skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Reddit's very rudimentary up/downvote system, well, sucks. It lets the lowest common denominator rise to the top,

Which is why Hubski's solution is interesting. You're recognizing the quality of the content does not really lie in a singular post or link, but with the poster, in a general sense. There are certainly certain posters on Reddit who I know I can always look to for good content, -makes sense to have your feed populated by good content providers rather than up-votes from the crowd.
My experience being raised by the valley, or why CS is broken.
Definitely one of Ron Paul's least popular positions among the socially conservative Tea Party-style libertarians. I agree with Paul. Prohibition causes more problems than those it is supposed to prevent.

Despite being illegal, drugs are not hard to get and it is likely that we've already hit equilibrium drug usage. Therefore, drug usage levels should remain the same after legalisation.
Premature optimization of code is a common addiction that many programmers face. Optimizing every single product you buy to find the perfect maximization of qualities is the real life symptom of this mania. Which product is best? Just get the one that you find appealing. The amazing thing is that the more you analyze product choices the less happy you end up with the outcome.[1]

But this leaves the question: Do you expose yourself to the advertising? Which advertising? If you don't expose yourself to ANY advertising, how are you supposed to choose things when you are standing in the store with no phone reception and no 5 year failure data? You take a deep breath, relax, and just buy whichever one you respond most to.

How is a small upstart company supposed to establish a reputation for quality in such an environment? Does a reputation for quality actually indicate true quality?

If a luxury brand item fails every few months and you have to take it in for complementary repair/replacement, how do you end up feeling? I used to laugh at people who bought super high-end luxury goods that I know from data are made from cheap materials.

But the reality is that the high-end company stands behind their product and they replace it when it falls apart since with their fat margins they can easily replace the products that have problems. The customer ends up happy. If you buy a "best of breed" product from a tiny company with razor-thin margins, chances are they will be gone by the time you are struck by a need to seek their help.

This is really hard for me to internalize, given that for many classes of mechanical products the benefit of super-over-optimizing is that you end up with a purchase that lasts for maybe 10x as long, which helps us try to ignore the reality that for most purchases we over-optimize, all we end up with is having wasted hours of time and decision-making energy for little noticeable benefit.

[1]http://biopsychiatry.com/happiness/choice.html
Every time an idea pops into my head, no matter how silly, I write it down. Then when I think of (or read) something cool that applies to one of my ideas, such as a clever way to market it, I write that down with it.

Do that long enough (I've been at it 15 years -- I'm 35 now) and you'll have pages of notes.

As for which ideas I pursue- the ones I think I can pull off. Simple web apps, for example, versus a plastic stencil-like guide for cutting the hair on the back of your neck (idea #178).

As for doing it solo vs raising money & hiring a big team -- again, whatever way it will have the most success (for the product, and for my happiness).
Meat without Slaughter - 6 months to "bio-sausages"
I spend a lot of time on public transit and occasionally open up my phone at work. I'd hate to embarrass myself in a public place.
I've certainly seen virtualization environments where RAM is a much larger fraction of the physical server's cost than the CPUs. How much RAM are you using when you aren't using many CPU cycles?
When you're logged in the front page only shows you the content from the reddits you're subscribed to, I believe.
Steve Jobs and The End of The Personal Computer
I haven't been through them, but I used to interview for MSFT (I did ~300 in-person interview between 2000 and 2007). I'll admit I'm totally biased having worked for them and that all my experience is there and not elsewhere.
These guys are gonna get the fuck sued outta them; Asking for money is asking for trouble.

Nice idea though, hopefully they open source the important guts before Apple's lawyer-jackals pounce.
I think if you're going to make the "in spite of" argument (on any site), you have to bring some solid supporting evidence.
If someone gets their Facebook password, your system is at risk as well. You trust someone not to use the same e-mail & password on Facebook that they use on every other site?
SWF to AVI Converter for Mac, convert SWF to AVI for Mac OS X
Mac SWF to AVI Converter helps to convert SWF to AVI or HD AVI video on Mac OS X. Download the free trial to decode SWF to AVI movies for Mac.
Software inventions, no matter how original, should never be patented. Where would we be if someone had patented web-crawling or unit testing or hyperlinks or MVC? Plenty of people are getting rich, tons of innovation is going on. What are software patents supposed to be good for?
BioEngineering Methuselah (Humans Living To 150)
Baby Shower Illustrations. Too cute. Too true.
But surely the client could use human input as it's source of randomness too : After all, in this case (browser purchases) the user is going to be hitting keys and/or moving the mouse.
Well, you can make that commitment - in writing and verbally - when you join a company.

With most employers, the statement is "For a period of one year after leaving employment, I will review and sign all documents needed to attain intellectual property protection for work done in the scope and course of employment."
The Internet's $10 million Mix Tapes
That's not fair. It has comment pages for each post (?) with proper comment threads- better than Google+ and facebook in that regard.

Edit: And, of course, twitter, the one without comments, comment sections, comment pages...
According to the Intel optimization manual, there's a 5 cycle latency for doubles (4 for floats), but both fp multiply/add and alu ops have a one operation per cycle throughput.

I guess it comes down to how effectively you can schedule stuff.
Hubski looks to me more like a HN clone and less like a Reddit replacement.
[Removed because I accidentally pasted a link to hackerne.ws rather than news.ycombinator.com, since someone already posted the real link in reply, I'll just remove this]
If You Can Think, Design & Code, You Win
The Serval Mesh Project, now available on Android
My understanding of Rollback in Event Sourcing is that there IS no rollback.

If an event causes the model to be in an invalid state, another event must be triggered to rectify the model into a valid state. (Simplistically speaking)
玻璃棉
This went around a few months ago: http://giveupandusemultiplebrowsers.com/

It's still valid.
I agree with pg, although I am concerned this might take away from the urge to reform software patents the real way:

I would propose to eliminate software patents, or limit their time frame to 2 years. The industry moves way too fast and 17 years is way too long. I know pg wrote that "if you are against software patents, you are against patents", but consider this: the 17 years are completely out of proportion to how quickly the software industry moves. And the pace at which they are submitted is simply too great for the patent office to do anything appropriate in most cases. When we apply the patent trade-off to it, you get a negative result, not a positive one.

The patent trade-off is essentially that the company discloses their "secret" invention to the public, in exchange for a 17 year MONOPOLY (enforced by the government) on so much as implementing this invention in any context.

In software, innovations such as "in-app purchases" or "one-click buying" may not be obvious in 1997, but a couple years later they become "incremental improvements" that are pretty obvious to everyone. In fact, OPENNESS (open source, especially on the web with HTML, CSS and Javascript) has been the biggest driver of innovation, and not patents. Clearly, there are other motivations besides having a monopoly, and those motivations don't need the patent system at all. In contrast, they are being stifled by the patent system.

No one read the lodsys patent in order to "invent" in-app purchases. They were just bloody obvious to implement when the time came. Almost any experienced practitioner in the art would have said it was obvious when they were introduced. Then Lodsys came out of the shadows and demanded money.

My point is that the very purpose of patents is being undermined. It is supposed to promote innovation, by letting companies feel safe disclosing their "trade secrets" and "secret inventions". In reality, though, these inventions are extremely obvious to everyone when they are introduced a couple years later, and all software patents accomplish is the downside of the compromise: namely, a patent troll (a company that never implements anything, but just files patents) actually comes out and leeches money from those who DO implement the innovation.

That makes innovation more expensive, and patents become like a tax on those who actually IMPLEMENT ideas -- which we all know is much more important than merely HAVING them. For up to 17 years anyone implementing this will have to pay, and is the industry better off? Not at all. It moves so fast, that in a couple years, what was patented by a troll becomes the next obvious step. Software patents for 17 years are not benefiting society.
Or more likely those Windows programmers don't know anything else but Windows and are unwilling to invest time to dig themselves out of the pit and see the light. To me a developer using Windows willingly has always been like an IQ test.
The problem is that legalization (like alcohol) is different from decriminalization (like pot in the Netherlands) in both the effect on use and the effect on crime. Too often authors like this one will pick and choose the best or worst attributes of each to match their conclusion.

This article cites the small or negative impact on use that decriminalization has had in Portugal and then jumps straight into how legalization (e.g. after Prohibition ended) has resulted in a drop in crime.

But there is no reason to suspect that full legalization wouldn't result in a situation similar to what we have currently with alcohol. That is to say pervasive use and abuse, lavish marketing campaigns, and really awful effects on public health and safety. Not to mention regulatory capture by the industry, where even modest policy changes (like raising the federal tax on alcohol) are pretty much a non-starter.

Likewise, there is little reason to suspect that decriminalization (of use and possession of small amounts) would do much to reduce drug-related crime, both by dealers and by those users who don't have a rock band or trust fund to support their habit. And you can't really tax a substance that is not legal to sell. And it does nothing to improve the safety or purity of street drugs. Basically all it does is put fewer non-violent users behind bars.

That might be worth it, but don't keep bringing up the benefits of legalization when you're arguing for decriminalization.
Ask HN: posterous vs tumblr?
I'm setting up a blog @ blog.[mypersonalsite].com and looking for hosted blogging solution. Wordpress is not an option. I've simple blogging needs. Nothing too complex so feature wise both posterous and tumblr look great. Which one offers a better control over design and offer good templates? Which one you are using and why?
I usually enjoy your articles, but I don't agree with your view here at all. These kinds of pledges are not going to prevent NPE's from creating lawsuits and there will always be unscrupulous people willing to participate in the shakedowns.
Agreed. You're the first person I found on this thread who seems to share my belief that simply white listing every company with 25 employees or under (based on headcount alone) is extremely naive.
I've been using sublime text 2 for a month or so now and I am starting to become a big fan. I think that I'll purchase it soon. My requests...

1) Add all of the menu commands to the list of commands that show up when you press cmd-shift-p. It is very weird that some of the named commands (like convert to spaces) are available via cmd-shift-p, but others (like switch to 1 column view) are not.

2) I prefer the way textmate does multiple selection, where you can press a single key to toggle between regular selection mode and block selection mode.

Using cmd-shift-up/down in sublime text is very unpredictable. It works fine in the case you have several consecutive lines with no extra newlines in-between, but that is about it.

Though cmd-d to multi-select the next same word is pretty awesome.

3) Easier navigation between tabs in differnt split columns. I never remember the keys to switch between columns and I feel the existing normal tab management keys could do the job with a couple of tweaks.

For example, cmd-t is awesome, but I wish it was smart enough to automatically switch to an existing tab instead of opening a new tab with the same file in it.

Also, make cmd-shift-{ and cmd-shift-} move across all tabs and not just the tabs inside the currently selected column.

4) And lastly, the find in project results desperately need syntax coloring. It is so hard to scan a giant blob of plain white text.

Ackmate style file types would be nice too, but that isn't to big of a deal.

Again, awesome stuff. I can't wait to try out the vim bindings and I hope he keeps up the good work!
Windows 7 tablet PC combine android operation system
In the near future, we can expect that android tablet PC will appear more features surprise us, like Windows XP tablet PC and Windows 7 tablet PC are outstanding among the businessmen. Because they preferable office software support. But for most of people, they don’t prefer to treat the tablet PC as a business device. So android tablet PC this small defect has not been blamed and for the well user experience wins the favor of everybody.
I did try the < in different positions, to no avail. Great catch with the slice though!
Goldman Sachs: The world's going to hell , here's how to cash in
There are definitely investors who do this kind of thing to business partners, but they are usually non silicon valley, non tech investors (like a local car dealership owner who is investing in a restaurant). It is really rare among professional investors. It might happen again at the private equity level, where established businesses are being restructured, but there you could argue the value is not with the founders in all cases, or with management. I have little experience at that scale though.

In a startup, the founders, and their relationship with each other and the company, is probably the biggest asset. If an investor doesn't like the team, he just won't invest at all.
Where did I advocate using only intelligence?
Not only that, but multi-reddits as well.

I've just got a bookmarks folder full of my favorite multi-reddits instead of a single Reddit bookmark to the front page.

My Reddit bookmarks folder:

Front Page: http://www.reddit.com/

News: http://www.reddit.com/r/business+economics+entertainment+lib...

Tech: http://www.reddit.com/r/android+androidquestions+apple+bacon...

Music: http://www.reddit.com/r/bass+hiphopheads+hiphoptruth+jazzyhi...

Funny: http://www.reddit.com/r/AdviceAnimals+classicrage+comics+fun...

Other: http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism+coffee+dating+design+fitness...

Random: http://www.reddit.com/r/answers+askscience+announcements+bes...
TaylorMade MC Irons
Ask HN: Supplier for Programmable LED T-shirts or 'erasable' T-shirts?
Thanks for reading:

I am seeking advice from the community regarding suppliers of T-shirts with Programmable LEDs or shirts that have an erasable area?

Preferrably someone willing to do a small batch (< 100)

Example: http://www.fatwallet.com/HandHeldItems-coupons/offer-528267/
"and the code using that pattern can't actually be rolled back and retried, then the code is wrong."

Well, yes, sure, that's easy to say, but the problem there is when your base language has no way of detecting mutations that can't be rolled back, you can't help but write wrong code. You've been doing it since the day you picked up your first programming language, after all. And in theory, C arrays are perfectly safe because you will always pass around their lengths and check the length every time you so much as glance at the array, but in practice it's hopeless and the only practical solution for mere mortals is Don't do that. STM actually suffers from this even worse because if you actually want to take advantage of the composition promises (and if you aren't getting that why bother with STM in the first place), it only takes one bad case in one block of code, with no feedback to the programmer that an untracked effect has occurred at any point, to bring the whole thing down. One of the whole points is that you can write transactional code that calls other transactional code and it's all supposed to Just Work in a way lock-based code can't be composed together, so a single transaction may run all over the program just like a single function call can.

I can't hardly get my coworkers to properly encode their HTML, and you expect me to teach them about managing effects in a language that doesn't even acknowledge they exist as a distinct category of things?

You can solve this by adding a concept of "effect" to your language, as Haskell does... but once you do that, you no longer have the same language. Not even close. None of the old libraries will work, more semantics will have to be tweaked, the change will ripple everywhere in both semantics and probably syntax, new coding patterns will have to be learned (and worse, unlearned!)... unless someone's come up with a really big breakthrough that everybody up to this point has missed.

It's not a hardware problem, it's a semantic problem.
My solution to this password issue is illustrated here:
https://www.nucleusdevelopment.com/_account
This is my new account login. (still in alpha testing, no live)

You can login with your password or just your username then click no-password login, an email is sent to your inbox, click the link, and your logged in.
The Joel Test against my employer - a Bank
Would much prefer to see it added inside of the address bar rather than as a button.
And a dumb person may not find the same thing interesting. Do you have any research to indicate one way or the other? If not, why take a position against the notion of intelligence- and personality-based content?

Incidentally, in a sense, that's the old OKCupid model, but instead of LOLcats, it showed you potential relationship partners.
Perhaps all of us have our own idea of why, exactly, we found The Jetsons' Rosie useful and appealing. For myself, the appeal is removing the need for a human to do any sort of physical grunt work to perform a task.

With software, I still have to open a browser tab and punch in dates, times, and locations on a webpage. I still have to physically go to the grocery store [1] and redeem the coupons I've purchased.

How about software that takes my email exchange, extracts the agreed-upon travel dates, books the cheapest ticket, and automatically prints out my boarding pass? Ah, it was all software until the printer - robot.

Or something that mines the types of foods and groceries I like, orders them for me, and delivers them to my doorstep? As a grocery store manager, I might want a robot to pick the products off the shelf and transport them to the customer.

I can't Babelfish a conversation I'm trying to have with a friend. I want those translators that they have on Star Trek. Hardware. Hardware which runs software, sure, but how am I supposed to translate Chinese using Babelfish on my cell phone?

I still have to physically scrub and place the dishes from the kitchen sink into the dishwasher. Hell, I even have trouble getting them from my desk to the sink!

So I say let's have more robots! But not robots that substitute for human interaction, but robots that keep us from the monotony of everyday tasks.

[1] http://publicnoises.blogspot.com/2009/05/david-foster-wallac...
The U.S. FDA desperately needs to adopt the EPA's window sticker model. You can market an inefficient car, but it has to have a window sticker that tells the customer exactly what they are getting into.
In other words: software will replace robots when there's no need to have an actual robot, just software. Erm, yes.

When your iPhone can assemble a car, do the dishes, or actually explore Mars, let me know.
As is mentioned in the last paragraph of the article, this machine should give insight into the viability of hardware TM. Maybe it will be implemented in more common processors one day, especially as the number of cores increases.
Pretty pithy nerdrage bait, my main takeaways are that he equates retweeting with approval, and that all of the magical powers he describes he (and a fistful of friends) has still does not allow him to take comments.
I'm worried that this pledge would legitimize software patents on some level.

Even if the road to a software patent-free world is a long one I think it's better to pursue that than compromise this way.

What if a company hires its 26th employee? Is that an invitation to litigate?

I commend Paul Graham on at least trying to contribute his ideas but I think we need to think more on this.
I guess you want to focus on sales, not marketing.

IMO, google text ads (and affiliate schemes, and other similar products) are sales. You find a person with a problem, drive them to a landing page, then pitch to them. Maybe you to do it a few times, but the ultimate goal is to make a sale. The fact that it costs a lot less than a salesman is just a bonus.

Banner ads are more about building your brand, and could be considered marketing.
Very good to see this getting more attention. Aging sucks and we should fix it, for the same reason that we should cure any other degenerative condition. Also, doing so would in one shot solve the impending Medicare fiscal train wreck. Health care is really expensive when you're trying to take care of 80 year olds, but really cheap if they're as healthy as 25 year olds.

And I wasn't aware that Larry Ellison was involved in anti-aging research. Opinion revised slightly upward.
Checked out double recall, seems interesting but at the same time it seems like a combination of in-line text ads and interstitials. I am sure it will catch people's attention having to type in a product name or words related to a product but I believe that will only annoy potential customers.
Hey "Vincent," are you professionally affiliated with AT&T?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2946472
best collection of software < having an assistant that does everything + the software.

In the future, why do it yourself, if you can delegate it to a robot and focus on more important things.
Pg, Please delete this account.
I am sorry by i don't know how else to do this.

But I have to have this account deleted.
Site needs some work, right now it feels more like HN (Similar visual style aside), just one big spread of submissions.

As mentioned, the great part of reddit is sub-reddits, Hubski needs some sort of greater way to sort out and separate content. The proposed following users doesn't seem prominent enough to me yet, though maybe this will change as the site grows.
Does anyone really investigate this stuff?

Not unless there's a ton of money involved or some important asset is at risk. This type of thing happens much more frequently than they can manage so they prioritize by severity.
The bigger you are, the more servers you have to manage, the more services might provide a way in, the more users have access and might have their credentials stolen... it's actually much easier to be secure when you're small.