want to believe
Using it to power the activity stream of a small site (+ Postgres & Redis). <3
It is also pure black in greader.
Poor people and minorities can't afford to work for a year for free

Poor people and minorities? So minorities, even if they happen to be individually rich, can't afford to work for a year for free?
That's just the Web Clip bar - which you can turn off in Settings->Web Clips.
Ouch! I got beat up over this. I still think it's funny. This man vs. machine appears on HN from time to time, and it probably will continue for another three decades. I've just gotta ask, are we really accomplishing anything here?
I think it is because Robert Morris passed away recently.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2712469
The cocos2djs also says that it was using box2dweb[1] but changed to box2d.js due to being more compatible with commonjs. Which is very interesting, as I've used box2dweb and found it quite a competent port.

[1] http://code.google.com/p/box2dweb/
It doesn't. The FDIC doesn't have a fraction of the money needed to insure a fraction of the money that is supposedly FDIC-insured. More over, the United States likely lacks the gold to back our current currency, let alone the currency needed to prop up those who lose money in the situation of the decreasing number of banks failing.
Garbage collection pauses are a problem, but Mozilla and Google are aware of it and working to improve the situation. The GC in IE9 seems to be surprisingly good (well, "fast" at least) already.

What do you mean with "write from scratch"? There are libraries (like this one, or ImpactJS[1]) to help you out. If you develop a new browser game, HTML5 has a lot of advantages over Flash today - mobile browser or even "native" mobile support[2] is one of them.

And yes, file:// URIs are horrible to deal with. Most browsers have a very broken "same origin policy" for file:// URIs - e.g. you can't manipulate images loaded from a file:// URI, because file://c/foo/bar.jpg is handled as if not loaded from the same "domain" as the hosting file://c/foo/test.html (Opera got this right, though).

Disclaimer: I'm the ImpactJS guy.

[1] http://impactjs.com/

[2] http://www.phoboslab.org/log/2011/04/ios-and-javascript-for-...
"There's a temptation in politics to see patterns and then fit language to it that kind of fits"

...

"The minimum wage is a horrible stain on a free society."

Maybe not taking your own advice here?
It's not just the left pane that feels sparse.

I jumped into an email thread and it feels like I'm reading the soot filled footprints of ancient Siberians crossing the glacial land bridge: everything's surrounded by so much white!

In this new design it's hard for my eyes to stay focused on the actual content.
"The way in/out points and compound clips work in FCPX is simply ridiculously awesome"

You mean, the way it forgets the in/out points you set on a clip? Yeah, I LOVE that. So much more fun to re-trim each and every clip every time you click on it. Huge timesaver. /sarc
Agreed. Everything has too much whitespace. Also there needs to be more borders and accents within reason. Everything kind of just blends together as white to my eyes right now. This goes for gcal too. Glad this is an optional theme for now though.
Allegedly they don't take information from analytics. (Most of the important metrics they could probably get from something like G-bounces (when you press the back button and go back to the results page) or other sources like data from Chrome or social data.)

It's free b/c it helps marketers measure and optimize their Adwords spend, and justify it to their managers. (Most search advertising requires cumbersome custom tagging - in Google Analytics, Adwords is basically integrated automatically or with one click.)
Thats fine and maybe thats a win for Google. But if the battle is for the most relevant Social Network you're going to need to get my Mom (or at least my sister) if you're going to "win" it.
Shameless plug: Impact also works nicely with Box2D, if you need accurate physics.

http://impactjs.com/demos/physics/
That's not exactly correct. According to the article Hertzfeld was the key interface designer behind the Circles UI in Google+. The Google-wide visual redesign is the result of a lot of people's work.
> There is still much debate as to what drives the brain

There is no debate. The short answer is: sugar.

> whether there is more to human intelligence than just the physical brain

No.

> Even if we could completely duplicate a human brain biologically, would it just start working automatically

Not unless you teach it. Humans who grow up in the wild on their own are quite ape-like -- clearly, human brain doesn't start working automatically on its own (at least working well). Also, as demonstrated by machine learning, you can teach a non-biological system just as efficiently as you can teach a biological one, which means that the fist AI will reside (or already resides) on a run-of-the-mill silicon chip.

> Would it be able to learn if we could attach sensory inputs?

It would have to, otherwise it would not be human-level AI by definition.

> It's quite possible that there is much more to human intelligence than massive computing power.

Yes, and that is years of learning and good enough (just good enough) learning algorithms.

> See for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind-body_problem

My foot tells me it doesn't have that problem.
While the extra white space requires more scrolling, it makes it easier to read, for me at least. It also makes it easier to click a message.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_space_(visual_arts):
White space should not be considered merely 'blank' space — it is an important element of design which enables the objects in it to exist at all, the balance between positive (or non-white) and the use of negative spaces is key to aesthetic composition.

Most people actually seem to be liking it which is suprising to me since it's such a dramatic change:
http://www.wepolls.com/r/1012846/Gmails-new-look
Buzz and Wave were different beasts in a lot of ways, although they're all in the "social" category.

My question is, why wasn't this federated from the outset? Could have made even bigger headlines if they were like "Hey, Facebook, here's you connect your users to ours. [link to wiki/doc/etc]"
My rule of thumb on whether it's appropriate to call someone fascist: would they label themselves as such? "Fascism" is a notoriously hard to define term -- there was never a "fascist manifesto" the way there was for communism.

Life is too short to argue with someone about what their political beliefs should be called. The British National Party is a bunch of wrong-headed jerks regardless of whether they're "fascist" or not, and every moment you spend arguing with them over whether they're really "fascist" is a moment you really should be arguing with 'em about why their policies are stupid.
I understand the cynicism of many people here, and I totally agree that there is a lot more to intelligence than mere computational ability.

Then I type "adress of resurunt in adelide", it autocorrects to "address of restaurant in adelaide" and shows me a list of restaurants in my city.

I tell my phone to navigate to one, and it understands me and displays a map with route directions from my current location.

I wonder if anyone in my city has deployed SceneTap yet, and laugh to myself at how weak it is. I mean - it can only count the number of people in a bar and identify if they are male or female. I wonder why they aren't rating the attractiveness of the people there instead? [2]

Driving my car, I swear at the bad drivers ahead of me, and wish the cars here were driverless. It's crazy it has taken so long! Ok, I understand back in 2004 no cars managed to finish the DARPA challenge across the desert, and the winner in 2005 said "The impossible has been achieved" when his team's car finished[3] - but that was 6 years ago! Anyone would think this was complicated or something.

Then I come on HN, and see everyone bitching about how ignorant it is to think computers could ever be intelligent. I agree of course - it's obvious that chess is no test of intelligence, nor is spelling correction, nor is contextual instructions, nor is machine vision, nor is driving a car, nor is breaking CAPTCHAs[4]!!!

The Turing test - now that's a true test of intelligence. At least until it is passed - then obviously it's a flawed test.

[1] http://blogs.forbes.com/kashmirhill/2011/06/28/using-facial-...

[2] http://www.springerlink.com/content/t75552811t449746/

[3] http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,171673,00.html

[4] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1897932
Yeah, when this very first happened, I was in the IRC room at onlyonetv interviewed Mark (via proxy). I kept shouting in IRC to ask them to use bcrypt and was told they were doing 1000xSHA-512. I later tweeted at MagicalTux to recommend bcrypt and was asked if multiple iterations of SHA-512 is good enough. He said that he was told bcrypt was not secure enough.

How do these businesses succeed with business people that have no business wit about them, have NO ability to communicate effectively in these critical situations and have awful taste in technical advice?

Google "bcrypt sha-512 hash passwords" and tell me if it's a hard call to make. You should have heard these guys within the first 36-hours answering questions. Even the business guy over at TradeHill, "Well, you know after mtgox, we need to do a lot to beef up our security". Even if that's a true statement, what a ridiculously terrible way to phrase it.

I think speech and debate classes should be required for everyone to graduate highschool, let alone college. People aren't good at thinking on their feet and speaking in critical situations where wording makes a difference.

When you're in the business of being an online bank for an uninsured (nearly) untraceable currency, mis-speaking like this costs you your most important asset: TRUST. That's not even touching the tip of the iceberg of lies and misinformation that has come out of mtgox.

Anyone that leaves a penny in any mtgox account is an idiot.
Oh. :(
Fantastic, thank you for making my day. :3
That doesn't even make sense. iOS has a hardware method for taking screen shots. You physically press the power and home buttons and a screenshot is taken and sent to your Photo album.
But why is the top bar charcoal gray instead of the black seen on all the other sites?
Ah. Well, its not like your missing or unable to follow a fundamental concept, you just use different symbols. A bit of practice with reading things the "math way" and you'll be fine.
This is a frequently perpetuated HN myth.
Well, that's one definition of scale.
US currency hasn't even pretended to be backed by gold since the early 1970s.
Do you control the Apps domain?

Account admins have a lot of control over what is turned on or off under the accounts
It sounds like you value "getting things done" over "improving your skills." That's not a bad thing, but its not what the article was about.
Circles are nice, but not a game changer. People are on Facebook because of features. They are on Facebook because of people.
No need - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2716707
(c) DATE OVERFLOW - hilarious! The help is audio cassettes and binders with screen prints! Hahaha! And there's screen burn!
That's only because there's people on Facebook.
DOMination: Simple DOM Manipulation with jQuery
Despite my non-techie status, I'm not willing to argue that non-techies are critical to the success of any start-up endeavor. In my mind, it's a (relatively) simple matter of identifying what expertise is required for product launch and harvesting those skills sets regardless of the packaging.

What I am willing to argue is whether the non-techie derision is necessary. And even more important, productive.
Launched, although not particularly large (www.splitterbug.com). What becomes difficult to manage when you introduce customer data?
>How do these businesses succeed with business people that have no business wit about them, have NO ability to communicate effectively in these critical situations and have awful taste in technical advice?

They take off because they are excellent, useful and timely ideas. Unfortunately, people who have strong, timely ideas, like this one, frequently aren't able to find good technical co-founders, probably because of the "ideas are worthless" meme so many hackers love to recite nowadays.

So the ideas take off anyway, but the sites basically don't have the technical architecture that they should and have to be rewritten later.
A reminder that MTGOX originally stood for "Magic The Gathering Online eXchange". When a site designed for trading cards online turns into the world's biggest Bitcoin exchange you better believe there's not going to be an appropriate level of security underneath it.
"Most people" as in 11?
You could flip it and it would be just as true (that is, not at all):

Speaking as a business guy, my default position is to be turned off by co-founding with a technical guy unless they have an amazing track record. I like the advice of earning a business co-founder.

I just wish more technical guys realized their code isn't that special, isn't a magic way of printing money and just coming up with the implementation doesn't entitle you to 75% of a two-man venture. It doesn't even really entitle you to an extra 10%.

In the beginning, your job is probably going to be to find a place to host, writing alpha CRUD apps, buying computers, buying food, buying and assembling furniture and generally just making things work. That's all very unglamorous work but, depending on the venture, it's quite likely your (alleged) coding skills will be of very little value (until you've found a market).

I don't think I'm alone (as a business guy) in generally finding technical guys to have an inflated sense of self-importance who often want to treat business people as an exchangeable/replaceable commodity.
Hacker wanna be's
if your so great... hack my facebook, using only my email address :P betcha nerds cant.
World's first Bitcoin dedicated miner board claimed
It seems they like to use this term, so bitcoin can claim it's still decentralized.

Since it's obvious we do need banks for bitcoin (or a safe way to store our currency) and it's not very anonymous, what's the point of using it again?

I would rather just use credit cards or cash.
The most likely way is simply running out of money.

But anytime you don't own the majority of the company you can be fired because you don't have control.

For example suppose you and a cofounder split the stock evenly, then sell 8% of the company to a third person drawing 4% from each of you so that the stock split is 46/46/8. Now your 46% gives you the same amount of control as the person with 8%. If your cofounder and Mr. 8% decide to fire you, they've got the votes.
You forgot to mention the golfing.
$4.50 for a lightbulb? phoebus would be proud. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel
Great stories...

... it's just the article notes a subcontractor has already been convicted of fraud and kickbacks, so this might not have been a project quite like the projects you describe (though if this is a Terry Childs-type case, I'd love to hear about it).
Why did you expect anything else from either company? By profile they really mean data. Every company out there offering free services is after your data and it definitely belongs to them since they have the context for it. Your name and number and interests by themselves don't mean anything but put a context around it and that is what belongs to them.
I was more referring to the fact that we fail to produce proof of the limited amount of gold that we claim to have and every attempt to audit it is rebuked magically.

In terms of the question, how would it be handled from an FDIC perspective if it came to a worst case scenario... it'd be a shit-show.
Thanks dan. Links like this are why I read HN
The sheer magnitude of their mistake is staggering. Instead of digging in to the enterprise email market when Microsoft was asleep at the wheel, with Exchange Server going nowhere, with Google still trying to pitch their Apps product as Enterprise-Ready, they were busy making pink Blackberry phones for teenage girls.

How can you lose when the President of the United States loves your product? You get complacent. You get distracted.

RIM had an opportunity to take out Exchange Server, to kick SharePoint's ass, to supplant the truly awful Lotus Notes with something even marginally better, so long as it worked well on the Blackberry phones that everyone had.

With Nortel as much as dead, they could've even made big gains into enterprise phone systems, IP telephony, and who knows what other off-shoots once you conquer that.

They could've provided VPN solutions with the Blackberry serving as a key, something the banks would've bought the instant somebody made it. Instead everyone has to use these awful RSA tokens, and they never really worked as the recent breach proved.

RIM could've become the go-to company for IT email and groupware, but instead they chased after consumer market share. They chased after text-messaging teenage girls and got blown out of the market when Android could offer a cheaper product with more features. They're lucky that Microsoft sabotaged Danger for them or they'd actually have competition.

So damned sad.
In New Zealand, holiday pay is accrued by your employer and paid out to you when you take time off or when your employment ends. This generally means that when you leave a company you get your unused holiday pay paid out to you in a lump sum, which can be helpful when looking for a new job.

With unlimited vacation time, I guess you'd have to use it or lose it. I'd probably be more inclined to take time off during the year than see the opportunity be wasted. If holiday pay can be saved up it doesn't feel like there's an opportunity cost to not taking time off.
Sorry, your password is too secure
I wasn't advocating this method or defending Mt. Gox. (Their touting of SHA-512 and use of the unclear term 'triple salted' raises red flags.)

I was providing an example of what could be meant by 'triple salting' that didn't necessarily involve 'three servers'. We could contrive scenarios where bcrypt with this multisource-salt would be a win over bcrypt with a single same-database salt. Intellectually exploring the problem and solution space requires more than just slavishly repeating the already widely-known 'standard methods'.

Have we worked together at a level that would help you assess my level of knowledge, and the sources thereof? I don't recognize your name/handle.
So what's your email?