skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Annoyingly, before me and my cofounder were hung up on precisely this question. We said "I know we've heard this a lot, but I can't think of any natural reason why the golden ratio would be favored in nature." We thought for a while, and gave up.

We should have just looked at the data. stupid, stupid, stupid...
Sounds like stuff from the minority report.
I'm not sure which articles you're calling FUD and what if anything you thought got unfair coverage. I submitted the scripting.com link because I wondered how it applied to facebook. fb and app store are the two biggest new platform type things. I'm sure Android will be hammered on for something (eventually).
ألكرويتات نت
Should we reunite fragmented conversations?
I'm still not sure why it failed.

it sounded like he just got tired of working on it. I mean, for a job like that with lots of physical schlep work I'd budget for a few people to handle the physical labor.

Maybe $10,000 was a hard budget limit? I dono. it sounded to me like he should have stuck it out for a while longer, maybe after finding an underpaid lacky or partner.
I hope so. I'm sick of seeing features act as leading indicators.
Oddly, good communication is nearly the complete opposite from good code. Your code should be boring, consistent and obvious. It makes it easier to fix that way. Writing should vary, be inconsistent, approach things from different angles, and often be redundant. It needs to be messy enough to keep the human mind interested; although too many little irritants like spelling and grammar can be disruptive. Some structure is good, but too much spoils the flow. It's a balance.
Image search engines still keep launching
comment re-integration from multiple sources aimed at the consumer is a losing strategy as it only serves the producer.

I think this is a pretty interesting hypothesis. It certainly applies to my usage pattern. I detest aggregations of comments from multiple sources. It's like trying to watch six television channels at once, three of which are inevitably tuned to the home shopping network.

You can't have a meaningful conversation with a thousand participants. It's much easier to have a hundred conversations with ten people each, conversations in which all parties are acquainted or at least share a set of common assumptions. Our languages, our social habits, perhaps even our brains themselves are designed for that use case.
Ask YC: What do you know about ARGs (Alternate Reality Gaming)
Hey Guys,

I'm helping a friend gather research on ARGs to help her launch her startup. I figured some of you may know yourselves or someone who does know something about ARGs. You can leave the comments here or email me at jason [at] publictivity.com

Examples of popular alternate reality games/campaigns are:

-i love bees (halo 2)
-lost experience (lost)
-the beast (AI movie in 2001. it started the genre off)
-recent dark knight campaign with citizens for gotham
that is CERTAINLY some of it... wtf were they thinking when they decided to take the regular find-file TAB key and replace it with RET???

to answer the question above: it is VERY intrusive. I've finally set it up to only ever take 1 line only, but even then it is a huge departure from the norm. The key incompatibility is a huge issue. The fact that all my muscle memory (17 years) is dead using it.

I have this peculiar belief that C-x C-f RET should _always_ open the parent dir of the current buffer's file. ido threw that out the window. Now that will load the alphabetically first file in the dir. Lame.

There are others, but I don't remember them currently.
Amusing. I saw the word "Stylish" and wondered how someone got it working in Firefox:

http://git.jrock.us/?p=Server-Stylish.git;a=summary

I had the name first! :)
Congrats on leaving to do something you like, life is too short to sit in a cubicle doing 9-5.

BTW that level 400 class sound's cool, would there be a public homepage for this class?
Help Protect Great Tits, Fight Global Warming, Scientists Say (With Pictures)
It's more complicated that that, of course, since the crisis might have been less likely had Glass-Steagall remained law.
I'm now using posterous, although I have a in-stasis tumblr. Has anyone spotted a good comparison between the two?

I like the intuitive autopost-to-twitter, works well for me.
Two Dunkin' Donuts stores are about to start trialling a system that can scan your face and play an advert on a digital screen that is targeted to your age, gender and demographic group

ie, racial profiling, stereotyping, etc ... another reason why I avoid the chains now and go to the local neighborhood stores where people recognize my face know my name.
I played perplexcity. It was fun and interesting, and the fact that they had money behind it (and could hire helicopters and actors and stuff) made it stand out.

That said, I think you can do a good job without much money if you shoot for the niche. I live in a small, boring town with a lot of bored college students, and I've thrown around the idea to make a local low-budget ARG more than once and it's been met with a lot of interest.
mind sharing what interested people?
That's what I was thinking as I wrote it.
Maybe he has access to a Bloomberg Terminal
Crash of 1987 compared to today
Ask YC: How to find perfect designer for startup?
Hi Guys,

Do you know some hints of how to find excellent designer for web startup?

I am a programer so I am not very familiar with design area, so I am wondering:

1) where to find excellent designer, where they live?

2) how to chose several from many for personal interview?

3) how to interview designer and analyze interview results when I am programmer?

4) how to make sure that he/she is good for particular startup, may be some test period?

Hope answers will be helpful for other people.

Thx.
>Have you ever blogged about Halo's Law?

I don't have a blog - it's more of a recurring joke than anything else.
I think it's the same thing at least a dozen other websites do too.
I'm a little pissed at my high school for starting a FIRST team the year after I left. I mean, we had sponsors for the years before that, but they would always back out last minute.

Man, this would have saved me a ton of money at WPI (you get a scholarship if you compete), but who knows I might even stay at Northeastern, seeing how much I love it.
Luarc: an implementation of Arc's web server
Download PSP Games Online
If you are looking to get Downloadable PSP Games online then don’t worry you are not alone! Since the PSP was released one of the key features that seems to be apparent is the amount of content that is available for the system!
Unfortunately the demise of these financial institutions is a symptom of American financial decay that has plagued every level of society - from the government, to companies to every day people - we are all spoiled on easy credit.

Our hardwork and innovation are the things that still makes the American economy unstoppable. But if we don't live within our means and stop borrowing like there is no tomorrow, we are simply paving the way for a long and sad decline.
Free PSP Downloads Movies
Are you ready to be left behind by the free psp downloads industry? I bet not. If you are a free psp downloads enthusiast like me, you find that there are many psp games,psp movies, psp TV shows, themes, psp wall papers and many others you would like to download to your psp.
I did FIRST's smaller sibling in high school. Was a lot of fun.

http://www.botball.org/
Next up, Why Apples Will Displace Oranges
pretty frikin sweet
Ask HN: Are there any Good Movies about StartUps?
I watched the movie "August" last week and was wondering if there are any other movies about StartUps. If you have any to suggest, please list them below.
The day foreigners realize creditworthness of this nation...

They realize it. But they have a dilemma...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma
The problem is that because 98% of the apps are pretty useless, getting above that noise is very difficult.
It's strong, but as a developer I'm ok with it. I know going in what the ToS are. I know what I'm getting into. There's certainly a tradeoff there still, because on one hand, there's some form of editorial control (unlike Windows or OSX), but on the other hand, it's as close to transparent as possible, and is there mainly to preserve quality.

I look at it kind of like the salary cap in the NFL. On one hand, it means some players aren't making as much as they would be if it were lifted a week ago. On the other hand, it means all players are making far more than they would if it were lifted a decade ago.
I have created two small ARGs, Faceless Invasion and FCLSNY. Since then I have spent extensive time researching the genre, trying to figure out how & why it is effective. I'd be happy to share what I know if your friend has some specific questions.
Well like I said, I live in a small town with lots of bored college students. It's easy to get support from:

* Local historical society, has a ton of info and is only too happy to share ("Youngin's these days don't care!") etc. etc. Excited that young people will be researching the town's history.

* Local newspaper, willing to let us have the entire newspaper archives in exchange for digitizing it for them. At the end of it we will have an entire searchable DB of hundreds of years worth of plot and character info.

* Local newspaper, willing to give us free press because it's more exciting than printing about Sherrif Farmer's dog or whatever else they fill up space with

* Local college students and student associations (engineering/nerd school), bored to tears with Nerf Wars or whatever else it is they do on weekends and are willing to do insane amounts of work for even a modest reward

* Local college is based around a historical person and is only too happy to learn he is a major character in the plot, instant writeups from student journalists and support/goodwill from college staff, invaluable help from professors

* Lots of bored CS students with nothing better to do. There's plenty of bored website designers and so on, and enough really competent people that we can roll out a small voip network or build a few robots into the landscape (trapdoors in abandoned buildings and whatnot)

This is, I think, the recipe for our success in a small college town. I would not take this route at all if you're trying to hit some urban area (from your initial post it looks like you're doing it as marketing, so quite frankly I wouldn't recommend doing any of this if your intent is to reach large groups of people). I should also note that this is just a side project (and a long-term one at that), I expect to take a few years planning before I actually do it (I have a startup that requires all my attention in the meantime).
I would beg to differ - recent bank failures are a result of the free market running amuck on easy credit and dumb investments (home loans without income verifications). The 30s were a lot less regulated and the great depression was a result of a free market moving without any government oversight or interference (Hoover responded to the crash by proposing to let the free market sort itself out, which in turn lead to a vicious run on banks.)

There is a fine balance between free-market economics and regulatory oversight. Bubbles will take place regardless of the level of regulation. Too much regulation can make small business life a pain, but regulation and oversight prevent swings and spectacular failures like the ones we are witnessing.
awesome. is faceless invasion the same one as this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Faceless_Invasion

Let's connect offline. jason [at] publictivity dot com
He riffs & makes big statements. Unless you're superman that means your going to be wrong a lot (I think he is wrong here too). But the other consequence is that sometimes right in a very powerful way.

For example his baseline stuff, going back years about the advertising, marketing, & consumer-attention complex is right in a powerful way. It means big things: 'It will probably never be possible to create another Coca-Cola or Colgate in the same way again.'
I think doing smaller ARGs can definitely have benefits. When doing events and real life interaction you want to focus on smaller communities if your budget is small.
Yeah, a lot of social network sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn do the same.
I wish I had better handwriting, and I don't think I've ever met anyone who wish they wrote less clearly.

That is not a good enough reason. I don't know anyone who wishes they were was worse at the high jump. That's not a reason to devote more school resources to it.

This is a question of priorities. There is not doubt that handwriting is now less important then it was 15 years ago. That should be reflected in the school curriculum. There's room for debate on the issue of how much.
Sure Gnip will displace Google............if everyone uses gnip on their site....BUT WAIT then Google will just make their own gnip.

Wow this is such an idiotic post.
Wow, if this is the one this sounds cool... I live in Montreal and would love to try this out.
Large Hadron Collider's Hacker Infiltration Highlights Vulnerabilities
HTML5 "not ready" until 2022? Same site claims it's already changing the web
Presenting from an iPhone
To give a famous example: Before the walkman, some market research was being done. The idea was that those guys carrying around stereos on their shoulders might want a lighter alternative that clips onto a belt.

They said 'no'
Probably based on health insurance.
Sad day when one of the greatest banks falls so hard.

It does reiterate to us, though, that shortsighted chasing after quick profits instead of long term sustainable growth is never a good idea. It's insane how one group within the company can do so much damage to the overall organization.
The 30s were more regulated than today in many ways. It was illegal to own gold. What and how much to farm was ordered by the federal government. Labor laws and interventions were extreme. If you traveled back in time to the 30s to participate in the economy it would seem almost fascist/socialist. This is why the depression lasted so long and got so severe in America. Other countries suffered similar initial setbacks as the US, but recovered far more quickly.

It is a ridiculous myth that Hoover was laissez faire. He intervened massively in the economy and FDR merely continued his policies. There's little FDR did in his first year that hadn't been drawn up by Hoover.

> regulation and oversight prevent swings

The housing crisis is the direct result of a deliberately orchestrated policy to subsidize housing.

The root cause of bubbles is monetary policy, anyway, not regulation.
Installing Google Chrome on Ubuntu Hardy
I think you're suggesting "tallness" as an alternative to "looking competent", but I'm already happy with the article's definition and method of measuring "looking competent" as objective.

I was asking for an arena with an objective measure of "actual competence" (not opinion, and not affected by circumstance). One example is how straight a line someone can draw. The performance of politicians and CEOs is notoriously affected by circumstance.

A possible experiment design: rank people by to how "competent they look" (using the article's method); then rank their "actual competence", by the objective measurement of how straight a line they can draw. What is the correlation between "competent looking" and "actual competence"?

Another area in where competence can be objectively measured grammatic correctness (written or spoken). Or, standard tests: IQ tests, university tests/entrance exams. Very convenient for a psych dept, so I bet it's been done to death.
Japan has no equivalent to glass-steagall and their financial system exploded after a massive property bubble. The laws in Japan actually force more financing functions into single banking entities than makes sense -- the opposite of glass-steagall.
Thanks! I can look it up; it's turned out that it amounts to an independent study/project (one isn't taught anything.) However, having time to create my own app on my own terms is one of the reasons I quit my job, and this way, I'll get one of the upper-level electives completed in case I try to graduate this Spring, as well guarantee I'll make time for myself to further development of a mobile app each week. Thirdly, I'm hoping there will be some publicity via the university if the app turns out to be cool.

By the way, the professor said we would own anything we create--does anybody know if that is automatic for student undergraduate work, or should I get some paperwork, just in case?
US in 'once-in-a-century' financial crisis : Greenspan
When I got to college, on my first calculus quiz I got a C+. It's a good thing this happened right away. After that, I realized I needed to actually learn how to study and ended up putting in a great deal of effort, unlike in high school where I could get good grades easily. I ended up graduating with all A's.
Born to Run - the evolution of the human body
Correct. Built into Google and PageRank of authority, that the authoritative source is the one you're looking for, that's most likely to be right.

They do try to get exemplars of clusters, though.
Why wouldn't push models be vulnerable to SEO -- in what would essentially amount to a DDOS attack?
There's an interesting series on Hulu.com called Startup Junkies. It's about a startup called Earth Class mail. There are only about 7-8 episodes on it but I found it to be very interesting
I don't know why he didn't raise the price. It's the obvious thing to do if overheads are eating you up, and he could have sold the things for 3 or 4 dollars. Or more, over the internet, if he'd mischievously tagged 'shipping and handling' to the price.
Arvind Gaba.com DIGG-IT - Update to iPod Touch 2.1 Firmware for Free
Very inspirational story! What school did you go to for completing your Computer Science BS?
Two feature length documentaries about Bubble-era startups:

Startup.com (about GovWorks -- they had the contract to process parking tickets for NYC parking tickets but they of course blew it with their extravagant spending)

E-Dreams (about Kozmo.com (RIP). haven't seen this, if anyone has it I would like to borrow/buy/digitally share it) The first 8 minutes are free here. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1283742294319360518&... )
Taleb vindicated again.
Yeah. Lots of websites do this. And I wish they'd stop.
Do you have personalized search turned on?
Congrats, and good luck.

I've known many people that have taken this leap. I don't know of a single person that regrets the decision.
Ask the tech transfer office for a letter saying you own your own work. By default, the university would own something you make for a class, so it's a good idea to get it in writing, just in case.

And congrats Vlad!
Tiny Water Bears Can Survive in Outer Space
This all reminds me of a book by historian Paul Kennedy. "The Rise and Fall of Great Powers." Y'all should read it.
"... Posterous has designed a blogging platform where the entire focus is on email. Your email client is the admin interface. For those of us that have an email client open all day, posterous seamlessly inserts blogging into the day's natural workflow. ..."

No I disagree with that one.

Maybe my workflow is a bit different but I've found the posting of blogs, images, short messages etc using a purposeful designed interface works better. The bit that doesn't work is joining them together. Flickr, twitter, blogger, wordpress allow you to do one task well. Replacing this process by email is a bottleneck because email clients (in my case 'Evolution') are horrendous things to use as a multi-purpose tool. There is no one way to map what you want to achieve to each service. For example:

- add a blog entry: include title a couple of pages of text with images and some urls (worked)

- twitter entry: quick message to a person with a longish url (text length > 140char, failed and url chopped

- flickr entry: tags + description + title + image (title failed, no tags allowed, no licensing of original images allowed)

I've tried these combinations and had success with the blog, moderate success with the twitter and bit of a failure with the flickr entry. I don't think the idea behind Posterous is bad. It's just the tools I have at my disposal are so clumsy. So the idea of an email interface while it works for me has a lot of rough edges and built-in frustration. Where Posterous does work well is integrating the bits you post, not perfectly but enough to be useful.
The world might just not be "hot, flat and crowded" enough for Segway yet.

According to New York city officials, New York is already too crowded for Segways.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/12/nyregion/12segway.html

Gov. David A. Paterson signed a law in July legalizing Segways everywhere else in the state.

Officials in New York City, where many streets are already clogged with taxis, tourists, dogs and double-wide strollers, deliberately asked lawmakers to leave the city out of the bill. ...

“To introduce a foreign, unproven, untested element into the mix complicates the job before us, which is to make the most efficient use of city streets,” said Noah Budnick, deputy director of Transportation Alternatives, a New York advocacy group.
Tiny water bears in space might seem cute, but beware. They look like this:

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.marsanomalyre...
Herbalspan - Specialising in Traditonal Chinese herbalism
Herbalspan specialises in traditional chinese herbal medicine and herbalspan stocks whole range of chinese herbs and herbal products.
Dear Adobe... top 100 complaints about Adobe software
Delve deep into everything Trent Rezner does. Not only is he a master of exploiting the power of ARG's but you can see hints of his ARG mindset when he and NIN release product/content.
Ok, he kind of didn't really offer a comparison, did he? I infer that he's considering Black Monday a "worst case", and saying that the economy continued to function despite it. But it's not the worst case at all, is it? Are we too fixated on "black days", and not enough on "black years"?
Well, you didn't mention The Game (movie, 1997). It actually started the genre, and inspired a real-life game called Majestic which technically predates The Beast. It's very much worth watching for inspiration.

Majestic was lackluster but ambitious: it wanted to be a realization of The Game but lacked the necessary good writing and good acting to pull it off.

I've often wondered at what point technology and its side-effects will allow people who are dissatisifed to create or join alternate realities and literally tune in, turn on, and drop out. At what point can you say that you have effectively stopped living in 'reality'?
ive seen the game before, but rewatched last night. awesome movie. yeah, majestic was just right after the beast. those two are the fathers of the genre. EA discontinuted majestic though.

I think technology is making the line blurred between two realities.
Wow, was he ever over-paying.

But the story reminds me of my first searches on Alibaba: "What? you mean I can buy cigarette lighters for THREE CENTS EACH???"

(Of course, the MOQ was a million. What would I do with a $30k sea container of lighters? Go door-to-door at gas stations?)
I got bit by this when writing Sleep. I had to write my own LinkedList class that implemented a sublist as a head/tail pointer sharing the contents of the parent list. Creation of the sublist is O(n) but other operations are O(m) based on the sublist rather than O(n) based on the parent list. And of course functions that recursively create sublists and iterate through them do not blow up unexpectedly.

The code is open source and compatible with LinkedList.java. The differences are: the description passed to any ConcurrentModificationException and sublists are serializable. Deserialized sublists are merely copies of the sublist and are unable to affect the parent list.

http://svn.berlios.de/viewcvs/*checkout*/sleep/sleep/src/sle...
How Dropbox ended my search for seamless sync on Linux