skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Well, now you're reducing it to just Christianity. And within the context of Christianity, I don't see why people would jump to the conclusions that they have souls only to get stuck at the problem of "so what do we do with Jesus?"

I suppose people sooner call the aliens soulless demons or rethink their whole religion than go half way in one direction and then stop in the middle.
Forget Shrinking Markets – How About Expanding Them?
The best alternative is to A/B test it with and without that type of messaging to see if it works for your users/customers or not.
The Cringely Internet Civility Plan
Another idea (sans - or in addition to a tax) to improve the signal / noise ratio of the markets: mandate that all B/Os put out there have a TTL of 5 seconds or until they are hit.

So if you Bid at X, you can't pull that bid 10 microseconds later. You can't quote stuff / probe with orders you never expect to get hit. You can't create the appearance of 'market depth' where none exists at all.
That was tongue-in-cheek, I think.

Imagine changing all of the restroom signs from "men" to "males", because "men" would signify "bathroom for everyone".

Or seeing in the newspaper "The blast killed 22 men, including 3 that were pregnant".
It makes me very nervous, but how "ethical" or not this depends on who's driving and participating in the effort.

A college friend of mine got charged with inciting a riot by standing on a car and shouting "Don't burn our hood! Go burn some rich folks stuff! Follow me!" According to him they didn't trash his stuff, and that was worth the hassle with the courts.

If your shop or car got torched or your kids are afraid at night, this is probably a great idea. Leveraging public data (photos) and off the shelf technology to at least identify witnesses if not actual participants should be done. If a friend of mine was in that situation and asked for help, I would do everything I could. If a company asked me to consult on designing the solution they could sell, I would probably pass.

I've been working in security, identity and privacy for over a decade and this "ethical" question has loomed since before Orwell. Commercial packages are marketed to law enforcement, today. Instead of disengaging or blindly sending your leads to police, the ethical middle path is a publicly defined framework. Using the riots as the catalyst, there should be public/web/community effort for vetting the most incriminating images, aimed at shaping the rules of public disclosure, law and evidence around facial recognition.

If this makes you queasy, get engaged. Saying "that's bad" or "they're wrong" won't stop those driving the technology solutions forward. Advocacy can keep the situation a little more honest.
Indian Govt wants monitoring access for Twitter, Facebook,Skype and Google
May I respectfully inquire as to how old you are? At the risk of sounding like an arrogant old fart, you act like you've never seen riots before.

These things have happened many times in the past, they usually burn themselves out after a few days and very, very rarely cost lives. This "anarchy" is very temporary. The odds of this evolving into a permanent state or a broad revolution are about zero.

Your idea of "plausible immediate threat" does not match decades of history.
Aside from the fact that I'm using a generator, where does it iterate twice? I don't see it.
7 Things I Love About Sinatra » RubySource
I don't think it's by any means uninteresting, and I agree that complexity theory has a role to play in enriching epistemology. That's why I said elsewhere in this discussion that I think this kind of work is important.

However, it's not in any way obvious that there are metaphysical implications to the limits this sort of result would place on knowledge. Facts are (for present purposes) simply to be identified with physical states of affairs. If some physical state of affairs is unknowable (and "System S will be in state R at time T" certainly looks like a physical state of affairs), does that mean it does not (or will not) actually obtain? I have a hard time seeing how one could make that argument, although of course that shouldn't stop you, if you think you have a good angle!

To address the particular example under discussion: if you take free will to consist of the impossibility of predicting an agent's actions and conclude that because this prediction is impossible, we are free, you still need to provide a further argument that your definition of free will is the correct one.

I'm not prejudging whether or not you could come up with a convincing argument to that effect—it might well be possible. But to my mind, the point of the omniscient narrator example is to add determinism to the system: because our actions are known in advance, they can be known in advance; if they can be known in advance, they must be determined. I take this to be the implicit argument when people suggest that we're not free because God knows what we will do.

Obviously there are different ways in which we can understand the modalities of time, and I won't try to pretend that this isn't a contentious area.
This has happened with a lot of new articles posted on HN in general.

It's frustrating because on one hand, you don't want to post an article that's not the source even though it has a clearer (albeit, link-bait) title, but on the other hand, you want the source link even though the title doesn't make any sense.
> regardless of whether IP should be taxed, the argument for taxing it is not that all property is taxed - because it isn't.

That's true. But hard-to-hide expensive stuff (houses, cars, land) IS taxed because it is hard-to-hide and expensive, and patents could equally well have the same fate.
Beer at Madison Ruby
Egypt vs Argentina Live Stream Online World Youth Cup 2011
It is bullshit because its main use is getting people to do things that are unnecessary so that corporations can make more money.

One must also wonder why such things are necessary now.
OpenGL 4.2 released, drives DirectX further into the ground
Why Has BlackBerry Been Blamed for the London Riots?
Crowdsourcing identity of UK rioters
This is pretty awesome!

Their contact page 404s unfortunately. There're some visual glitches in their guided tour that i wanted to point out.

Seems like an admirable repurposing of what Coffeescript is doing to create a mathematics toolkit.

(Last note: too bad they didn't name it Calculon!)
Hacking QR codes for fun and profit.
That doesn't cancel out the list of steps.
Anyone know if there a tablet pressure/tablet pen direction api in browsers yet?
First Person to Camp Out For an iPhone 5 Makes His Plans
I don't mean to be simple but the best incentives for using a product are (a) it does what it promises to do and well, (b) the cost and benefits are commensurate, (c) it is more elegant or efficient or <name your quality metric> than its competition?

I don't need games or rewards or incentives to buy products that meet these criteria.
Airbnb Rolls Out 24/7 Phone Support, Additional Safety Features
Show HN - Connecting founders with hackers instantly (powered by twilio)
the url is http://friendlyaudio.com - would love any feedback and any suggestions on best way to get users on at the same time for more effective meetups.
The Byte Order Mark breaks YAML Parsing in Ruby -- Somebody Set Us Up the BOM
New Survey Shows Confusion Over Term 'Cloud Computing'
Corporate Social Media Needs a Refresh
Developing Social Media Profiles
Not really, "^" is too dense and very different from natural language (if the target is beginners, otherwise you're right).
Oscar’s accountants expose their secrets
OS X Lion: Magnificent New Spotlight Features
Even if it is all available somewhere, I conjecture that it’s a win for those who have a project mixing PHP and Javascript, there can be one consistent style across languages.
Gazing Into the iPad vs. Non-iPad Crystal Ball
As tybris's comment indicates, the allure is primarily that you can configure the system to automatically spin up new instances on-the-fly as load increases, in case your startup gets on the front page of reddit.

Because most startups want to gratify that vanity, they set up on EC2 because they want to prepare for the "inevitable" deluge of users without paying for an adequate pipe or server configuration around-the-clock.
ITC Says it Will Look at Apple’s Patent Complaint Against HTC
These days it is a bit more complicated. Now just about anyone sensible can become a "blessed" agency, a Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organization (NRSRO).

The catch is that the biggest rating agencies accept payments by the company issuing the bond. What happens is that Bank of Insanity gives Moody's a check for $500k to rate their super-senior diseased livestock bond. Moody's then says "at least 5% of the cows will probably survive, and $500k is a lot of money, so this bond is investment grade!"

That's why things work out so poorly.
Show HN - Connecting founders with hackers instantly (twilio app)
url is http://www.friendlyaudio.com would love any feedback and the best way to hold more effective meetups with these types of users or any different pairs of people.
A lot of people seem to believe that being strong on algoritms and data structures are important skills for a programmer. Maybe it has to do with the problem domain, but I have a hard time accepting that. I couldn't implement bubble sort from scratch if I tried - let alobe anything actually complicated. I could back in school, but in the 12 years since then, I have not once needed it. Understanding the finer details of coupling and coherence are much more importabt skills in my book. It's not as easy to messure though.
I agree with the idea that the list is too focused, and probably doesn't help as much as it says it will.

After reading "Where Good Ideas come From" by Steve Johnson, I think a better approach is to be good at code, and decent at everything else. You don't need to run a 5 minute mile, but you should at least be able to run a mile without taking breaks, and be able to hold a conversation about Latin American Literature, and be fluent in your programming language, and kick out a decent design, and bowl a 150, and so on.
Newspaper giant Tribune Co. developing tablet device
Well there are two concepts in play here, one is like the old S&H Greenstamps, which is to take an activity that is normally a process to achieve a goal (say shopping for groceries so you can eat) into something that is itself a goal (do enough shopping and you can get a new toaster). The airlines created 'milers' who are folks who spend time figuring out ways to keep their executive memberships current by having enough miles.

The second is the notion of awards and 'achievements' which provide ego reinforcement for folks who might otherwise be appalled at how much time they are spending on an activity. This provides a convienient rationalization path so that folks don't say "I just wasted three hours on the TMZ site, instead they got three 'oscars' for finding all the Paula Abdul stories in under three hours."[1] Its a rationalization that they 'achieved' something by investing that time.

Affinity programs, (such as airline miles, green stamps, etc) are pretty straight forward since they give information that the customer has done a certain volume of business with you, you can afford to give them a discount (post facto) by discounting stuff with affinity 'points.' Achievement / Titles type programs are a way to tap into the human rationalization engine and generally only make the consumer feel better (or less bad) about the poor value they have received.

[1] Its an entirely fictitious example, only the web site, TMZ, is real and it really is a complete waste of anyone's time :-)
How would you define "social coding"?
You need a new voice in the video. The current one puts me to sleep and sounds dull
Great, another gold bug.
Ramping up your spam efforts on HN? It's not really worth the effort, sooner or later a mod will notice the 4 or 5 MacObserver accounts that spam and shitcan the entire domain which will ensure any submissions by legitimate users won't have a chance.
I think my biggest lament will be dying before we get off this rock and/or contact other intelligent life. But I think we're very far off from that.
Manolo blahnik shoes
Japan Government Withheld Radiation Forecasts and Data
FX Schedule 
FX Network, the channel boasts an audience who are enjoying this pay-television, American and English FX Network is always number one of the millions of broadcast television, pay-FX network with superior image clarity and is also connected to the internet such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, MSN, BBC, and others.
Does your mother refer to you as "Doctor Popular"? How about your best friend? How about the telemarketers that call or your internet provider?
Give me something that opens my eyes.

All I see at the site is: "beautiful goat", "measuring beard", "10 year old hot model". That's a crap as one can get!.
Ah... but if you do that, you'll be forcing companies to pick an arbitrary measure, regardless of how well it describes the underlying economics. The goal of accounting is description, not conformance.
Sales orgs have been running sales contests since the beginning of time. Salespeople don't take part because it makes the company more money (even though it does) they take part because it connects with their competitive spirit, gives them an opportunity to make more money, and is usually associated with some new push/technique/product for the rep to try out in the field.

Game mechanics as it applies to business is essentially just the internet version of the sales contest applied to different orgs. The problem has been that areas like customer service and development have been harder to track than areas like sales. And even sales has had to define new metrics as the sales cycle gets longer and longer, it's no longer enough to just measure the outcome, you've got to measure what happens in between. These same techniques can and are being applied to other areas, and there's a lot more that can be done.

To some extent 'game mechanics/gamification' is just another buzzword but it also represents a pretty powerful concept that can be used to build more effective organizations.
How does Scala figure out the precedence on that? And in general what does `word1 word2 ... wordN` mean?
Others might find the Sage Notebook interesting:

http://nb.sagemath.org/
http://sagenb.com/

Features

•Use Sage, Python, R, Octave, and most other mathematical software with any web browser

•Notebook interface that allows you to write and run code, display 2d and 3d plots, and organize and share your work.
I've served in the military. We had an asset we needed to secure - not nukes, but fairly important. We did the risk analysis and wound up with this layered approach: big thick blast-, TEMPEST-, and EMP-resistant door, retinal scan identification system, and an armed guard ( enlisted, not contracted ) 24/7. There was other stuff too. I don't remember it all - it was 1996 fer cryin out loud.

Complicated systems fail in unpredictable ways, and we understood that. We absolutely did _not_ want to depend on technical means only.

Maybe some organizations behave the way you suggest, but IMHO it is far more rare than you think.
We're the heuristic algorithms mixed with good user experience as applied to a market filled with endemic, institutionalized and non-innovative players.
A question on Startup's stages and lifecycle
Hey HNers,
Wanted to tap on the vast experience here in creating a startup via building a product.

I have decided to quit my full time job for a BigCorp, move to India (citizen) and start working on an idea full time, along with a co-founder who will be located in USA. My co-founder is at this time is contributing part-time. He will be keeping his job (safety net for investment).
This is our first time endeavor into a startup.
Our idea is still very rough and would evolve as we build the product (as expected). Right now we just have quick proof of concepts and simple functional prototypes.

I had a few questions, that I am hoping some of you could shed some light on:

- We are not planning to register our company yet, as we don't have a MVP. The plan is in the next 6-8months we can churn out a beta and then try to register the company (in USA). We do have our domain parked though. Is it normal for a startup to just go with a domain as its identity or do you folks register a company when you start off? We don't plan to put much on the website anyway until the beta.

- At this point our venture is completely self funded. In fact the cost to build is mostly the cost in terms of our time. Does this make our venture as a pre-seed startup? I am a bit confused about the startup stages jargons. Is there a definitive guide to it?

- Is it a good idea to keep track of expenses (assuming labor is also an expense?). Will it help in evaluations?

- What is the lifecycle most of you have seen with a startup? As I understand ->
1) Conceptualize
2) Create a minimum viable product/service
3) Self-promote, word of mouth via networdk about the product. Gather some userbase (paid preferrably).
4) For expanding, look for funding either from Angel investors or seed investors. YC is another option if we can make the cut.
5) ...
(Any step or order that I am missing?)

- Other than putting in more than 18*7 hours of work into building the product, most of which will be time spent writing code, is there something else to know and keep in mind? Some process that I am overlooking?

- We are users of what we are building and find a need for a product like this. Our current market research is based on how to plug the void that is there today. We are also actively looking at current players in the market, identifying their strenghts and weaknesses. We plan to ask our friends to help test stuff as we build and get their feedback constantly. Are there other ways of doing market research? Is it even worth it?

cheers!
The strong tendency to downvote ad-hominen / abusive comments on HN has really improved my ability to write comments that are informative and non-inflammatory. That's the good news.

The bad news is that the comments that I make that get lots of votes tend to be on bike-shedding topics - things that everyone has an opinion on, such as sexual harrassment in the community, or military toys, or HN meta-discussions. Posts that I consider authoritive (and there are _some_ subjects on which I can talk authoritively!) rarely get many points, typically just 3 or 4. In my opinion, it is this tendency that drives the reddit-isation of social news sites.

So, how can we keep the good effects of points (keeping the tone polite), and get rid of the bike-shedding? Well, personally I think it would be good if you got a point for each comment/subcomment made off of your comment. Comments can be flagged with a category:inflammatory/abusive/off-topic. Each flag loses you a point. Points are only visible to the author of a comment. Flag categories are tracked separately so that the author of a comment can see if they are getting flagged for being off-topic, or poor tone, or whatever.

I would like to be able to say that we shouldn't care about points, but they really have helped me in making my posts more informative and less inflammatory, so I think they do have some benefit. It's just that the current system has some negative unintended consequences...
It's great to see so many simple libraries taking advantage of closures in PHP cropping up. For comparison, here's my take on collections in PHP, inspired originally as much by Underscore.js as it was by Doctrine's version: https://github.com/xi-project/xi-collections

Unfortunately, there's not much in the way of documentation as of now, but a look at the API should prove illuminating. For starters, the API is meant to be inherently both chainable and extensible with room for implementations based on eg. SPL classes. The idea is for the collections not to be throwaways for intermediate processing but to instead grow into a part of your application's internal API. Although the code should be in perfect working order (we're using it in one production system currently), the concept is a bit experimental at this stage. I'd very much appreciate any comments you have.
While I agree that being defensive at first does use up the most important part of a post, I don't think it necessarily undermines it. If you can disarm people's preconceived prejudices even a bit, it may well have been worth it to avoid the knee-jerk groupthink down-vote that plagues every site, including HN.

To the extent that my use of cliche distracted from point, I am sorry I used it. Similarly, I find meta-discussion, such as critique of the language of each others posts to be distracting from important discussion.

Finally, you should hate the game. The voting system on sites like Digg, Reddit, HN, have very serious problems, and the "rhetorical tricks" like prefacing a post with "I'll probably be downvoted for saying this..." are an unintended consequence of a poorly designed incentive system. Maybe I'm oversensitive to this sort of thing as a game developer, but it seems to me worthwhile to address an incentive system which encourages people to write suboptimal posts that use these "rhetorical tricks".

I'm not advocating for the abolition of self-moderation, karma systems, etc. -- I'm just saying that the systems in place are rudimentary and leave much to be desired.
Much better just setting up an IRC channel or enabling people to set up their own profiles and allowing them to connect when they want, through search (kind of nichified linkedin). Kind of like you noodle, but stronger on the people search. In fact their people search function is pretty lame and I think a real opportunity, given the number of aspiring entrepreneurs there are wanting to meet others.

Going straight into Voice chat is tricky to pull off. Do you really want to dive straight into a voice chat with a total stranger, with no knowledge of background/sector etc?

Good idea though. We need more sites connecting non techie founders to hacker founders, we really do.

Good luck with this.
10 Curated Interviews from Investment Bankers (From Reddit’s IAmA)
I bet it would. Learning Ruby on the side made me a much better PHP programmer in 2005 because Ruby taught me how to do OO programming. Learning a little Clojure has made me a much better Ruby programmer because I started understanding the functional side of things.

Whenever I learn a new programming paradigm, I find it often does help me look at problems differently, and that does help me do the day to day stuff better.

Note I said new paradigm, not just a new language or framework. :)
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That’s really insightful, thank you.
Impressive. They seem to have added operator overloading to CoffeeScript, among other things:

# 1. Matrix multiplication

m1 = matrix([1, 2, 5],
[2, -1, 6],
[5, 10, -1])

m2 = matrix([2, 3, 1],
[-3, -1, -3],
[4, 9, -2])

show m1 * m2

Not sure how this could be used for "serious" number crunching (as it runs in-browser) but I imagine it would be a fantastic teaching tool.
Ooh those are sexy. I think I just found some new A/B tests.
Content Marketing Strategy 201
Ask HN: Hiring scam?
A friend of mine was hired on as a graphic designer for a company in San francisco, last friday, after 4 months of employment - she was told that Friday was the last day of her 4-month evaluation period - that the company will hire someone else into the 4-month evaluation now and then let her know if she was selected.

This was a total shock to her, and they had never mentioned anything about this prior.

This sounds highly suspect to me - that they are using people for 4-months at a time then dropping them prior to giving them any benefits.

What do you think? And what do you suggest she do?
I'm surprised that people who know the terms "right fold" and "left fold" are willing to write PHP.