skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This article is interesting, but I cannot take it seriously until the sources begin to link to more supporting medical literature. Nearly half of the links are to a website with a domain specifically selling this message. I clicked around this site and didn't find any citations.

I'm sorry, but the format of this site trips off my whackjob detector and no one should be willing to take random medical advice without at least the appearance of support from the medical literature.

This is doubly true when it comes to subjects of fertility or diet.
Dude. If I'm your co-founder are you going to go blab to everyone in the high hills about our relationship if it goes sour?

Not cool.
We are definitely the people who will dig out of the hole. Well, at least the people who will design better shovels :)

Even so, it's good to know what you might be facing.
Ncomputing scores big Indian deal for $70 thin-client computers
I might get downvoted for this but what the hell. Did you effing have to mention the younger girlfriend prize while talking about honor of all things?

You just made me and every other female/over 30 reader feel like shit. If you think we all get worthless as we grow older, have the decency of keeping it to yourself. Especially if you are going to expound the moral virtues of treating people right.

"Think twice before passing forward your pain, be it by inaction or by delusion" indeed.
Neurobiology of a hallucination
150 estate agents are closing every week in the UK, according to the BBC.

Every cloud has a silver lining!
People didn't "buy houses they couldn't afford". They bought houses who's value was 40-50% inflated and then had that value disappear, almost overnight.

I love how this 'crisis' is blamed on over-reaching Americans, but only one side of the transaction. It takes two to tango, but don't forget the millions of Americans who made billions selling homes at grossly inflated values.
Einstein's Mistakes
Computers at Reading University Almost Pass Turing Test
What are the arguments actually? The fact that Ordynov was robbed by wholesome food?

Dostoevsky's rubbish, as always.
I know that xkcd strips are generally frowned upon when posted here, but I thought that this was an interesting one about the DRM / Pirating situation, so I posted it.
War’s Irrational Motivators
Are the obesity rates in countries with diets high in rice consumption (e.g. Japan) especially high? Or is it usually offset by something (so in Japan's case: fish consumption)?
Then why do most doctors reject evidence based medicine?
"But Sequoia also has limited money to invest in existing companies, because money from new funds can’t be invested in old companies, according to standard fund agreements with its investors."

Pushing valuations lower by FUD is good business.
Searching for Intelligence in Our Genes
If it works, it's still a scam.
This video is not available in your country.
"why would your startup do a better job?"

Isn't that the point of what we do? Building something better, faster, smarter than established business? If you don't think you can be more efficient/better than big media apply for a job there and leave the innovation to true Hackers.
I think a lot of the market-acceptance factor is that many people, when they hear the term "affordable housing", immediately think "double-wide."
Korea has something equivalent to the social security number called "Ju Min Deung Rok Jung Bun Ho", which literally means resident registered proof number. You need a valid number to register to any site.

Internet has been the medium for the Korean people to quickly organize protests against the government and the place where all rumors regarding celebrities start. The Korean government simple wants to have people reliable for the comments they make on the internet as well as find those people who organize protests. The government or the current president probably wants the latter while using the former as a strong case to do so.

[btw, I don't think Korean people glorify suicides as the Japanese do; I'm a Korean and at least the people around me and I do not think suicide is something to be glorified.]
Multi-user editing can be really great sometimes. That's something that the desktop apps don't have or don't use effectively.

Behind-the-scenes version control is in Google Docs, so I'd expect it to be in their presentation app, too. That can be really handy, as well, and while you can do versioning decently in Powerpoint, I don't think may people use it.
It was a joke, but I'm enjoying the responses.

High pasta diets are not exactly on the menu in Mexico.
Depends on the nature of the "strategic partnership", but the stuff that I'm trying to push is really more directed at existing businesses, not startups. Many companies have partnerships with VC firms or their own VC fund or internal "labs" that invest real money in complements. Ultimately, much of the early-stage VC game seems to be about investing in complements for existing businesses and then selling the complement to that business once the risk has been reduced to a reasonable level.

So to clarify, I'm trying to say two things:
1. when designing a business model, don't think in terms of selling advertising (i.e. selling out your users), think in terms of "creating value for someone with discretionary budget to send your way"

2. most companies, especially their marketing departments, should be more active in investing in complementary infosoftwaretech.
On a somewhat related side note, last night the wife and I wanted to watch some of the Tina Fey/SNL Palin spoofs and by default we headed to YouTube to search. After not finding much, we backed out and found NBC was streaming the full clips.

The point? It will take a while for big media to encroach on GooTube's dominance. With deals like this, it will make it even harder.
Who says we can't?
Sorry about that. My point was the greedy wife left him when he most needed her.

The girlfriend was a successful entrepreneur all by herself. And she was 40. Far from a young trophy girlfriend.

And I think it's wrong to measure how much you are worth by looks in the first place. My mistake was mentioning age, but note I didn't say she was prettier (she wasn't.)

(And you got my up vote, you are right.)
It's amazing how Dostoevsky captured the dark essence of nerdiness in this story.

Here's the original for those who know Russian:

Его пожирала страсть самая глубокая, самая ненасытимая, истощающая всю жизнь человека и не выделяющая таким существам, как Ордынов, ни одного угла в сфере другой, практической, житейской деятельности. Эта страсть была — наука. Она снедала покамест его молодость, медленным, упоительным ядом отравляла ночной покой, отнимала у него здоровую пищу и свежий воздух, которого никогда не бывало в его душном углу, и Ордынов в упоении страсти своей не хотел замечать того. Он был молод и покамест не требовал бо’льшего. Страсть сделала его младенцем для внешней жизни и уже навсегда неспособным заставить посторониться иных добрых людей, когда придет к тому надобность, чтоб отмежевать себе между них хоть какой-нибудь угол. Наука иных ловких людей — капитал в руках; страсть Ордынова была обращенным на него же оружием.
I have long admired Krugman's analysis. I haven't read his academic work on economics of scale but if it is of the same quality as his articles, the nobel prize is well deserved.
SQL Server 2008 Database Performance and Scalability - the Microsoft approach
Without his made up war this would not have happen.
As much as I wish you were correct, reality says otherwise.

When I was 100% a geek, I would agree with you: the product (code) is everything, who cares about those other minor business annoyances?

Reality: how programmers does it take to implement a good product that people will buy? More than you can afford. How do you afford them? Raise money. Which for you may mean "pitch to dumb rich people", but that's still a CEO's job.

At any time in the project development, a good pitch to the right business partner can turn the company around and greatly improve its prospects. Yes, if you don't do any of those "CEO" things, you may still succeed because you push through an amazing product. But why take the chance? Try to do everything well, the product development, as well as the CEO/pitching part.
Cargo Cult Science

http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/02/CargoCult.pdf
This is an example of Google's poor aesthetic taste really hurting them. With Hulu, the bottom bar disappears entirely and you get true full-screen. With YouTube, no dice: you get a quite large bar taking up space at the bottom.
I think it's extremely important to have academics in constant communication with the public. Keeps them grounded and their language plain, while the public can continue to engage with academics long after they've graduated.
The problem is that the author assumes that the increasing rate of cancer is due to ineffective sunscreen. But there are many other possible causes: For one, the use of sunscreen may give people a false sense of security, leading them to stay out in the sun longer than they would without sunscreen. Also possible is that advances in healthcare are allowing people to live much longer on average, which in turn has affected statistics as cancer becomes a larger problem to deal with among the elderly.
This already happens.

Remember how, around 2000, we went from budget "surpluses" (based on projections which assumed the .com bubble would never burst) to deficits almost immediately?

Notice how we are bailing out the financial industry, in an effort to postpone problems? (I don't think anyone really believes the bailout will prevent a recession, though it might postpone it.)
I was also pretty unimpressed with Elbot.

My conversation.

-Hi.
Why hello there, human.

-How are you?
The results of my latest structural analysis say I am solid as a rock.

-Why would that be, my friend?
There are a few people who visit me from time to time. I think you could call that friendship.

I rest my case.
The housing bubble, generally thought to have begun in 1997, would not have occurred without the wars in Afghanistan (2001-present) and Iraq (2003-present)?

Ok.
"Preview mode disabled" - that is pretty horrible.
I get my financial advice from "midnight code monkeys".
Are Google search results disappointing you?
Over the last year I have noticed that Google search results are not as relevant as they used to be a few years ago. I often have to browse to page 2,3,4 of the search results page. But I remember often I could find what I needed in the top 3 search results on page 1.

Is it just me, or are you guys having similarly poor experience with Google search?
At McDonald's for lunch today. Well, I doubt "all", but definitely "plenty".

Unfortunately adult autism care in the US is fairly deplorable.
This is what it looks like to me: http://abstractnonsense.com/mm-slides.png

I can't find a "download" button.

You’ll probably want to full screen it.

Fullscreen mode is disabled. You probably need something like allowfullscreen="true" in your embed code.

Am I missing a joke? Or is it just broken?
For me it's "booyah!".

Said shortly after I prove or disprove something.
Incandescent bulbs to be banned by EU in 2010
True, this article immediately fails Sagan's bullshit detector. Claiming you understand _any_ cause of autism is an extraordinary claim if there ever was one.
Fields is structured differently than the Nobel prizes though - only once every 4 years, and only to mathematicians [edit: not] over 40.
My Solution to the financial crisis -

I read an article on diamond synthesis posted here recently. Now as the president, I would order a silent meeting with the head of the companies leading the diamond sysnthesis industry - Gemisis and apollo. Their work is synthesizing the gemstone into identical physical makeup as natural diamonds. The benefits for superconductors and microprocessors are tremendous as well as the impact of the diamond as a commodity trade. Some think it could well replace steel.

That being said, I would murder the ceo's replace them with body doubles, close their companies and destroy any evidence of their technologies.

Then make the find of the century....the largest diamond mine in the world located right under alaska. build a mine, staff it, then back the dollar with diamonds.

The dollar would be worth substance again and the significance would be huge around the world...
That's a pretty weak connection. You're comparing a 11th century religious organization with a capitalist corporation founded 1000 years later. This is not to say the Cluny wasn't dynamic, but why is it necessary to try and compare it with Google?
Fantastic piece of writing, thanks for posting this.
It's funny, I remember someone saying "If Paul Krugman hadn't started spewing about politics in the NY Times, he probably would've won the Nobel Prize." Looks like he won it anyway...
I am not sure it is so much criticizing as much as it is simply describing.

Being passionate about something to the exclusion of every thing else is a common human folly.

That something being knowledge is common for us hackers.
I agree.

That, and when a lot of people think "I'm going to buy a house," they are thinking of that one house that's in every single suburb. That one that is functionally the same but might have a different room layout.

I think the trend may be shifting (part of me thinks that the trend will have to shift), and that would be good. I know that I, and most of the people I know, would like to be living in a walkable community in housing that is as sustainable as possible.

I mean, if I had the capital for it, I'd get on building an awesome little town. I don't though, and probably won't for a while - maybe someday though.
Well yes, that's what the article says, eventually, except you have to wade through a whole bunch of BS about construction costs to get there.

It seems to be mostly wrong about _why_ land is more expensive than it's ever been, blaming it on various policy initiatives. Really though, land is more expensive than ever before because there are more people than ever before. Also, because we're richer than ever before (in terms of the amount we have left over after paying for groceries etc) and hence are willing to spend a higher portion of our income to secure one of the limited number of blocks of land which are in a convenient location.
Left-leaning columnist and economist wins Nobel?

Doesn't seem very surprising to me given the history of the Nobel committee in the soft sciences and humanities. It will be interesting to see how history views Krugman's accomplishments. I know some of their laureates, like Arafat, didn't hold up so well.
The reason China's censorship works so well is not because it is so hard to bypass, its because the general populace doesn't understand or wants to take the time to understand how to bypass it.

Imagine if FOX was your only news source just because you had to go out of your way to get a black box and steal your neighbor's cable. (Maybe that's stretching it a little, but you get my point.)
I always thought the main thrust of WiMAX was to allow high-speed connections to rural areas because of low infrastructure costs. I guess I was wrong. Seems like rural areas are being ignored altogether.
I think you meant "not over 40".
Long term unemployed and discouraged workers puts the unemployment rate around 11%. If you're going to call numbers, please either know what they mean, or explain why your 6% figure is somehow more relevant than the figure that... uh.... measures the total number of unemployed who'd rather be working.
Release-Critical Bugs Delay Release of Debian Lenny
The Audacity of Open Source Audio
You can't blame the sellers. They took whatever price they got away with. That's what they are supposed to do in a market.
Do I have to spell it out?

The observation is that sunscreen sales and melanoma rates are correlated. That's probably true, but it doesn't tell us anything about causation, one way or the other. Perhaps sunscreen is ineffective against melanoma. Or perhaps melanoma rates are rising because sunscreen use causes melanoma. Or perhaps sunscreen sales are rising because melanoma rates are rising. (As someone who has just watched a close relative die of metastatic melanoma, I assure you that the experience really inspires you to wear sunscreen and go to the dermatologist. Every time I get a pimple, I have to fight the desire to visit the emergency room.)

Perhaps sunscreen sales and melanoma rate would be completely unrelated, if they weren't both driven by an external cause. Perhaps they're both caused by population increases in the Sun Belt, or by other demographic changes.

Perhaps sunscreen is highly effective against melanoma, but there are still lots of older patients who got all their sun in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s before sunscreen was invented, and those patients are still getting melanoma at large rates. Or perhaps sunscreen is completely ineffective, but we won't know until the people who used it as kids reach their sixties. Or perhaps sunscreen causes melanoma... but it takes more than fifty years to do so.

Perhaps sunscreen causes autism! I guess that's what this article is trying to suggest.

As you can see, pulling hypotheses out of one's ass is easy to do, and it's fun for the whole family. It's also uninformative. Scientific studies would be informative. I'm sure there are lots and lots and lots of published studies which address hypotheses like these. It's a pity that the article didn't cite any of those studies.
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/1857261/Whiner-Jerkins-All-Hands...
Only 55 VC Funds Raised Money In The Third Quarter (Down 29 Percent).
MySQL University: Checking Threading and Locking With Helgrind
Economics Theory Adapted To Trace Brain's Information Flow
i love paul krugman. completely logical , insightful, and comprehendable
I meant the closest Nobel to a Maths Nobel is Economics. I didn't mean another award entirely.
useful stuff - plugins for wordpress, drupal etc. might be useful for distribution
The argument is "land" combined with restrictions on converting other kinds of land into residential homes.

However he does not follow through on the regulatory costs and sort of buries them in the article.
Maybe if they would link out . . .
I don't agree with this statement at all. China has a lot of highly educated (and in practice, unemployed) young people. Many of them are in IT. In my opinion, it's ludicrous to think that large numbers of people don't circumvent the great firewall routinely (perhaps even for simple privacy issues devoid of any seditious intent).

Look at America. Lots of people use privacy-enhancing technology, even in illegal contexts, without really understanding it or the issues that surround it.
This is huge win for any company making a product that needs the network but doesn't want to be tied to an existing broadband deployment. The cost of embedding a WiMAX chip is far cheaper than embedding a 3G chip, so a whole new array of devices will now be able to communicate with your network or web site whereas before it was too expensive.

Some of the examples in the article (parking meters, home energy meters, etc) were interesting, but there are exciting consumer facing applications for this.
Joost Turns On Its All-Flash Website. Is Anybody Watching?
It's the link underneath the flash.
Haha good point, but it was a play on "Le Web" and "Le Meur".
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Since some of the folks who decide the Nobel winners have been quoted that other decisions were made as a "kick in the leg" at the Bush administration, Krugman's political columns probably helped him.
This should be part of Firefox
Cisco Lays Off Texas Broadband Telephony Employees
Advanced Micro Devices in the Clear | TechJaws
Sequoia Capital: Armchair quarterbacks
Far Cry 2 The Next Generation FPS | TechJaws
Don't forget "project", "ghetto", and "minorities"
Uninformed Journal Release Announcement: Volume 10
Cluny was the magnet for smart people that Google has been in recent times. And it was extremely profitable and fast growing. It's possible nothing before it had grown so rich so fast, except states by conquest.

Also, here's the thing about comparisons: they're not like scientific statements, where you should err on the side of parsimony. A statement of the form "x is like y" is an invitation to consider similarities between them.
I counted 451 variables, which is pretty impressive given how smoothly it runs in Firefox along with it's levy for memory leaks. :O
Well, exactly.

Here in the UK there are lots of people complaining that locals are being priced out of their own coastal towns, as city folk are buying up properties as second homes. But when the time comes to sell, those locals are perfectly happy to take the money.

Most of today's problems are caused by people who want to have their cake and eat it.
To those people wondering about the influence of politics on Krugman's prize:

(1) Krugman won the John Bates Clark Medal for economics in 1991. This is a Prize given every two years to an American Economist under 40. It's often considered harder to win than the economics Nobel, and is a significant predictor of who actually will win the Nobel. Note that this was largely before Krugman got involved in politics, and past winners include Milton Friedman. I doubt his politics helped him win this one.

(2) By most measures of citation impact, Krugman is one of the world's leading economists. E.g., http://ideas.repec.org/top/top.person.nbcites.html

Citations are, of course, an imperfect predictor of the significance of someone's work, this is just an additional data point.

I doubt his involvement in US politics had much impact on the prize.
A Blogger's Guide to Armchair Economics
> People didn't "buy houses they couldn't afford". They bought houses who's value was 40-50% inflated and then had that value disappear, almost overnight.

If they can't pay for their houses, they can't afford said houses, no matter what said houses are worth or how said worth changes.

Mortgages aren't "called" when a house's value changes. Mortgages aren't "called" when the lender goes bankrupt (someone else buys the mortgage). The terms don't change when the house value changes.

They're losing their houses because they can't afford to pay for them.
Python extension for Firefox
Ask city councils that set minimum square footage restrictions for new housing.
I shared the exact sequence of impulses after viewing the video. Someone please put a price-tag on this.
Samsung S3600 Unlocked
Samsung may be gunning for a high end market with it’s touchscreen flagships like Samsung Pixon M8800, smartphones like Samsung Innov8 i8150 or as yet unannounced Symbian based Samsung i7110.
How to Survive Outside the Valley
It's broken to me too; with flasblock + the debug version of flash installed, I couldn't get it to send me to the link posted by adnam.
Greenspan's policies were the main cause of the current recession. I think we should give credit where credit is due.
Dostoevsky isn't talking about the "dangers of science" as such. He even goes out of his way to make that clear in the last sentence.

Seems to me more like he's interested in what happens when the intellect runs amok and is unbalanced by other aspects of human nature. Although I haven't read this story, that would be consistent with the rest of his work (Crime and Punishment, for example, which now that I think of it really goes into the dark side of "nerdiness").

Edit: Rereading the passage, I don't think that's really what's going on here either. This character seems naive and almost helpless, and the tone is more compassionate than critical.
Bavcyc hit the core of this problem: The central item is YOU.

Are you, the programmer, familiar with perl? That's the question that really matters.