skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I was referencing toddlers and how that age group learns. The word toddlers is not condescending, it's simply the most appropriate word for the age group in question.

> I don't see how it holds any more weight than your argument from antiquity

The dictionary is nothing but "argument from antiquity", as would be the conventional definition of "correct usage", in contrast to the "many people doing it wrong makes it right!" definition you disavowed, skipped a graph, then repeated.

Prepositions are not "essentially arbitrary" even when used with metaphysical concepts. Particular prepositions work with particular types of concepts, and curiously, end up quite similarly used among a variety of cultures and languages. In English, for example, is the concept something you can possess, or a process that happens to you? If you consider other things that couple with "on" or "by", you'll see what I mean.

Certainly English is charming, and rapidly evolving. You've likely read Bill Bryson's "The Mother Tongue", but if not, you might enjoy it.

http://www.amazon.com/Mother-Tongue-English-How-That/dp/0380...
"the only advantage is that police are called about 30 seconds sooner"

Unless the thief takes off with the victims phone as well. Additionally there are sadly instances where the theft at the ATM is just the start of other crimes towards the victim.
PayPal Makes Buyer Destroy a Valuable Antique Violin To Get a Refund
Randomly selected california...goddamn that makes for bad reading.
well, apart from the very aggressive title, i don't see it covering lot of new ground. seems to be written more for people who don't know memory models exist.

a slightly older but a far better introduction to the whole thing seems to be this one: http://www.cs.uiuc.edu/~sadve/Publications/computer96.pdf
Cities Are Making Us More Human
What's the probability we're idiots?
Kodak Sees a Future Where Film Is Optional [1995]
User onboarding for their associated services could be a solid revenue stream. Also charging for promoting different services.
That would be an excellent idea in countries where people are taken hostage to empty out their bank accounts overnight to get the maximum withdrawal over 2 days.
There is definitely a misnomer that ebook creation is easy, especially as so many creation tools seem to output to .EPUB. The key isn't creating an EPUB, it's creating a good-looking EPUB.

This stuff is hard and I totally understand your pain - I'm the digital product manager over at Blurb.com (ebook!). We're primarily focused on fixed-layout epubs which ensures that the picture you laid next to the text will always stay in the same place. Reflowable epubs are technologically easier to create but the output can vary so much that it makes the author look sloppy at times. Not cool.

You can create a Blurb book and then convert it to an ebook for $1.99. We create them to Apple's strict epub standards so you can even submit it to their iBookstore. No DRM. :) (http://blurb.com)

Looking forward, I think we are going to see a larger focus on fixed-layout ebooks in the future as more tablets are created (Kindle Fire, iPad) and authors see the limitations of reflowable ebooks. I'm not knocking reflowable ebooks, but just writing a book in itself is a huge undertaking (congratulations!); trying to maintain formatting and a clean layout afterwards feels like you're being punished.

As to anyone else who has gone through ebook creation/conversion with Blurb (or elsewhere), feel free to send me a note or comment with your questions. It's rare that a HN thread directly relates to my work :)

- Nic.
I remember a couple of years ago, I was on a bus and there's an old lady sitting next to me. We had a chat, then she said that she owned a "useless old computer called Apple 2." She really wanted to get rid of it in exchange of small amount of money.

I said, "Cool, let me see what I can do, here's my email."

I was an idiot, really. I forgot that she might not know how to use email, and I didn't ask her contact.
I've been wondering about the social consequences of being on camera, and automatically recognizable for a while.

I've come to believe that we're about to see the end of revealing clothing, at least for women. After all, which woman wants to appear on "Paul Blart's Home Alone Stimulation" videotape, just because they dress stylishly or revealingly or just have a nice rack?

I'm surprised that more stuff like the "Splash Mountain" flashing shots hasn't appeared on the internet. You'd think that mall cops would share their "Best Daisy Dukes" (or whatever) tapes, and that eventually, some would leak.
Thanks for posting this, alexchamberlain, much appreciated.
"""In whose 'literary' eyes is 1984 a minor work? It's an important piece in the 20th C. literary canon."""

It mostly has political (in the broad sense) importance, not actual literary one. ("Brave New World" is even worse in this regard, but it also has the same kind of importance).

"""And you've completely discounted the post-modern literature of post-WWII, including Nabokov (!), DeLillo, Franzen, Morrison."""

I said there are "a few exceptions to prove the rule". Nabokov could be one, true, but surely not DeLillo, Franzen and Morrison, and not crap like Rothman, Pynchon et al.
Ask HN: Your MVP or Customer's MVP?
If your startup is not the first-mover, what would your strategy be to build a MVP? How would you define your MVP?

Would your approach be different for B2B apps versus a social platform?

Was reading Robert Scoble's blog on "Why I'm treating startups more critically lately" and was wondering how one would approach it. In our case, we are targeting customer's definition of MVP for our startup.

https://plus.google.com/111091089527727420853/posts/NN7YJRT7S8m
It's your lucky day! Make a detailed list of what you would want from such a service, divided into levels, and indicate how much you would pay for each level. Place the list here, or email it to me, and I'll try to build your ultimate ifttt clone. I like pinboard and ifttt, but I see ifttt as struggling to transition to a paying model because they are spending way too much time, money and energy supporting a large user base for free.
Apple Design Guru Ive Awarded Knighthood
Are you a hacker yourself?
Yep, I really liked the moral operating system talk as well - really powerful stuff. There's more on it here: http://venturebeat.com/2011/05/14/damon-horowitz-moral-opera...
I'd benefit from a "Driving Mode" on my phone. If John, Rachel, or Stan calls, auto-text them: "I'm driving, can't talk". Everyone else goes straight to voicemail. If they send me a text within 5 minutes of that call (must be serious), make the font huge so I can read it in .5 seconds on my console. Hide all other texts.

I'd like to be truly responsible and just turn my phone off, but I don't to allow for those few times when there actually is something important.
Text is still the best way of discussing ideas, even among artists. My concern is that a similar service won't get any where near the critical mass in terms of its user-base... which may be because we're more visual ;)
I don't want karma, I want useful criticism. We need to win public support. Granted, BloombergTV is far from mainstream, but we're taking babysteps.

We aren't for piracy, we're just aware of how futile trying to legislate against it is. I think we can make a case for this that articulates the genuine problem and still resonates with the average American.
It happens to me often enough. Maybe it's just if you have friends who are interested in gadgets, but they will usually say things like, "Oh, you got a new phone? Can I see it?", "Oh, you installed a new ROM? Can I see it?", "Oh, I was wondering how this worked on that phone, can I try it on yours?" All of these are generic requests that just involve tapping around a lot to get a feel for the device, and they're all totally valid requests that one wants to fulfill to help his friends experience more stuff.

Also, some people just don't consider their phones private and don't understand why anyone else would. My parents or siblings sometimes want to flip through Gallery to see the newest pictures of my children, friends, or co-workers.

A couple misplaced photos can be quite the liability in a situation like that...
So, "writing and publishing a book isn't easy so I'm charging you $50 for an e-book so I don't have to give up the work and percentage to a publisher that would make it available to you for $20".

I don't stand by publishers but this seems to be the other extreme. The consumer loses in both, IMO…
It sounds lame, but it in no way reflects reality, so i don't understand what your point is. Under the current system, the recently deceased authors book would earn royalties for his estate for 75 years. Grand children he's never met will benefit financially from his work. We grant them a monopoly, and get no social benefit. This is a perversion of the intent of copyright, which was to promote more creative work.

Simple inheritance is categorically different. Your inheriting money from your family has no negative impact on others. But if you inherit an intellectual monopoly, it is taking something away from the public good for no benefit. That may be acceptable for a reasonably limited term. But how anyone can imagine a copyright term that extends across multiple generations is reasonable is beyond me.
J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot releases iPhone special effects app
My favorite, from Steward Brand:

Confronting a difficult problem we might fruitfully ask, "What would a microbe do?"
I didn't attach a license to this as:
a) the front-end is just a very simple UI put on top of attacklab.net's showdown.js. Unfortunately, attacklab seems to be dead now but the showdown code has a BSD license, see: http://static.joncom.be/screen/script/showdown.js.
b) the back-end simply opens and saves text files, I didn't think anyone would want to see that.

In answer to your question, attacklab did the hard work and yes there is an open source license attached to his/her work.
My pick, "marginal benefit" and conversely, the sunk cost fallacy.
>Results which would get mentioned on the nightly news get fixed, period.

I can't think of a single publication or media outlet that hasn't covered Santorum's "Google problem".
No, I'm perfectly well-versed in the differences between C and C++, having written in one or the other for a long time. A trivial look-alike implementation of std::string can be written in C, and would look a lot like the RString class.

Your argument is actually, essentially mine. The need to use the platforms' string functions heavily swings (but does not force) the choice of null-terminating the RString members. As I mentioned, it would be really stupid but entirely possible to simply clone the non-null-terminated string into a temporary null-terminated char array every time you want to use a function that takes standard "C strings" if you really, truly, madly wanted to have an RString implementation that was one byte smaller to store. But that would be insane.
I don't think it's a correct analogy, since the copyright infringer isn't doing any possible (or perceived) damage to Disney. I think the pattern should be: "Company X gets shut down because one of its customers broke Law Y at the expense of Company Z".

And the best Company X I can think of is a sports franchise. (A customer base that is too large to monitor in real time, and that forms a community that would get shut down along with the business.) So what are Y and Z? I don't think they even have to differ from the reality. "Imagine if the government shut down the Boston Red Sox because one of its fans was handing out ripped Beyonce CDs." Or maybe the fan should be selling fake Rolexes, since that probably actually happens.
I agree that such tactics are not helpful for a rational, adult conversation. However, if someone is spreading hate-speech about gays on religious grounds, he is far beyond the reach of logic and rationality.
I'd highly encourage everyone to read Kahneman's book. It really makes you appreciate the fact that what we consider "thinking" and "decision making" are usually just sequences of lazy cognitive biases that [poorly] approximate solutions for substituted questions. Unfortunately, I suspect that there already is a response bias to the readership of that book, since only those who are willing to question their own thinking process and metacognition would be interested in this kind of book.
I really do agree with a lot of the points you made. The one thing I think you failed to mention was that the in the past, these same companies that are backing SOPA/PIPA fought previous technologies, such as public radio, VCRs/DVD Burners, and DVR/TiVo. Ultimately, those channels did not hinder or kill the industries they are fighting to protect, but rather provide them new methods of distribution and new sources of revenue. They can choose to spend that money on technological improve rather than on lobbying/litigation/drafting legislation. We already see companies embracing the new technology and making great improvements (Apple with iTunes, Pandora, Spotify, etc.), but the other companies aren't keeping up with or using the technology to remain in the game and/or relevant until they have no other choice.

Another point a coworker made is that we are squeezing the inefficiency out of these systems. Models of business that worked well 10-50 years ago don't work nearly as well or at all now because there is technology in place that eliminates the need for some or all of the distribution methods in place that they are trying to protect.
Most manuscripts are written in a word processor like Word or Pages, without any formatting. 12 pt Courier at 1,5 line height. I like it when writers send in their work in Adobe InCopy format, but few of them do.

http://www.adobe.com/products/incopy.html
Vilayanur Ramachandran should probably have proof-read his, after listing four examples he forgets one. He was probably trying to decide which was the better example, cold fusion or telepathy.
Comparison of sorting in C++ and C
And, to qualify my answer, I'm thinking Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Hoffmann, James, Balzac, Poe, Stendhal, Dickens, Melville, Flaubert, Hugo, Conrad, Mann, Proust, Lawrence, Rilke, Kafka, Fitzgerald, Gide, Hemingway, Faulkner, Wolfe, Miller, Musil, etc...
>No. Santorum screwed up by defaming 10 percent of the people on Earth, who replied in kind. Dan Savage just got them organised.

Disagreeing with a position held by 40% of people != irrational hate speech towards 10% of people.

Obviously, a view isn't made more correct by having more people believe in it, but if one makes entirely baseless attacks on a large demographic, and that demographic responds, I find it hard to be sympathetic.
Turn off safe search and it's the top result
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Brettspiel
Brettspiel
Last week I went along to the London Educational Games Meetup and the event proved engaging enlightening and thoroughly worth the train fare
Doesn't matter too much. Any language that i listed will do the job. Just pick one and start writing code, any one of them will make learning lisp later easier.
No; read SOPA.
If you were my cousin who did that to me, you wouldn't exist today, to put it lightly.
Ratio 1 is hand coded divided by the library routine

I think you did the opposite.
Unlikely. But you could be vigilant for any copyright infringement the SOPA supporters are doing on their own websites, and then get the rightholders for that content to ask their sites to be shutdown.
Spotlight could save you that frustration already.
I like it in principle, but I think the interface could use improvement.

I had to click lots of stuff to get it to select only my city.

I don't like the "window" tabs much. Maybe it would work better extracting text & attributes then letting you expand the entry in place, or perhaps by flagging items of interest then generating a report.

It would also be cool if it allowed more detailed filtering than is already supported by CL.

I'm a networker so CL isn't really that useful to me personally, but lots of people rely on it for job searches and improved usability / accessibility could be a significant boon there.
It's already started.. Cisco shutting down Flip Mino for example after buying it $580M.
I originally wrote my ebook as preparation for a 3 hour long conference tutorial. I had given the tutorial previously and thought that I would prepare by writing a book. Well, the book was published in November, the conference was in July. Yes it is hard work. Especially when you have a full time job and family.

Amazon really wants ebooks to be priced under $10. Hence the 70% margins from $3-$9.99. The Hockings, Lockes and Konraths who spit out a novel a month can go down in the $.99 - $2.99 35% margin and make it back by selling 50K copies a week. I don't know that any technical book sells that much in a month. Hmmm, maybe technical books aren't exciting enough and could be spiced up a bit.

WRT formatting, I ended up writing my own restructuredText to epub converter[0]. I format my html specifically so it will go through KindleGen and make acceptable mobi's. (I'm convinced that the author(s) of KindleGen outsourced every other line of that program, then blindly merged them together. I'm not sure how else it could generate such horrible markup... A first year intern should be able to do much better in a month of a summer). Then I also created a mobi/epub friendly css project that has had some contributions from professional ebook creators. [1]

It took a lot longer to write than I would have thought, I had an in-law that writes grants for a living give it an overview, and then got a professional Python editor to give it a wonderful overhaul.

I did cover design myself with Inkscape. It's OK, better than a lot of covers, but not stellar.

As for distribution, e-junkie has a horrible interface (for admins) but does the job for self-distribution. Amazon has about 60+% of the US market, so even though mobi sucks, I put all my focus on making it look great on the Kindle. (In fact I'm in the middle of another book on mobi-friendly epubs) Getting published on KDP is easy, no ISBN required. BN has another 20% of the US market, pubit also easy, no ISBN required. Apple is a pain, and from my research most ipad users buy content from Amazon... Smashwords is fine for novel writers but requires writing in Word (at least until mid 2012), so I just can't justify spend time tweaking Word documents, for a book on Python where it is imperative that spacing and whitespace are correct, for a small slice of the pie. If Smashwords accepted by epub or mobi, I'd put it up there yesterday.

I'm horrible at marketing. Getting reviews and feedback is longtail behavior. Send out 40 copies to people who say they'll give feedback and maybe one or two will respond. (Maybe my peer group is bad) I need to spend more time prettying up the website and on marketing, but I feel good about my book and the reception it has gotten.

Yep it is hard work, but for some reason I'm in the middle of writing two more books.

0 - https://github.com/mattharrison/rst2epub2
1 - https://github.com/mattharrison/epub-css-starter-kit
Copper clad steel
In 1915, Fushi Copperweld discovered the secret of cladding copper to steel. Today, our bimetallic conductors add value, strength, weight savings and flexibility in a wide range of applications.
Evolution is a scientific fact, not a personal view.
The entire purpose of Pagerank is to estimate the results you desire the most.

Most people here desire the original article instead of a summary on Google+.

You are telling everyone they are wrong and pagerank knows better than them what they want. This isn't futhering a hivemind.
I also enjoyed that book very much, and I'm trying to expose it to people who otherwise would not come in contact with it or the general topics it discusses. We're probably preaching to the choir here :)
FYI, you can put quotes inside asterisks to italicize them, rather than python-style triple-quoting.

*This is an example*

This is an example
holy crap -> http://sopatrack.com/lookup?lat=39.070388&lng=-76.545239...

these guys are going to totally vote for SOPA!
Right there is why the bad guys always win - they don't care that an effective metaphor is not strictly accurate. We are ham-strung by our integrity, which is a sad state of affairs.
And this is why me and my family get way more use out of a Chromebook rather than our Android tablet.

Please make Android grow multi-user capabilities or give me ChromeOS in a tablet format.
Of course, the question is, how long does it take for that theoretical portfolio to be outdated? Developing film was around until quite recently, until it quickly became obsolete.
2 of my first 3 digital cameras were kodak.

a dc2300? a low end 2mp camera. and a palmpix attachment that connected to my then palm iiix and iiic. both were very good cameras and the lenses were better than any of the camera phones i had for a few years. the palmpix especailly for a vga res camera took surprisingly good pics.

i never heard of them trying to put their tech into camera phones. their name and reputation would have helped shift a few phones. a quick check only turns up one model a motorola zn5.

they're also sitting on impressive printing technology. there is still a market for mobile printing for embedded applications. i would love a a5-a6 printer that fitted in my bag to kick out a page every once in a bluemoon.

it would be tragic to see kodak disappear from shops and be nothing but a brand in some larger company.
They did see it coming, probably in the same way that the movie and music industries saw the inevitable future of digital downloads. Who knows what political battles must have been fought within that company.

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/07/10/business/kodak-sees-a-futu...
> But I'm not making a moral judgement.

I was addressing the parent comment to mine, which did seem to be making a value judgement.

> My point is that you will get bad salespeople by selecting for the ones willing to take smooth, low returns over commissions.

Can you back this up with figures, or is it your expert opinion?
Watch The Devil Inside
Watch The Devil Inside Online Free camera work is by Gonzalo Amat which is edited by William, Brent Bell, and Tim Mirkovich. The movie is distributed by Paramount Pictures under Insurge Pictures studio which is planned to be release in movie houses on January 6, 2012.
Have you looked at sphinx? I've used it to generate epub format files with some success.
Santorum's SEO Problem
This was done to me by cousins and brothers maybe 4-5 times (with very well developed games before each time). I understand the frustration (although what you describe sounds a bit full on) particularly as I'm pretty sure you had to start a new game then save.
St. Alex Church, Calangute
In fact this isn't true, because one thing that IE did better than any other browser was scriptable async http calls and XML transformation with XSLT in the browser. At the time no other browser could do that. We were using javascript to get XML data from the server using the ActiveX XMLHTTP object, and transforming it client side with XSLT to generate HTML. This enabled filtering, sorting, and different presentations of data all client-side. This was hugely productive compared to imperative-style Response.Write HTML building, and at the time was only possible in IE.
The 4 Types of Virtualization
Uber should consider implementing an app feature where I can enter my destination address and it calculates the price of that route AT THAT moment: "If you were to book a car now it would be $X" not just "hey its 6.25x". The UI is terrible. People dont know what 6.25x means. Give it to them in dollars.

This feature alone would have solved this NYE public relations drama.
Ultrasonic bird control is the best way to get rid  the birds
Every country worldwide has been fighting to control pests for ages. The term pest is usually referred to the harmful animals that are detrimental to human health or even the ecology.