skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
By using their services, aren't you tacitly assenting to their business practices?

Certainly not! I do business with plenty of people that I disagree with. So do you, no doubt.

This is a classic (i.e. "really old") line of argument against political activists. To testify to that, I give you MIT's most (in?)famous political activist, Noam Chomsky:

As to how I tolerate MIT, that raises another question. There are people who argue, and I have never understood the logic of this, that a radical ought to distance himself from oppressive institutions. The logic of that argument is that Karl Marx shouldn't have studied in the British Museum which, if anything, was the symbol of the most vicious imperialism in the world... But I think Karl Marx was quite right in studying in the British Museum. He was right in using the resources and in fact the liberal values of the civilization that he was trying to overcome, against it.

Remember, the goal of an activist is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The goal is to convince the baby to join the activist's side. Which you accomplish by living inside the baby's culture, appealing to its better nature, and using all the tools at your disposal, including the baby's tools.

It's not as if the whole idea of Google is fundamentally evil. It's a few specific aspects of Google's business practices that Cory dislikes -- aspects which, he might well argue, could easily be reformed without significantly affecting Google's prosperity.
To be fair, he's not a programmer, so the "it's BSD licensed so I can do whatever with it I want" argument probably doesn't have as much influence on him.
C has a variety of garbage collectors, here's one:

http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Hans_Boehm/gc/

I wonder if it's really more of an intimidation factor than anything (and I'm not saying this to be a jerk, I am truly curious why people have the perception that C is such a nightmare to maintain).
Yeah but C's worse case is still better than most of Perl's, PHP's, etc. best cases. Just as an example.

I don't disagree, btw, that dynamic languages are easier, but I'm really wondering if C's maintenance is really more of a perception than a reality.
I think it happens to everyone in small amounts. Low blood pressure seems to be a common culprit for me. If I get super-relaxed, like after a yoga class or a good workout, I can actually see my heartbeat. It's weird, and it was unsettling until I figured out what it was.

A close friend of mine has HPPD, and although I can't speak directly from experience on that, it seems to me that much of HPPD is an anxiety reaction to normal visual phenomena that most people grow used to and filter, but for which people can develop hypersensitivity and then become convinced that something is wrong. (This would be much like how, during the onset of a severe panic attack, especially in a person who has never had one before, normal semi-liminal physical sensations morph into "evidence" of impending doom/insanity.)
From the page source:
"if the lhc actually destroys the earth & this page isn't yet updated please email mike@frantic.org to receive a full refund"
Reed-Solomon coding is an old fella. Whenever you have a link which is unreliable and you can't afford to retransmit packets on the link when errors are introduced, RS is your friend. Mobile phones are among the prime users of this.

If I remember correctly, the PAR/PAR2 formats used on usenet is using RS-encoding as well.

An alternative would be to plot the file in N-dimensional space and define a set of vectors to pinpoint it. When you have enough vectors you have the precise pinpoint. Additional vectors gives the error-correction capability. Some microsoft guys played with this idea for Bittorrent-like networks a while back. But there is a disadvantage in the time it takes to decode the data, and it probably doesn't help the swarm that much :/

Another interesting viewpoint: We might need RS-encoding on the local harddisks soon (implemented in hardware or software), as it would circument the bit-error rate problem with those disks.
I’m one of those few people who knew what this symbol meant: the character was a standard symbol in the “MacRoman” repertoire before the introduction of the Euro replaced that code point (high-ASCII code 219, or shift-option-2) about the time of Mac OS 8 or 9.
I like to base my technology related decisions mostly on the technology, not politics.

Well, that's your use case. Cory Doctorow has his own use case -- one which Firefox addresses much better than Chrome, at least for the moment.
Agreed. Use 3-letter currency codes if you don't have a symbol.
GINA prohibits employers/insurers from discriminating against you based on your genetic info

That's an incredibly weak response. Someone asks you about the privacy you provide and you say it's illegal for other people to misuse the information. That's like me asking a company what they're going to do with and how they're going to protect my social security number and the company rep pausing and saying "Um, yeah . . . don't worry, identity fraud is illegal." Not the most confidence inspiring thing I've ever heard.

I spent several years in the privacy sector and take it from me that protecting this kind of information is hard enough when the organization actually has a commitment to meeting industry standard privacy best practices and laws, let alone at a company that apparently ignores them. (Please correct me if your company actually does comply with HIPAA or any other federal privacy laws -- I'm just going by you responding to a question about your privacy compliance by rattling off a reference to some newly-passed law that is non-binding on your company.)

Relying on GINA here is completely irresponsible. If you're serious about handling sensitive health information, you ought to comply with HIPAA and have that compliance routinely audited. Period.

Otherwise no one should trust your company or, in my opinion, take it seriously at all.
1980s-style "business" people haven't adapted to the "new" reality of technology, where individual people, talent, and culture matter more than the business-on-paper.

To them, a business is a collection of assets-- real estate, IP, cash-- and relationships between external entities and the corporation. The people-- employees and managers-- are relatively interchangeable, in their minds. They're surprised to find out that firing the founders and replacing top brass might cause a company to collapse, and that the company culture actually matters in a non-PR context. This is when the MBA types put on their WTF face.
The economist doing error correction codes?? Are you guys sure the LHC didn't do anything to the universe?
Patroon - Javascript Template Engine
Patroon is a template engine written in Javascript in about 100 lines of code. It takes existing DOM nodes annotated with CSS classes and expand a data object according to simple rules. Additionally you may use traditional string interpolation inside attribute values and text nodes.
I prefer:

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1066
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1067
ok thanks for the info. just what i needed. I was'nt looking for an NDA (and i know that no VC would sign it). I just wanted to to know that you would'nt show it to alot of other parties. I think it's such a good idea so :)
Making Full Use of Client's Hardware
Go! Destroy the world now!!
But he also spends much of his time working for the EFF, so I'm sure he's aware of the various open source licenses and what they mean.
I made an account. Too much schtick for my taste. Also, start deleting stuff from the UI. It's an interesting concept, but it took me forever to figure out how to even browse the offers. (What the heck is the difference between "services needed" and "offers made?")
Largest particle collider conducts successful test
Apparently, when energy becomes matter, it creates some sort of cloud of javascript context in which the variable worldHasEnded is defined.

I don't think that was covered in my college physics textbook.
I do so love 23andMe and as soon as I can either A) Set aside $399 for it or B) the price drops again, I'll be getting one of the spit kits.

Especially as I am curious as to what shows up, as I already have one genetic disorder!
Point taken.

But at what point do you throw the baby out with the bathwater?
Ken Thompson - Reflections on Trusting Trust
I'm tryin', Ringo. I'm tryin' real hard to be a shepherd.

Pulp Fiction
lulz. Bezos is a genius. Also: I wonder if a lot of the turkers aren't the same people so accustomed to being scammed by "stay-at-home" work offers in local newspaper classifieds.
Ah, the pitfalls of being acquired. You can't resist that sweet acquisition cash but at the end of the day the devil gets his due. If you are ever so fortunate to be acquired then just face it, you are not going to like your new masters, so just cash out and leave.
Ways to Use ShareMeme with QuickMode « BlogMeme
Angel Investors: Giving Businesses Their Wings
This is a fundamental fact of companies: they are bought not sold.

Excellent insight
All your contents are belong to us - Google Picasa 3 TOS
11. Content licence from you

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content
which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By
submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual,
irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to
reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly
display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or
through, the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling
Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked
for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

11.2 You agree that this licence includes a right for Google to make such
Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with
whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and
to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.

11.3 You understand that Google, in performing the required technical steps
to provide the Services to our users, may (a) transmit or distribute your
Content over various public networks and in various media; and (b) make
such changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that
Content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices,
services or media. You agree that this licence shall permit Google to take
these actions.

11.4 You confirm and warrant to Google that you have all the rights, power
and authority necessary to grant the above licence.
Don't, unless you have insider information (not in the illegal sense). If you have money laying around outside of general savings start a Roth IRA. Fidelity and Vanguard are both excellent and very low cost.
Forgot about that. Good point.
no, all your content is licensed to us. as it says, you retain all copywrights and other rights to your content, but by using picasa you give google free reign to make use of it.

in addition, i'm not sure if i'm reading it right, but it appears you can revoke the license to google based on the additional terms of those services.
People still write software for specific OS'es?
Chrome's market share dips significantly after first week
Maybe I don't understand the whole Google+China issue, but if you can do business with people you disagree with, can't Google do business with China?
The Lifepod: Yurt of the Future for the Modern Nomad
Yes. And who says this is the last and final version?
When the baby is Chuckie.
The title is wrong.
This only finds an AP's Location not a cellphone or iPod. Yes it has been tested and No you don't need to drive past someone's house to get their MAC address there is several other ways to do that.
Yes this can be accomplished in other ways such as asking, but that is like saying you can steal someones credit card from their pocket instead of creating a complex phising site
The transcript was typed from them talking, not from watching the recording. They wanted it live as quick as possible and damn the editors!
London stock exchange postmortem / diatribe
Buzzword: adobe's Google docs
By the time this is over, there will be a thousand things that were "not covered in my physics textbook". :)
I just saw this on the way to class at one of the TVs in the student center and stopped to give a listen. This stuff is pretty damn interesting.
ah..2005...a very good year for apple.
they offered discounts and 100% refunds to customers who bought just before the end of the quarter, and they ended up with extra cash for their 10-Q even though these actions hurt the business.

DCF deals with this. They get upfront cash but since these actions hurt the business, it hurts cashflow in the future. So it's not like as if they got off scot-free with this strategy. Like I said, DCF requires that you have really good estimates about future cashflows. If you say But you don't see it!, then you are not making good estimates.

Note: My point is not that DCF will give you a 99.99% accurate valuation. No model will since all models depends on the accuracy of the inputs. My point is that given the amount of knowledge you have about a particular company, the DCF model provides the best framework to reaching a fair valuation.

A company with a few long-lived assets, like an airline with just a couple planes, will show low earnings and high cash flow when it's not replacing a plane. This is one of those situations in which high cash flow is deceptive and earnings are not.

It is not deceptive. If the company does that, you just assume their future cashflow from operations will decline from the aging planes.

While other valuation models are useful in supporting your initial valuation calculations, DCF is the fundamental block.
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I Predicted the New Microsoft Ads
Interface design at its best - Swype
The Secret World of Advanced Search Technology
But they haven't collided anything yet. They only turned on the two beams independently of one another to see if it worked or not. So I think there is still hope for those who need to forget about the things that they don't understand the more they think about it.
I wouldn't count on it working in IE6.
Does it track apps outside your browser?
I think that summarizing the project as limited due to an arbitrary "cap" as defined by the projects initiators is a little short-sighted. Who's to say that Coriell wouldn't continue growing the project as much as demand and funding support such?
A piece written by someone who has no idea what caused the Stock Exchange crash and who just wants to vent his ignorance of the fundamentals of transaction processing. He honestly has no idea about technologies like SQLServer and Windows Server 2003 - just wants to air a set of open source prejudices.
InfoQ: Version Control for Multiple Agile Teams
I took a nutrition class through an accredited correspondence school for a science credit. If you look around you should be able to find a school near you teaching the classes. Most of them suggest or require high school biology and chemistry and give you a nice background without marketing bs tossed in.
Whether or not a particular aspect of Google's business with "China" [1] is ethical -- and whether or not "the business" can be readily separated into "ethical" and "unethical" pieces that can be independently pursued (or not pursued) while maintaining Google's own ethical standards -- is, not surprisingly, a question of ethics and politics. One which I don't think is best carried on here at Hacker News.

[1] "China" is a word for a very big place. Does it refer to the government, or the people? Is there a difference? This footnote is too small to contain the volumes of debate which might ensue from this question.
I'm not sure it fits what he's talking about, but I've found book burro (http://www.bookburro.org/) quite helpful. It collects results from several used book price searchers, rather than searching inside book content, but it can also search for library availability in a $distance radius, which is nice.
Email becomes a dangerous distraction
UA Profiler: Automatically testing browser features
Another post cites 40%.
How Box.net Scored the Dell Deal
I wrote almost exclusively in C for 12 years. I wrote cgiemail, which was very widely used. Today I would never start a server-side web project in C.
I really didn't get this rant. The author seems to believe (without any convincing reason) that in order to understand a program you have to understand it's data structures which must be typed and set in stone.

I read the article he's bashing and I thought the code was nicely written and quite an enjoyable read. It certainly wasn't that hard to understand.

Answering his points in brief:

>No complete declarations of complete types, even though it would be (kind of) possible with JavaScript. So I can't start by visualizing the data structures.

Type declarations are not mandatory to understand code.

>No type declarations, but lots of confusing variable names, so I'm constantly going back trying to figure out what's what.

The variable names are reasonable (symbol_table, scope, expression, etc). The most confusing were "nud" and "led" but those were explained in detail later ("null denotation" and "left denotation" - used for binding operators during precedence).

>Dynamic modification of fields in objects. For example the function advance() adds the field arity to the token object, which was not declared anywhere, so you only find out about this by reading this function. This goes against everything sane in programming.

Goes against everything "sane" in programming? It's just something the author isn't used to. It's perfectly valid programming technique and I've used it in python.

>Going completely overboard, the field arity is used to store whether a token is a "name", "literal" or "operator" but later, for operators, changes this field to "unary", "binary", etc. (Truly bad programming, but not related to my argument about typing.)

I can't make any sense of this rant.

>To deliver the final blow to understandability, in functional style, the member functions of the objects are dynamically added and modified. At this point, if I see an object, I don't know its "type", but even if somebody tells me that, I don't know what state that "type" is in: what the data fields are, what they are used for and what the member functions do.

I get the feeling this guy just has a mental block about the way programs should be (C++/Java yay! Anthing else - boo!) and is unwilling/underexposed to other programming paradigms.

>Given the cognitive difficulties above, how does one look over the code to verify that it's correct? It's hard enough with static languages, here it seems quixotic. How about finding bugs?

The same as with typed languages except that the compiler doesn't do one level of verification for you.
Jodoro: Patent Discussions
I ran the test from Chrome and got 7/11 (rather than 8/11 as expected) - I suspect because my connection is slow (single channel ISDN) and thus timed responses where slowed.

Yup confirmed - I ran FireFox 3 against the test suite and only scored 6/11
Personally, I would have though that in a world with Twitter, IM and all the rest, e-mail would be the least of your worries.
I can hardly wait!
We learned about a Hamming distance at University. But I could never figure out when what or why it should be used. It was either predicting the future, or just sending more bits to compensate for error.

But what if you get errors in the new bits? It's daft.
I came here to say the same. Effectively content free, possibly actually content negative.
Kevin Rose was on the panel with Mark Cuban when he said that in response to imindi.
Who cares what Cory Doctorow thinks about web browsers?
Seth's Blog: How often should you publish?
I use lists to layout forms, other people use tables. Forms can be a beast! It helps if the designs have been done with the 'web' in mind and not just what looks pretty on paper.
I'm very impressed with how much Box.net has progressed.

When I first heard about it, I dismissed it immediately:

1) Box.net (No .com? You'll be losing a large amount of traffic to the .com owner)

2) Yet another online storage service. Xdrive, Mozy... we have many of those around

But they really execute their plan very well and differentiate themselves from the competition with their clean and easy-to-use interface. Their widgets in particular is very well done.

It really reinforces the point that it's execution, and not ideas, that matters
What's the expression? "I am sure we are all just a little bit dummer for having read that"
Awesome. They have an Atom feed. That way I can stay up to date.
What I am wondering about is how much faster TCP could be with RS for recovery instead of the current resend-packet technique.
Are you suggesting that you can be as productive in C as I can be in ruby? If not then you answered your own question.

Second, are those garbage collectors widely used in C code and if not why?
PG: A Fundraising Survival Guide
People shooting off things like "The unix text utilities were written in the 60's and 70's when computers were 33mhz and had 5MB of ram." as though they were fact.
I've known the story for 6 years; it hasn't changed at all. Cuban is much better known in the sports scene than in the tech scene.

When do you get to tell us what Rose did or am I just ignorant?
Erlang: An introduction to gen_event by creating Account Notifications (Part 3)
Definitely a classic CS paper.
Coincidentally, I predicted that someone would take credit for predicting that Bill Gates would appear in the advertisements. :-)
I couldn't agree more. I've been a paying customer for a while now despite the plethura of free options out there. Their UI is great, sharing capabilities are well integrated and mobile access is well executed. No complaints.
The future of gaming is all in the mind
I would guess it would be slower and you would break the internet. You would have to introduce enough redundancy to cope with the worst tolerable loss rate which would increase the number of bits to transmit. Worse, it is the noticing of dropped packets that tells TCP to slow down and decongest a link. If enough senders fail to decongest then packet loss on the congested links skyrockets wasting bandwidth elsewhere and doing silly things like favoring the sender with the biggest pipe.
Petroz Fine Art Gallery Edouard Manet and Vincent van Gogh
Petroz Fine Art Gallery Edouard Manet-Vincent van Gogh
A Web Developer's Personal Projects
Have you tried getdropbox.com? What do you think about it?
Legal digital music is commercial suicide
Wow, fiction for real. Science-fantasy is more like it.
The best, and worst, of Demo Fall 2008
HHFHAUFSFAGIYGAFIUHIUPA MUINOIUOIUOIUOI I8UOIOIAEWUNWUICF UQIRUIWEQNFYICYNWYRIYR WYIRUPUQYFREFYHGFIGEAF AUIYFIASIUFIUH FAIUHCIUAHFIUAFUICHIURF UDSCHDSAIUFYIUAHDIUHC RIUFHREIUVIUREIRUEAYVUIAIHCUIDYA YAFIUHREAIUYFIHREFIUIREHVIAE URHAIUFHIUREHFIURH CIUAYERFR UIHVYREIUAHFVIUR IUREHFIUAHERFIUEVHIUYREIU UIYDIUGFIUREGIUR VRIU BYEE
More than 80% of Mozilla's revenue comes directly from Google.
This was already posted last month: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=270809
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed%E2%80%93Solomon_error_corr...
And the enjoyment experienced from all the free breakfasts/lunches/dinners/beers/paint ball outings. :)
is this a surprise? was the initial jump a surprise?

new browser, people test it out, go back to their familiar browser. i'll probably do the same for IE8, use it for a short time. doesn't mean i'll make a permanent switch.