skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Pairwise Voting: Governor Genro tops President Obama on Citizen Feedback
But the analogy falls flat because the Galaxy Nexus is more expensive on contract than the iPhone. Price matters, the pricing helps Mercedes devote resources to develop the products the way they do.

Since no one has corrected this so far, I'll do it: the Galaxy Nexus on sale from Verizon includes 32GB of internal storage, and is offered for the same price as a 32GB iPhone4S. That is, $299 on a new contract.

In fact, the Galaxy Nexus can be cheaper on a new contract than the iPhone4S -- see Amazon offering it for $149 for a limited time.
That’s complete and utter bullshit.

Stuff like that used to happen (the dark late 90s and early 2000s) but not anymore. And even during that time (which was during my childhood) I always found a cool new way to use the special pieces. I actually always loved having special pieces I could repurpose in some way.

This meme needs to die. It’s not based in fact.

Case in point: http://city.lego.com/de-DE/Products/Default.aspx#4643

That big windshield is awesome. I could make a big fire truck with it or other kinds of vehicles, maybe integrate it into a building.

Oh, and Lego has tons of sets that are just awesome and pretty much only made from normal bricks. Take this awesome house: http://creator.lego.com/de-DE/products/default.aspx#5771

Lego has diversified their product line. That means you can get more, well, normal toys. But they are still selling as much classic Lego stuff as they always have.
I must say that I found the post amusing for a company that bills itself the Elance for high-end, when the first post's I saw where:

I am in need of a designer to develop my company website. Currently we are operating without a website. Budget: Under $1,000

I am looking for a web designer to build a basic 5 page site for a debt reduction service. Budget: Under $1,000

It kind of looks like the same need a Facebook clone for free junk to me.
Public data that was available to use as 'proxies'/indicators of value: User base, company size, funding, and acquisition amount...of course we'd like to show profit...a couple companies like Blurb submitted profit eg revenue 58M in 2010
Thanks for sharing that tidbit, that's brilliant.
Salesforce Buys Social Performance Platform Rypple
It's not immoral to give the public what they are asking you for.
I always get replies from my Congresspeople. Unfortunately, they're usually along the lines of "SOPA will save America from sinking into the ocean" or some similar bullshit.
The law firm my wife works for has just switched to the new version of office, because Word Perfect is no longer supported by their billing software. I don't even think their version was new either.

It's kind of sad that you'll only modernize when you'll no longer get paid. You'd think improving efficiency would be motive for modernization, but I guess not.
The same holds pretty much true if you put it up on somebody else's website that doesn't generate much traffic. I think the argument is these cartoon syndicates don't have much traffic.
I remember actually finding it very easy (and fun!) to hack my stupendously detailed X-wing LEGO set when I was little; the main difference was that the mix-and-match would generally take place with larger units (partial assemblies from smaller "model-set" type sets) or involve adding little bits coming off of things (flames from some fantasy castle set went onto the barrels of some generic set and made extra rocket engines to go onto my X-wing!)

On a side note, I remember a LOT more of my childhood play than I thought.
I'm afraid I can't be as optimistic about future legislators as you seem to be. The pace of technological change is only going to get faster. Even someone who is an expert in a field is going to be utterly clueless about the latest technology by the time he gets elected for a second term. "Dropbox? What's that? Is that like Kazaa?"

Besides, these people are not only ignorant, they are willfully ignorant. They could have asked the experts/"nerds" anytime if they wanted to, but they never will, because they're not interested. They are not going to let expert knowledge get in the way of doing what industry lobbyists paid them to do.
I know the OP is not the author, Zed Shaw, but I simply wanted to say Thanks to Zed for this.
It's a fine tradition it seems... Atari vs Commodore, Amiga vs PC, Sega vs Gameboy, Mac vs PC, PS vs Saturn, Dreamcast vs PS2, and so on... These days it's iOS vs Android.

In some bizarre way, if these are the "controversies" we're having, then we're doing quite well in general ;)
Here Are The 11 Biggest Pivots Of 2011
And he made the front page of Hacker News. I think he's a better business man than people give him credit for. I think he's a really entertaining guy and tune into his podcasts whenever he puts them out.
Just because a comic has it's own website, doesn't mean that website cannot be run and maintained by a syndicate.
Pro-tip for self-taught mathos: It's pronounced "Gal-wah theory". Also, "Lee groups", "Paul Erdish", "Kurt Gurdle", "Leonhard 'Oiler'", etc.
I agree. I used reddit daily for several years until a weirdo passive-agressive moderator? replied to one of my comments with profanity and then sabotaged my account in some way. Wasted a lot of time and haven't been back there for years, a shame. At least I learn more here, and there are fewer pictures of kittens.
The not-so-subtle implication that there is a causal relationship between design and success is totally unproven. In general, ascribing success to one factor is always a bad idea. And of course, success = funding is a different matter altogether.

In a practical sense, however, startups that are fundraising and which have design chops should use this type of data/meme to their advantage by talking about design as if it actually has a causal relationship with success. Use pattern matching to your benefit.
We posed a "?"...our goal is to increasingly focus on impact: would love to show profit and positive social externalities... I hear you that it's frothy and too many me-too things going on that are targeting the tip of Maslow's hiearchy for the top <.5% of people
University accuses Oracle of extortion, lies, 'rigged' demo in lawsuit
I'm confused by what you're saying. You claim to not be talking about quotas, but cite not covering the fact[1] that "ICS has revolutionized Android" as a failure. If he had covered it, that would be better, correct? So evidently there is some level of positive Android coverage he's required to do before he's allowed to say what he actually thinks and link to what he actually wants to link to. If that's not a quota, what would you call it?

[1] Here I get absolutely bewildered by what you're saying, given that the first device with ICS was released today, and I know this precisely because I read it on Daring Fireball yesterday, wherein Gruber writes: "I spent a few minutes playing with Topolsky’s Galaxy Nexus in the On The Verge green room; some of the text editing improvements in Android 4.0 alone make it quite obviously the best Android phone in the world".
And thus the first nail in the java coffin. Or at least the Oracle version.

Anyone know why Oracle doesn't want people to use java? (and by people I mean linux users and by java I mean their version).
Why Google TV will win
It happens to me too and considering my past experience with Eclipse I don't think OpenJDK is to be blamed - I just uninstalled Eclipse and went with IntelliJ IDEA. Works fine.
I don't get it.

You complain that a 5000 piece lego set is movie themed, when the only thing movie themed are the minifigs and the box it came in.

As kids every single lego set we had was built into the "model" precisely once, and then dumped in with the rest of the lego. We kept the instructions, but would never rebuild the original set. That's hardly the point of Lego.

As an adult I have a huge collection of Star Wars lego sets, including the Imperial Star Destroyer and Death Star. When my son is old enough (he's not yet 3), they'll get dismantled and put in a bucket all together. From that day on they WILL be generic lego pieces. The fact that they came in a Star Wars box is then irrelevant.
Of course, stats 101...We put caveats below the infographic:
-we're not making the claim that tech startups with designer founders are statistically better in some way, instead we are highlighting interesting case studies to explore further

-Of course the designers featured here can’t possibly take all the credit for any success, it's all about team work and we're celebrating design together no matter what background you come from

-The goal is to raise awareness about the existence of designer founders and their diverse backgrounds with data in a fun way that has never been done before (not draw causal claims)
I didn't get that entirely from the article. They had already cut off communications links, so it sounds like it was already running in some sort of backup mode, meaning that GPS and gyros were perhaps all it had left to go on.
Interactive CSS Playground
Here is the link to the article of the author: http://lea.verou.me/2011/12/introducing-dabblet-an-interacti...
Is Search Marketing a Waste of Time for Startups?
For some time now it's been clear to me that as society grows ever more technical, it's leaving legislators behind.

And, or perhaps especially, judges.
I dont think the value of start-ups with a design co-founder gives us much more value than saying, designers are very beneficial for a product-oriented startup.

Im sure we can have similar calculations with value of startups with a single founder, with a business co-founder, startups that have their hackdays on friday ...

I don't want to marginalize design co-founders, I am looking for one for myself, but I dont like these sorts of conclusions and statistics
Tiny solar cell could make a big difference
Lego's patent on the basic block design has run out so it's actually a pretty smart strategy of Lego to move to licensed properties over the last decade - what else could they do? I've already seen some Hello Kitty "minifigs" with Lego compatible blocks, that's just the tip of the iceberg.

http://boingboing.net/2011/10/21/expired-patent-of-the-day-l...
You're right. SOPA does so much it's hard to keep track of. I'm barely able to keep from turning off my TV while listening to the hearings.
"Let the iPhone get on Verizon and see Android stagnate completely"

Who are you quoting?
An Open Letter From Internet Engineers to the U.S. Congress  
An Open Letter From Internet Engineers to the U.S. Congress
There are years of jurisprudence and years of common law precedent that form the true vision of what the First Amendment means today.

I always find this argument irritating. You don't need to be an attorney or a jurist to twist words around, postulate social contexts, and invent hidden meanings. The minute that society agrees that the phrase "Congress shall make no law" means something other than "Congress shall make no law," I'm as qualified as you are, or as qualified as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is, to decide what that phrase really means. At that point, we can no longer even pretend to be honoring the founders' intents, so we might as well go full retard.

I rather like the Bill of Rights the way it was written, but I would understand if the nation decided to hold serious discussions about if, and how, amendments such as the First, Second, Fourth, and Fifth should be modified and adapted to better accommodate modern society's needs. Even though I might disagree with the outcome, I still think it would be better if we reviewed the Constitution regularly and changed it where we felt it was necessary, than to continue paying lip service to the entire document and the intent behind it while ignoring both at will.
Yeah we're getting that issue, too. And sometimes the prompt doesn't appear properly.
Induction puzzle: cannibal game theory
This is class warfare just not by standard definition.

It's not the proletariat vs the bourgeoisie. It's Apple vs. PC.

Sure the phones are the same price... but we all know that the perception is that the cool kids use Apple these days, and so the cool apps are only on iOS, and if you don't have a Mac you're just not a cool technologist. So that's the class warfare... cool vs blah.

I, for one, think it's ironic that just a decade ago Apple was for the noncoformist and today it's so mainstream it's boring.
Except so many of those pieces are not generic. There's dozens of color and shape specific pieces in there. Things that will never go on anything else.

That said, you can still buy generic lego boxes.
Newspapers all over the world use different grammatical conventions in headlines from articles. I read Chinese, and Chinese-language newspapers also have headlines that look quite bizarre in isolation. As the first kind reply here said, this convention probably began to save space for "banner" headlines in large type.
The heart of the matter is, what is gender? It's clearly not the case that gender is identical to being biologically male or female, eg, based on which sex organs are present, or on the chromosome. You need only read the Wikipedia pages on "intersex" and "third gender" to see some of the diversity in the world. Sex indeterminacy is only one of many possibilities.

Go back to the original Turing Test. In "The Imitation Game", the questioner must determine which of two people is male and female based only on written notes. (Presumably typewritten or some other means which doesn't even reveal handwriting.) If the only way to tell that a person who looks like a female is actually a male is through a close physical examination, then will you at least agree that they are doing a good job of acting as a female?

Of course there are many people who do that, including actors and cross-dressers, who see it as a different persona which they can put on or take off. For those who work hard at it, it's a sign of respect to be called "she" because it's a recognition of the effort needed to get the body language, and voice patterns, and dress style down.

But some people feel that being born male was a mistake, a birth defect. A cleft palate is a birth defect which is easily fixed nowadays. Nose jobs and breast implants and LASIK are usually voluntary procedures to change a genetic characteristic. Gender reassignment isn't as simple, but much easier pre-puberty. One worry is that the person, decades later, may decide that the choice made as a child was wrong, or at least deluded. That's why there's a lot of counseling involved.

If someone considers themself a female, takes on female gender roles, and to every extent possible acts like a female, then can you see why there's some offense that some side effects of some stupid little chromosome still make others call them a "he" instead of "she"?

That person may still be deluded. The question for you is, how do you tell the difference between a delusion and (what you consider to be the impossible case of) actually being born as the wrong sex? What are the negatives and benefits of encouraging vs. denying that delusion? Bear in mind that clearly a number of transgender people are happier having made that change.

As to your Superman example, "Superman" is a specific person from a fictional world. But suppose you thought you were Kryptonian, and you underwent hypothetical genetic tinkering and technological augmentation to get x-ray vision, super-strength, and so on. Then yes, I would call you a Kryptonian, or a human transformed into a Kryptonian if I wanted to be more precise. Just like my Dad, born Canadian, is now a US citizen. But if you just decide one day that everyone should call you "Superman", without making any effort at it, then don't be surprised if people don't agree with you. What would that effort look like? I saw a Superman impersonator on the Strip in Vegas, and would have no problems calling that person the Man of Steel.
Lofgren just pulled out ACTA. Big plus for her.
I see what you mean. Yeah, I agree with you there. Apologies for me knee-jerking to the wrong conclusion.

And the worst part is that I heard this segment ON NPR last night on my way home.
Recipes with Backbone.js
I did the same thing, but my password was prefixed by "stupid". Your insult may vary.
Funnily enough, this is what I like most about stackoverflow. They know what they're good at, they know what use-cases the site is designed for, and they actively fight mission creep.
> The next warning is stay off IRC or other places where "hackers" hang out. They think it's funny to hand you commands that can destroy your computer. The command rm -rf / is a classic that you must never type. Just avoid them. If you need help, make sure you get it from someone you trust not from random idiots on the internet.

I don't really agree with that. I know for sure that popular channels in OFTC and Freenode are monitored by very smart and responsible people that would never let this happen. In my many years on IRC I have not seen a single novice guy looking for help actually get had by someone intentionally trying to mislead/screw over.

I would instead encourage novices to read this:
http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#usefora ('How To Ask Questions The Smart Way: Web and IRC forums directed towards newbies often give the quickest response')
I'm pretty excited for this, I've been waiting to upgrade from my Droid Incredible and nothing else has grabbed my attention quite like the Galaxy Nexus.
Gruber is not a general "tech journalist", he's an apple centric blogger.

Two of his main themes are that the following bits of conventional wisdom (which you can get on any of dozens of "tech journalist" websites) are incorrect:

(1) Android is winning.

(2) Android is as good as iOS (or better or nearly as good).
This reminds me of a quote from the movie Analyze This (2002):

Jelly: Anyway, two of the witnesses decided not to
testify and the third guy, well, he commited
suicide.
Dr. Ben Sobel: How?
Jelly: He stabbed himself in the back four times
and threw himself off a bridge.

Oracle isn't demanding Ubuntu actively remove Java from user's computers

Except that it makes it impossible to do otherwise, as security (a hallmark of desktop Linux) is compromised. Technical users that need to keep their servers up will know how to workaround this, while mom and dad won't care.

Despite the backlash, I think this is the right choice.
Kudos where kudos are due. He's doing right by his fans and the technology. That's why everyone is so impressed.

He's brilliant and paving the way for artists to make money.
He is the Trent Reznor of his field.

Reznor on "what to do as a new / unknown artist":
http://forum.nin.com/bb/read.php?30,767183,767183
Gruber comparing himself to Foster-Wallace made me throw up in my mouth a little bit....
Spoiler alert: the #1 most overused word of 2011 is... Pivot! Half of these are not pivots at all, at least not according to the definition Eric Ries originally coined: "A change in strategy without a change in vision."

SkillSlate: looks like a change in vision to me (totally different product)
Fondu: not a pivot, its a totally new company
Hipmunk: not a pivot, it's a new (complementary) product
Turntable.fm: Brand new startup
Fab: Brand new startup

All of these look like startups we should be commending for making building good products and making strategic decisions this year, let's just stop calling everything startups do "Pivoting" just because its a buzzword.
Yes, they have the valuable Congressional Research Service to do non-partisan evaluations. Their reports are great, though often not made public.
Most of the reasons are good, but how can anyone keep a straight face while they present changing strategic priorities as a big-company problem? Don't startups do 90-degree "pivots" of the entire darn company just as often? The ten startups I've been in all got jerked around far more than the two big companies, and I get the impression this is even more true in today's startup culture.
Distributed Buddhabrot Fractal in ClojureScript
> meeting expectations"

Perhaps one of the expectations is not putting fucked up shit like package installs into init scripts.
Let's start by being able to talk about the basics like IP addresses, servers and domain names? The baseline doesn't have to be very high to weed out the ignorant.
Time is literally what GPS satellites are broadcasting.
Assuming you have used Grails before, this should get you started on where it stands today http://grails.org/doc/2.0.x/guide/introduction.html#whatsNew
Open Letter to Louis CK
Ask HN: How to buy a domain name from third party?
A domain name that I am interested in is registered to Anything.com. Anything.com appear to be a professional domain parker with a very large portfolio.[1]

The name I am after is pretty obscure and invaluable I would think but I am not sure how to proceed. If I appear too interested the price normally sky-rockets. Here is their response to an enquiry:

"I handle inquiries for the Anything.com, the owner of the domain name and was instructed to follow-up on your inquiry. The domain is currently in use and was not bought for resale. However, while Anything.com does not offer its domain names for sale, I will forward serious offers to their board of directors. Please feel free to submit an offer via email. I can also be reached by phone if you would like to discuss further."

[1] http://www.namepros.com/domain-name-discussion/518591-anything-com-very-nice-names.html
What qualifies someone as a designer? Going to design school? Using Illustrator in the course of business? Having "good taste?"

I've never had the word "designer" on a resume, but I kind of feel like I'd qualify. But not sure.
Alexander Graham Bell Recordings Heard For First Time Tues Now Online
Sometimes, just sometimes, a group of lawmakers puts together a diverse group of people who are experts, and has them undertake a good faith investigation of an issue.

And sometimes, just sometimes, the lawmakers read the group's recommendations and base their votes on those recommendations.

We cannot expect a much better response to any collective action problem.

Clearly, this is not happening with a bill that was written by and for the media industry. But the source of the problem is not governance per se, but rather the fact that the system has been corrupted.
>isn't defending a preference one way people relate to certain other people?

I took that quote and that post to refer to the negative implications of treating people differently based on personal preferences.

>If by "other people" you meant all other people--I don't think that's actually true or evidenced here.

Not all encompassing "all", but it happens quite a bit. Many a "flame war" have stemmed from something as trivial as personal preference. The very example we have is a public example, which is good for outlining the issue, not defining it. I understand these people have professional reasons to pick one over another. I understand why one would defend their preference aggressively. But as the article implies, there are ways of doing so without putting down the other person for a difference of opinion. That is the overall lesson.
I don't believe that his argument is alluding to the objects' actual prices, but rather to the framework he perceives MG and Gruber using to further their arguments. Namely, an appeal to 'luxury', where luxury is a self-sufficient reason for something to be better than something else. And that people who haven't experienced this 'luxury' can't comprehend what makes it superior.

Honestly, I haven't read enough from MG and Gruber to form a meaningful opinion on their argumentative style, so I'll digress from staking out a position. But I agree with Topolsky in theory, that is that an argumentative appeal to luxury isn't sufficient in itself, considering luxury can be decomposed and explained at a more concrete level.
It no doubt has an EGI - a combined GPS INS. It will depend entirely on the software interpreting that data.
Using Perl for Statistics: Data Processing and Statistical Computing