skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Thanks garry! <3

If anyone is wondering, Garry of Posterous is one of a two-man team who make us all look bad by releasing a new feature almost every day, responding instantly to user feedback, and generally being annoying over-achievers. I know you're cheating, Garry, and when I find out how... ;)
I don't pity anyone making that money. Also, it's great publicity for them. If it works, they're on the gravy train for decades (though CP+B was already doing just fine).
That is indeed a very useful aspect of genetic testing, however 23andme focuses on less medically useful low penetrance genes. The more medically useful high penetrance genetic tests are almost all patented
Ah, okay.

Is your DNS and server header stuff all in order?
That's true of most of their posts I think.
I agree. I wish ML used s-expressions.

Also, you might like this presentation, "The Swine Before Perl" by Shriram Krishnamurthi (of PLT). It's a great thing to show people who wonder how you could think Lisp has a good syntax: http://www.cs.brown.edu/~sk/Publications/Talks/SwineBeforePe...

(Also: SK's book is great.)
I hate it how letting companies abuse their employees is somehow being "business-friendly". It is not - economy is going to work a lot more smoothly if employees are protected from abuse, guaranteed decent minimum wage, sick pay, holiday time, heath insurance, are protected from discrimination and unreasonable sacking, have union representation etc.

Litigation is a really poor substitute for it all. Instead of having clear democratically decided guidelines for everyone companies will behave irrationally in fear of litigation, or just abuse everyone anyway and pay lawyers to shut down legit complaints; most employees won't get anything out of it of course, just the lawyers.
Sloppy science makes people feel good when it plays into their preconceived ideas. I fully await the day that the left starts defining other ptolitical views as forms of mental illness. Who knows, maybe Pfizer could find some meds for it.

Kuhn and Popper should really be taught in schools more. There's this incredible propaganda people are taught in regards to science which has very little to do with how actual science is done. People get this warm and fuzzy around the general idea of "science" without the hard knuckle reality that skepticism, falsifiability, the inductive problem, and the difference between correlation and causation, just to name a few problems.

So it's easy for a soft scientist to do all sorts of amazing and miraculous things in the name of science. And heck, it sounds dead right too! Let's just not poke around behind the curtain too much, okay?

It's the ultimate in laziness. Instead of learning political theory, philosophy, economics, and history, we've got internet video! From TED! Can't get cooler than that.
I became a programmer in spite of high school. I had started programming a bit around seventh grade, due in part to the years of joy my Commodore 64 had afforded me.

I was looking forward to taking the lone computer science course at my high school, but learned that it was only offered to International Baccalaureate (IB) students and not the regular advanced placement (AP) students. BTW, The IB program is a sham as those students shared most of my classes yet received more recognition. Compounding my anger, my friends that took the programming class did not want to enroll in it.

I developed a love of coding by experiencing the results of coding (e.g. games, early web browsers, email, etc) and discovering the computer could solve a problem an infinite number of times as long as I solved it merely once. I developed a knowledge of coding by taking courses in college and reading books on my own time.
I agree that functional programming is very closely related to mathematics.

I think that for programmers who think mathematically, FP is a breath of fresh air, and to them it is obviously, intuitively, right. By "thinking mathematically", I mean people who think of all possible cases, and not just specific instances. For example, when you say "f(x) = x * x", you picture a curve that illustrates all cases. I think the mathematical mindset is to see all code in that way.

- Reliability: I personally don't have that mindset naturally - but what I find very valuable about it is the possibility of proving code. That is, not only does the code work, but you can be sure it will always work, for all valid inputs (i.e. that are in its domain, and its pre-conditions/assumptions are met). Reliability is one of the open problems of programming, and functional programming makes a contribution. I've also found that studying some FP languages has helped me understand some mathematics better, through familiarity (e.g. list comprehensions).

- Concurrency: FP is supposed to help with concurrency, because of immutability. There's a role here, but I have doubts: Erlang, the most promising candidate for concurrency, doesn't actually use this feature (its concurrency is by pure message passing, and it doesn't share any memory (even when it could) - this is for reliability: so that process death has no effect whatsoever on other processes). In other words, pure message passing (also used in webapps, and in SOA) seems to be the answer to concurrency, not FP (though FP can help).

- Hackability: There's also the great hackability of everything being an expression - you can put everything on one line, or divide it up however you like. I personally find this fun, but not (yet) useful. However, I imagine that in some cases, being able to divide up the problem exactly where you want to could be very useful - I just haven't yet encountered that myself (I'm very inexperienced in FP).

There's some functional programming going on in the Python community these days, and I'd suggest that as an accessible route. It's probably the least advanced FP, but that's what makes it accessible. I find the Lisp community is too advanced to bridge the gap to a newby if they lack the mathematical mindset. Haskell is more accessible, but there's still a big gap. I found Erlang more accessible still, but Python is the accessiblest - also because of its community.
Terminator 2 and Technology
http://armorgames.com/files/games/light-bot-2205.swf
It just went from dark blue to cyan.
From someone who's done time in an agency: these are my favorite and most talented digital design shops: http://delicious.com/jm3/agencies

(sharing these to amswer your question and because it's inspiring to check out all the great work; most of these shops will be well out of the price range of any reasonably frugal startup.)
Way to go, Startuply! I didn't bookmark it before, but I'll definitely add it to delicious now.
The Magic Formula of Raising Angel Funding
I don't understand enough about the stock market to comprehend the possible unintended consequences, but trying to interfere in the free market can result in things like the 70s fuel crisis.

I'm not sure where we are on the "people never learn / we're screwed enough to need this" continuum, but I definitely don't get warm fuzzies from this. :/
The end of capitalism? (vid)
This is the biggest WTF moment. Ever.

Without the ability to short sell, the market can't even function effectively.

Convertible/Risk arbitrage people cannot do their job wihout short selling. The risk-free spread is there for the taking, but you can't take it.

Options market makers cannot hedge their PUT writes without short selling.

This is what I envision:

We'll see a massive short covering rally caused by a dry up in volumes by next week.

Option traders will stop trading as they cannot properly hedge their postions, as will all risk arbitrage, debenture, derivative and ETF traders. Traders of all financial products will not trade if they cannot hedge their positions.

Liquidity will dry up and volatility will increase drastically, which is exactly what the SEC wants to avoid.

The USA has decided to follow their Russian and Pakistani comrades in artificially controlling the market.

It's over fellas.

We've killed the banks.
Now we'll kill the hedge funds and the options houses.
That's a silly argument. "Mad Men" is of no tangible value, but it drives a huge amount of advertising revenue.
Advertising revenues on social networks have historically been pretty poor.

I think what O'Reilly was getting at was people forming their startups that essentially chase the latest trends in what now amounts to a bubble. He makes a valid argument and we could all be looking back at what he said in the future and only realize then just how spot on he was.
Is 2008 a sui generis election?
Citroen e Sony em parceria para lançar novo carro conceito
DMV announces Friday that you are no longer allowed to turn left. You are only allowed to turn right as of tomorrow
Do you know where I can find a list describing the highest penetrance genetic tests that I can compare with 23andme's offerings?
However, I think the basic article premise (stated in the title), is something interesting and that nobody is saying. MS was cooler, even when it was cruel and dark. Now it's not even the dark lord, it's like a new IBM, and that's not going to attract a lot of attention.
Et tu, Sergey?

Note: All one needs to succeed in life is a blogspot page named after an adverb. Other possibilities include: "indeed," "nonetheless," "meanwhile," and "obnoxiously."
It's difficult to do real FP in Python, though. Its lambda operator is crippled (one statement only), and it doesn't have tail call elimination* . Still, you can try out some functional ideas in it pretty easily, such as the map and filter functions.

* What tail-call elimination basically means is that when you call a function, but aren't waiting on its result as part of an expression at the current level (the difference between "1 + f(x, totalCount)" and "f(x, 1 + totalCount)", the language realizes that it doesn't need to keep a placeholder for doing stuff when that level is done on the stack. Therefore, calling a function in that manner can be used for (potentially infinite) looping without just piling more and more on the stack and eventually filling it up. If you try doing that in python, it will eventually blow the stack:

def houseOfCards(x):
if x == 0:
return "done"
else:
return houseOfCards(x - 1)

>>> houseOfCards(10)
'done'
>>> houseOfCards(100)
'done'
>>> houseOfCards(1000)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
File "/tmp/py21945wPg", line 5, in houseOfCards
RuntimeError: maximum recursion depth exceeded
It's odd that Wikipedians would delete the article, instead of just changing it to say, "PBWiki: a collaborative website for sandwich lovers."
Actually, ActionScript can be an extremely elegant and powerful language, when coded "correctly". The vast majority of Flex developers come from either a design or Java background, and as a result you find that most ActionScript RIA code adheres to strict application frameworks, static typing, etc...and rarely takes advantage of the interesting parts.

ActionScript has first-order functions, allows for dynamic typing, and utilizes class as well as prototype inheritance, even for built-in classes. This means you can do neat things to the prototype object associated with any object - even the Function object itself.

Just because the majority of people developing in ActionScript don't utilize the functionality doesn't mean it doesn't exist! Take a minute to look into the language yourself - you might be very surprised.
New Microsoft "I'm a PC" Ads (sans Seinfeld)
But it costs so much more to keep a cancerous waste around who poisons the environment.

I'm all for workers' rights (I once belonged to a union), but sometimes the axe has to fall.
every part of that site is trivial to do. I'd expect "rock star" programmers to not miss deadlines that badly.
Oh yes, if the hedge funds are forced to cover, this could conceivably lead to some blowups, putting even more pressure on the banks that finance them. Wonderful.
Wow those guys are smart. I think I'm going to start calling bad investors and bad investments "Lehmans".

The article was full of great quotes, but I think I still love Cuban's quote the best regarding the current financial situation:

"One last point, has the irony of 3 of largest companies in the country who make their money giving financial and insurance advice to companies and individuals, are facing ruin from the advice they gave themselves ? If this isnt a lesson to every individual who is taking advice from an investment firm, i dont know what is."
In your experience, how easy or difficult is it to work with Haskell, given the lazy evaluation? In my limited Haskell experience, I've found this to lead to unpredictable performance results.
That's awesome. Do you guys post on the compiler list?
Well, fakesergeybrin.com has already been registered, so that comparison is interesting in more ways than one.
Seems more the opposite to me. IBM doesn't do anything different than anyone else in their advertising. They just come out and say "IBM products are good." Also, IBM doesn't sell much to consumers, so they don't need or want to sound cool.

Microsoft is doing something different. And while all different is not cool, all cool is different. It's at least half way there.
You can change max_recursion_depth in Python, although I forget how it's done. Still, the lack of tail-call optimization is very annoying.
The fundamental mistake for these ads is simply that computers are a tool. Nothing more, nothing less. Microsoft wants to associate themselves as the tool of choice behind these supposedly famous and important people and their work but quite frankly that's bullshit. It's trying to capture the essence of Apple's Think Different ad campaign (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oAB83Z1ydE) but fails miserably. What made Apple's ads work was that they didn't bother talking to you about computers. They know it doesn't matter what computer you use, you just need to know Apple.

Saving the environment, broadcasting yourself, campaigning for candidates, being a movie star, teaching children in Africa, all of that could be accomplished with either a Mac computer, Windows computer, or a Linux computer. Other than telling you that these people are PC it doesn't do much in helping you understand why Microsoft is even relevant in any of the situations presented.

At least in the current ads Apple explains why their product is better based on features, simplicity, security, and functionality. Microsoft's ad just made me feel like it was empty and soulless, reinforcing what I have always associated with the Micro$oft brand.

PS: offtopic, Discovery Channel's I Love commercial is wonderful: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5BxymuiAxQ
If you hate having redundant types, I highly recommend using haXe. It has type inference by first-usage so in most cases you don't need to specify any type. If you want to get around the type system it has untyped{} code blocks, casts, and the "Dynamic" type, all of which throw type safety over to the runtime interpreter.
The other day I had a crazy realization. If you add up the actual labor time required to create a lifetime's worth of standard goods and services, you get something like 5-10 man years. You can do something "worthy" that makes humans more productive, but since we are already so productive it doesn't make a huge difference. The $64,000 question is, if technology has increased our productivity so much over the past 50 years, why are we actually working more hours, and liking our jobs less? Why aren't we all retiring at 30 to do what we love?
Are you an economist? How informed is this conjecture? Would you guess more or less than the people who made the decision?
It's pretty easy to ignore what you read on the web when it doesn't fit your preconceptions.
X360 não ultrapassou o Wii em vendas no Japão
I think the blackberry will be shortly as well.
Can anyone recommend simple user interface design software?
I seem to remember a startup recently linked on this site that solved my exact problem, but for the life of me I can't find it and Google is no help.

I am looking for simple software (preferably destop) that lets me mock up user interfaces quickly. The software I recall actually had working widgets and would serve nicely for basic 'does it work right' logic.

Am I imagining things or does such software actually exist? If so what is it and why is it so hard to find?
If you're going to that extreme, just jailbreak your iPhone already.
I love how these TED people always make a point of congratulating themselves on how important and good they are.
Welcome to Boston.
Misleading title. "Wikipedia" didn't do anything; an Articles-for-Deletion (AfD) vote did. In the vote, which has a full change history, nobody spoke up for PeanutButter Wiki, nor were any of the sources mentioned in the comments here present in the original article. This was a totally normal, in-process deletion.

Should the closing admin have glanced at Google News? Probably. Note that one of the AfD votes here makes indirect references to external sources, implying that they only peripherally cover PBWiki as "just another wiki farm". Maybe that's fair, maybe not, but you can see why in a "debate" with no dissenters, this just got closed quickly.

The fix for this is trivial. Take the original content of the PBWiki Wikipedia article --- it's still around --- and paste it back into the article. Add the external sources to the end (don't even worry about style, someone else will fix it). Done. An article with genuine sourcing in Newsweek, Forbes, and the New York Times isn't going to be deleted.

God I'm such a dork for knowing this stuff.
Web 2.0 Expo 2008 (video)
I'm totally serious. You can ask anyone who knows about the market and get their candid opinions.

I don't know how long they're going to effect this ban but to give you a preview of what banning short sell can do, just take a look at the China stock market. The chart is like the Eiffel tower.

The shorts make the market effective as they provide a floor at a bottom where no one else may be willing to buy.

I'm all for a permanent ban on naked short sells but to have an outright ban of all short sells is plain stupid.
Here's the video: http://blip.tv/play/AbTEA4a8DQ
That headline is a bit sensationalist. PBWiki isn't really a competitor to Wikipedia. Or Wikia, even.
And if Google said they were unhappy, their stock would plummet, so I don't think we have anything to go on here.
I think you're probably right, but I also think there's a lazy argument out there that you could go halt malaria instead of making ad money, and that's a stupid argument; make the ad money and spend it on malaria if you're that committed.
Isn't this pretty much the same as the Edge article (by the same guy) that got deaded a couple days ago?

Fascinating.
balsamiq.com or
omni graffle or
gliffy.com or just go straight to html
Can't wait for the cool personal life bits about the new plane him and larry brought, or the trip to outer space him and his buddies are about to go on, or how no one will ever make an algorithm better than the google search one.
Data point: In China, retail investors are not allowed to short-sell. China's stock market has had an unprecedented rally over the last 2 years (up 600% from Jul 05 to Oct 07) and then an unprecedented collapse recently (down 66% since then).

http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=000001.SS#symbol=000001.S...

In econ & finance textbooks, the theoretically predicted result of this is that it exacerbates market swings. When the market is overvalued, there's no check on its upward movement caused by short-selling. When it's undervalued, there's no check on its downward movement from short covering. It's always hard to sort out causation from correlation - there could be dozens of other factors at work - but China's experience seems to support the theory.

As for your appeal to authority, it's possible for the SEC to know more than furiouslol and still do this, as long as they're incentivized to do so. Byrneseyeview's comment on another story here explains how:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=308539
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/medicine/...
What's unscientific about it? He's collected data to test hypotheses pyschologists have had for years.
the market will sort it out. have any of the yc guys gotten rich lately? in the end, no one but the franciscans is really interested in a vow of poverty.

beyond seed capital it doesn't even seem that rockyou and slide are swimming in cash. from yelp to loopt to twitter...at some point it will be put up or shut up on the revenue side.
New Microsoft Commercials Are Live
Because "standard goods and services" are redefined as productivity increases. 20 years ago we couldn't afford half the stuff that is "standard" now.
The $64,000 question is, if technology has increased our productivity so much over the past 50 years, why are we actually working more hours than ever, and liking our jobs less?

because we are donkeys who fetishize work. pretty much the whole theme of this site is work fetishization.
Yes, they could port most of Cocoa to Windows just so they could run Xcode, but do you think that would be cost-effective for them (dozens and dozens of man-years they don't really have)? The lack of a Windows development environment doesn't seem to be costing them any serious developers for now, at least.

So that reason doesn't seem very speculative to me.

Personally, I think it's one of their core strengths that they stay focussed on what they do well (development under Mac OS X), and not try to spread out too thinly when they don't have to (clearly, they had to for iTunes; Safari's a longer shot). It might look like arrogance to you, but it might just be good sense given limited manpower.

And I don't think it's speculation to say that $2K invested in a blazing fast development machine like a 24" iMac (you could also do it for less than $1K with a Mac Mini, which works just fine) is easily recouped, if you're serious about shipping an app. Even a decent $5 app that's not a flashlight should be able to sell more than 400 copies in a market of 10MM right now, moving quickly to 25MM and up.
AMEN. go into any food bank and ask the "clients" how many of them have cable tv and cell phones with data plans
and I will click on them every time I see them. at least twice. i think that money is better off in google's pockets.
"Another Edit: perhaps, when something like Google Gears is everywhere, it might change. But offline support - both for code and data - is kind of essential."

HTML 5 includes a storage API, including a SQL database. Apparently the iPhone already has it, and any browser based on WebKit (Nokia, Android?) will likely have it in the not too distant future.
tell me a startup that is not creating a frivolous toy
Kill 'em all. That's how a lot of folks feel, but in reality what we need to re-think is compensation. Hedge funds being paid 1-and-20 and company management getting 99% of comp in call options provides a huge incentive for taking on absurd risk.
what business types flourished during the Great Depression?

repo men
It's not that I disagree with you, I really don't have enough knowledge to decide. I haven't the slightest clue how long they want to prevent short selling for (I think the article got cut off since I don't subscribe) or what sort of effect that short term action might have.

I was just wondering how you came to the decision that it's stupid. It seems you'd need a lot of knowledge to be reasonably sure of that, given that other people with a lot of knowledge made the decision.
Download King of The Hill Episodes
Created by Beavis and Butt-Heads Mike Judge and The Simpsons Greg Daniels, the weekly, half-hour animated series King of the Hill was a genial “redneck” comedy set in the fictional burg of Arlen, TX. The central character was Hank Rutherford Hill, a 40-year-old salesman for the Strickland Propane Company.
To paraphrase Orwell: "Trust a snake before you trust an anecdote, trust an anecdote before a statistic, but do not trust a model."