skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This isn't a problem of democracy. It is far more general than that: it's a problem with humans. It persists even on the small scale -- in an oligarchy, and even in a monarchy or a dictatorship. Indeed, it might be an even worse in a dictatorship, because when the dictator decides to prefer an intuitive falsehood to a counterintuitive truth, there's no effective way to argue.

The answer to this problem, at every scale, is marketing. That's not what a roomful of rationalists wants to hear, of course, but it is the correct answer: Although it is wise to support proposals that are backed up by statistics (because those are the ones that are likely to work!) you also need a sales pitch. You must get people to associate the proposals with mom and apple pie, or with sexy people, or with Progress. Or you must convince them to follow the herd.
Great job Alex!

Some immediate feedback:

- Green: no good.

- Going to nytimes.com and trying to snip article segments on the front page: doesn't work well. I'd make sure the front page on the alexa top 100 works flawlessly

- I think you need to highlight what you're about to snip when you're in "snip mode"

Besides that, great work: When can I subscribe to other people's snips?
I like the concept. If it does whats advertised and without too many bugs it sounds like something a LOT of sports buffs would like. So it looks like a good idea with a lot of potential... beyond that I have not yet tried it myself, but I intend to.
(a) It's not clear that he's an American. In fact I rather suspect he's not. In any case, and with my melodramatic invocation of "love" notwithstanding, it's perverse not to recognize that this is no ordinary election, regardless of which candidate you favor.

(b) I didn't say anything about my views on the election, just that I think it's historic. That goes even for libertarians; though I agree spending will be out of control no matter who wins, the president affects much more than the Federal budget. And an election in the midst of two wars and a global financial crisis with the country's first black presidential candidate is historic no matter how you slice it.

(c) I'm an anarcho-capitalist (terrible term) in the David Friedman tradition. Put that in your libertarian pipe and smoke it. ;-)
I applied but haven't received anything, including spam (gmail).
Secrets for controlling VirtualBox from the command line
MUCH BETTER! Using Mob Wars as a template was a wise choice.

Still the invite component needs to be pushed harder. You aren't enforcing team size requirements for running missions and you aren't rewarding people for building rosters of real players.

OH, and you forgot to put in Offerpal. This is a great game for Offerpal. :)
Should Google Go Nuclear? Clean, cheap, nuclear power (no, really)
Who’s To Blame for Tech’s Woes? You and Me
I see you do reward $10 per hour per fan when you buy a hat logo deal. Not very obvious though and encouraging them to get more "fans" when they buy the hat deal would good. :)
But asking for more references will not guarantee more perspectives; it is simply guarantees more data, possibly repeated data. It is quite possible that the 10-15 references you ask will say within delta of the same thing about the candidate. You get reinforcement, but that doesn't seem quite useful enough to justify all the added calls.
> I think Sun is doomed, but I've been saying that for the past 15 years.

I think Sun as we know it is doomed, but they still are sitting on a ton of amazing IP - Current generation of SPARC, Solaris, Java, MySQL, etc.

Question is where do they go from here? There are strategic mergers with outfits like IBM and Fujitsu, but I don't think they are compelling enough... I think those will only really come about if Sun detonates and needs to be sold off - which I don't think is likely right now.

They also appear to have bypassed the whole "cloud" bit entirely. Even if you're skeptical on the cloud it might be a risk worth taking for Sun. It's a new market at least, and it's a growing market. They've got the hardware experience, Java and MySQL. These would all make a good basis for a cloud play.
He mentioned elsewhere in the thread that he is a researcher in Europe; there is some variability, but basically if he was in private industry in Europe he most likely wouldn't have any of the insane IP concerns you are spouting off on here.
Voyage of the bacteria bots
Yeah I can see a difference--Linux breaks backwards compatibility way more than Apple =P.
I'd say no. The cost of the silicon wafers in terms of $ and energy to produce has remained about the same. Refinements in process that make it a little cheaper have been offset by higher energy costs. What Moore's law has done is make it possible to fit more and more transistors in the same space, not make the space cheaper.

I'm calling bull on this one. Photo-voltaic solar is still ruinously expensive and it will require more than incremental innovation to change this.
"Not counting nuts and bolts RepRap can make 60% of its parts; the other parts are designed to be cheaply available everywhere. This is an interesting coincidence: we can make 60% of our proteins; the other parts are evolved to be cheaply available everywhere..."

Sounds corny.
Well, I am not sure straw man is the correct term, but I am not meaning to personally attack the designer. I was merely refuting the point that some are making that this is a brilliant design.

And I am not sure claiming the UX analysis and usability questions are hallmarks of amateurs is a very compelling argument from you. It seems to me they should be the questions everyone is asking about this form.

And there are clear design patterns in form design, even if they aren't the most effective, they exist and users are used to them.
It's like the grey goo, just MUCH MUCH BIGGER. Oh noes!!
Was just a joke - relax.

Really.
Yeah my karma is comment driven too.
Not only are the 193's not required, they don't count towards the major at all.
Maybe not absolutely "anybody," but it allows a lot of people with no sense of aesthetics to make decent-looking documents, which is still pretty successful. If you don't need to do any mathematical notation, TeX is not difficult to use, especially if you can just use a preexisting package.
SCPD videos are generally only available to students. If you're not an actual Stanford student, they want your money. The videos show up at https://myvideosu.stanford.edu, but you need a valid SUNetID.
> (a) It's not clear that he's an American. In fact I rather suspect he's not.

Me? Based on what?

> In any case, and with my melodramatic invocation of "love" notwithstanding, it's perverse not to recognize that this is no ordinary election, regardless of which candidate you favor.

Perverse? Every presidential election involves some "leg tingling", so what makes this one so different?

> And an election in the midst of two wars and a global financial crisis

World wars were bigger - were all those elections "historic"?. The Civil War was in the US - was 1864 "historic"?

> with the country's first black presidential candidate is historic no matter how you slice it.

Racist :-) (Didn't you get the memo? Any mention of race is an attack on "The One".)
Despite being rejected for YC, pg and team couldn't have done it in a more graceful way.

I was appreciative of the way the email read.
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viaweb?

</kidding>
Don MacAskill: Now is the time to build
the new kernel change my /dev/hda to /dev/sda, which messed up my custom fstab entry. so it went to command prompt on startup to allow me to change it. fine apart from that.
Me? Based on what?

I think it was the repetition of "US ... election" that gave me that impression, and in particular the inclusion of "US" in the construction. As a US native, it probably wouldn't have occurred to me to include that modifier, so I guessed that you might not be American.

what makes this one so different?

Well, "an election in the midst of two wars and a global financial crisis with the country's first black presidential candidate", for starters. Not to mention arguably America's lowest standing in the world since WWII. I remember seven elections and have voted in four, and (despite the "historic" claims four years ago) this one feels bigger than any of them.
I'm taking a Comp Sci class in flash animation and graphic design. Not only does it not count towards the major, but nor for any elective, either (of the ones I have remaining to fulfill). But I wanted to take it... and it's been worth it.
How do you know that a back-door reference from someone they did not list would not poison the well on an otherwise qualified candidate? Perhaps the candidate is ill-placed enough at his current employer to be likely to garner a one or more middling reviews -- perhaps that is why he is looking elsewhere. It's possible that your corporate culture is sufficiently different that he can thrive, but how would you know?

Really the opposite could be said for references he provided; they'll sing his praises, even if he is a total dud.

Not saying references aren't extremely important, but I wouldn't mind some thoughts on getting past the apparent fragility in the process.
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I found a site that I thought were selling fakes but thought I would take a chance. Ordered a pair of Gucci sunglasses for less then $100.00. I had seen them elsewhere for as much as $350.00. They came fast and were the real deal! Came with the Gucci case and couldn’t believe the price. I don’t know how but netshades.com is the place to purchase Gucci sunglasses.
Ah, good thinking. You also get paid more when you play games, which I should also make clear. Maybe I'll put a description in the fan page, and also in the challenge page.

Thanks for the advice.
Oh, there'll be a commissioner section coming soon. We'll even let people buy star athletes and such.
Thanks. Please tell me if it lives up to its promise.

The hardest part is the game mechanics, pricing stuff, payouts, etc. Making it so people can advance, but not so fast that they get bored. Making them want to come back, but still giving them some stuff to do now.

It's a tightrope and has made me appreciate Mob Wars and other video games more.
Hmm, seems good enough volume for me
the licensing for a new nuclear facility is measured in decades
all of this "a downturn is just the time to get going!!" shit is becoming a tired cliche. do you know what happens in a downturn? people put their money away. yes even for your "awesome" work. so if you like "no money", roll up your sleeves! when the downturn is over the next bubble will be in greentech, so you won't be getting rich then either. THE WEB IS NOT IN THE THIRD OF NINE INNINGS. that is just what your dipshit "thought leaders" tell you. do you know how big google's cash hoarde is? if they dropped a penny from the top of it, it would go through your skull. move on, this market is settled.
"I divided my work into two categories: what I had to do to "feed the animal" (busywork and formal requirements) and what was meaningful to me. The strategy was to minimize the former (not eliminate it - don't fight the beast, petting works better) and maximize the latter."

This is my exact strategy at the day job. For a long time, I rebelled against the absurdities of corporate life and got into long and difficult fights to change the system.

These days I just use the system to maximize progress towards my goals and minimally "feed the beast" exactly as gruesom pointed out above.

Imo, most managerial jobs can be handled in exactly the same way and can be used to further what you really want to do. (In my case I am working through "Introduction to Algorithms" (Cormen et al) in between meetings, memos and other management madness). One just has to be constantly aware of how much time and energy goes into which category of work.

I think of it like going to work at Arkham Asylum. You need to know what it takes to keep the Joker and the ScareCrow calm (or at least not ripping out your throat) while you save a chunk of your salary and work towards that startup. It is kind of fun in a "play a strategy game" kind of way. It also helps that I am mentally prepared to drop it all without a qualm, and walk away on a moments notice if it becomes necessary. Being single and having no family to support really helps here.

Great post gruesom!
You don't, just like you don't know whether a "front-door" reference would really hire the candidate again, or is in fact just being nice. The whole references thing is frought with peril; I got tanked on (one, longshot) VC due diligence thing from a bad back-door reference. A friend of mine I recruited for a company I worked for got tanked on her back-door reference. She went on to be a total rock-star at the job she got instead of us.

On the other hand, I have stories about back-door references that were collected too late to avoid tragic mistakes.

You want to do both. The back-door reference is harder. The idea that you're getting real information from "10-15" fast reference checks from friends and family seems crazy.
I love that there is no politics here. It's really eerie though. There's so much about politics in everything I read, hear, and see all day that when I check HN it feels like walking out of a really loud room in to a really quiet one.
Is the Bailout Constitutional?
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Analyzing the Hacker News Users’ Join Dates, Karma, and Profiles
re-post from a link in this comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=349524

Thought this was interesting enough to be its own thread, even though the data is a little under 200 days old.
Rise of the political economy: Pols now want more strings on TARP.
Zed follows up on the search for Matt
Grey GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO?
Sometimes I doze off a little when you're talking. This must be one of those occasions. Sorry.
5 Stars for Guy Kawasaki's "Reality Check"
John Walker's Crisis Letter to Autodesk Employees (1983)
In Washington state? Nominate yourself for a WTIA Industry Achievement Award
You did the right thing Zed. Glad you at least have answers now.
If only you get to decide what's small, what's completely optional and whats the entire task, you are right and I submit.

You would have to be crazy smart to figure out P,NP, etc. in 15 minutes without pre-existing knowledge of it.
Check how fast it takes to brute force your password
Happy halloween everyone (.mpg)
First thought that came to my head after reading the name: "Snipd: It's circumcision 2.0."
tl;dw (Too long didn't watch.)

But yes: they should.
Hmm..no iphone users here it seems...
Definitely yes on the duck-horse. I can't stop imagining how it would look. Thanks a lot.
Good read! I really like the way every single detail was thought out and actually made sense. It happens quite often that the explanations for a design are corny and far-stretched.
2008 McCain Contributions From Law Firm Founded By Charles Keating |
The most interesting part of that post is Zed's commentary on reddit. As an early reddit user I found it blunt, but it struck a chord none-the-less.

I think it's time to move the discussion from how reddit's different to how news.yc is going to prevent the same thing from happening here. It's clear (at least to me) that comment voting just promotes group-think.

It seems we have a few stop-gap solutions (i.e. moderation) but nothing yet that's practical, elegant, and effective.
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I remember hearing about "business method patents" a few years back when I was still working at Deloitte Consulting. They positioned it at this huge win and I didn't see how it was going to work. I'm really happy to see that it didn't.
I got turned too. We're competing with eBay and our site launches in 2 weeks.
Venture capitalists not upbeat on economy
Yes - Nuclear should be much more prevalent than it is.
Well, you are definitely right about one thing: policy analysis is, unfortunately, a task too exhaustive for the average American. Therefore, I can definitely imagine a counterintuitive (but right) stance turning off voters.

However, one thing that I have learned throughout this whole financial crisis is that people do care. And regardless of whether or not the underlying problem(s) are generally understood, the public wants solutions...and good ones.

Political stances are always under a lot of scrutiny from the university professors and media networks. So if the general public cannot analyze and understand the full situation they will instead rely on and digest the consensus of the intellectual community. I cannot see politicians (at least smart ones) worrying about having their their voters understanding their policies. They have bigger fish to fry. They have to be right, they have a record to defend, and they want to carry on a political career that can only advance with a record of retrospectively, good judgment. Matthew Arnold put it best with, "The freethinking of one age is the common sense of the next."
"Our philosophy is to not let anyone amazing get away, even if we don’t technically have an open position for you."

Reminds me of NFL teams who draft the best player available, regardless of position/needs on the team.
Hacker News keeps surprising me. Months ago I thought it was going downhill, but it seems to have stabilized a bit since then.

Reddit still has stuff that's worth reading, but damn, you have to search now. It's a pain.
Not 100% convinced about comment voting promoting group-think: I try (and sometimes fail) to vote on comment quality even if I disagree with the points made. The discussion in this place is routinely exceptional in quality, and it seems to me the few occasions on which the case for group-think could be made could equally be explained by the fact that commenters sourced from such a narrow demographic are likely to do a fair bit of agreeing.

That said, I'd be aghast if we ever descended to the level of reddit.
I really don't want to rain on anybodies parade, and I'd really like to like the design just because it's different and original. But unfortunately, I don't think it's a step up in terms of usability.

Ignoring stuff that others have already pointed out, there's no way to know which fields are required before you submit. Not a big thing in the grand scheme. But it's kind of a no-brainer, always recommended usability thing.
is now a good time to ask...

'how are you going to make money?'
Hair today, gone tomorrow: tracking hair loss and growth
The irony is that we said the same thing as early redditors about digg.
Juliana's Site
Very old. We all wish the Polywell would be funded, but who will shell out the cash?
Robert Bussard passed away last year of cancer at the age of 79. Check out his wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Bussard
Canvas Prints - The Best Wall Art
Canvas Prints are not something new. However, they are being used more and more in new and exciting ways. The concept of taking a normal photo and getting it printed on to canvas is great for taking those well captured photos and hanging them over the mantle piece, and having them as a focal point in your lounge. Sure, you could always find yourself a nice art piece at the local art shop,
Well you are partly right, but you can get a lot further and get there faster if you do have a plan.
I could be wrong, but I think this letter illustrates why why many of us are attracted to startups. This kind of esprit de corps, this sleeping under your desk and working around the clock doing everything you can to move the ball forward, this single-minded insanity that focuses 100% of your effort and will on building something amazing and changing the world forever. Is it probably just naive and idealistic and ridiculous? Yeah, it probably is. But I think at the end of the day, many of us just want to be that committed to something.
Cogent, Sprint Disconnect Networks, May Cause Web Slowdown
(The begining of) The end of Business Process Patents
I agree that 10-15 references is totally bogus; I said so much in a reply to a different comment.

I'm still boggling though, actually more so than I was before your reply. You mention examples here that make the whole process seem incredibly error-prone, bound to result in false positives and negatives, and as you described it fraught with peril. This is a discouraging testament to the utility of doing reference checks.

I feel quite uneasy questioning years of standard hiring practice, but do the benefits of this sufficiently outweigh the drawbacks? You gather data about the candidate, but no metadata about the recommendation, which I can see make a considerable difference in how the reference is acted on. Metadata such as:

* the relationship dynamics of the recommender to other people besides the candidate

* how candid the recommender is about the benefits and drawbacks of things he/she evaluates

* what sort of events the recommender encountered, and what mood that set him/her in before talking with you.

All of these would put the recommendation in better context. There are probably other data points (recommendations of the recommenders, etc), that could be considered, and then there are time/benefit trade offs to decide which are best left unconsidered.

I will agree that a reference check will likely shuffle out someone who is obviously a raving lunatic, and would never work out no matter where they are hired. But, beyond that, it seems more nebulous. I have the sense that there is a combination of institutional inertia and real benefit that drives this practice; I want to understand where the bounds of each are, and whether my intuition is completely off-base.
Attack Ad Generator (friday fun)
Here is the treehugger side of me, not the pragmatic side: where do we dispose of the waste? At the end of the day there's still waste created.

Here's some pragmatism: Why spend any money investing in a new short term solution when we could spend the same amount on renewable energy that never runs out such as wind, solar, tidal and for the most part hydrogen? In another few hundred years we will start running low on uranium (edit: Wikipedia says it can be reprocessed and used an estimated thousands of years). I think if we're going to transition from oil and coal we shouldn't just go to a new stop-gap solution. The next energy source needs to be renewable so we never run into the same problem again.
You can set your update manager to only fetch security updates and install them in the background (and via a GUI, too!). They don't break anything and you won't get bugged.

Plus, many people have huge hard drives and making backups of the OS isn't hard. You can fix it of course, but why bother when can you do it faster restoring from a backup..
Secure data backup solutions
After a recent system crashed that had our companies critical data on it I knew we needed a better backup system. The solution IFS Technologies offered with recovering an entire system in 30 minutes was amazing and best of all - it works!
Jeff Atwood is trying to kill me
It indeed says "From web", which is the standard if you don't provide a source parameter to the API. So it's not that hard :)
The Deacon's Masterpiece or, the Wonderful "One-hoss Shay": A Logical Story
Really!? Can you elaborate? I am interested specifically in what attracted you to the product.

I am obviously not seeing beyond the emacs/vi wall.
Ubuntu 8.10 Arrives, Bringing More User-Friendly Features