skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That is pretty amazing for her. A novel approach, although my knowledge of cancer-fighting-techniques is limited at best (limited to just about 0). Good for her, however, I hope this turns out to be another leap forward in saving lives.

CBS needs to fire whoever edited this article. It is riddled with spelling and grammatical errors, and parts of it are down right impossible to make sense of.

Cheapens the entire weight of her amazing discovery, to have it reported in such a haphazard manner.
As an employee, I collect salary from Day One. I also don't have to invest any of my personal savings in the company.

Thus, my risk is much lower than a founder's.
>Jon Stewart showed 4 people using the word 'nerd'. Three of them were anti-SOPA!

So what? Were they anti-SOPA from the beginning, or just when we started getting serious pressure applied... Even if they were instinctively anti-SOPA, would it be fine if they refer to you as something similar to carnival show (okay, that's a geek), as opposed to a concerned expert in the field? That was at least my take-away from the clip, have not watched the full episode yet.

Do they refer to bankers as Till Fiddling Cash Rapists? Decorum counts for something, and we are not a side-show.
> your time as a youth shapes you, forms your understanding of the world.

Only if you stop learning. And by learning i mean challenging your ways of thinking and acting (think about a computer geek learning salsa dancing), not learning something similar to things you already know (think about a computer geek learning yet another programming language).

> the majority of people (aka normal people) who where adults before 1985 do not "get" this new world the way you do.

Don't be a sheep. I mean, do not get along only with people in your age bracket. Keeping an open mind, socialize with younger people: they'll teach you things, if you let them.

Disclosure: 37 year old fart here.
Those are pretty cool things to be a tech lead for. While I agree that those projects are not earth-shattering or incredibly innovative[1], Facebook's traffic numbers make everything technically interesting. For example, the Like button is served 3 billion times per day[2]. I'm sure FB has a lot of infrastructure for that kind of load, but knowing that you might have 3 billion daily hits leads to some interesting technical challenges.

[1] Although perhaps somewhat earth-shattering just because hundreds of millions of people use those features.

[2] http://venturebeat.com/2010/07/07/facebook-like-buttons/
Kinda like asking $1000 for a glass of water from the man almost dying of thirst but accepting $3 from the man that's jogging and wants a sip.

The problem is I've always seen explanations where pricing is set my the market demand. I'm curious how an economical model would look when there is no market, just this sort of individual negotiations with zero transparency.

Edit: This reminds me of the "how much is your time worth" sales question. Imagine how much a billionaire pays his maid.
I care because I want to know the right answer. Sometimes people post questions seeking the wisdom of the crowd, and its impossible to tell which comment gets the highest vote. Which negates the reason for asking the crowd in the first place.

Its kind of like asking your friends if you should buy A or B. If all of them say A, you get a good handle on the reasons to buy A.

This sort of question works fine if commenters just say A or B in the first comments. But what if someone replies to that and says "What about C, that's an even better alternative." And then everyone agrees C is better. But the current system doesn't allow us to see that accurately, so I'm asking if it can be turned on for people wanting to ask questions that way.
To be fair, I only see the three ads above and none on the right. Still, is this what Google refers to as 'above fold' location ?
Why not iTunes U?
Except companies can't vote... not yet at least. The one thing more important than campaign contribs is votes. Granted money equates to a certain number of votes. But as long as money-votes < protest-votes we win.
Incorrect. Nginx overtaking IIS was first seen here:

http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2012/01/03/january-2012-we...

Look at the graphs on that page. You'll see that Apache is still number 1 (as it has been for the past 16 years), still has by far the largest market share, and is still growing fast. Faster than Nginx if you look at total numbers.

Nginx's primary benefit is performance, gained from its event based request model. Guess what Apache 2.4 has... The same thing. The idea that Apache is dying is laughable.
Advertising company penalises others who sell advertising, news at 11.
Behind the music: What if the culture industry shut down for a day?
But the US did not order anyone to be arrested abroad or extradite anyone did they? They arrested one of the developers when he deplaned in Las Vegas.

These cases are not all the same. Different criminal laws are being violated, by people in different places, involving different US-based businesses.
Integrating Twilio with Ruby on Rails
I don't disagree with what you're saying.

I just think that if we techies try to understand some of the concerns of the copyright holders, we are in a position to propose legislation of our own. Until then, we are resigning ourselves to playing defense.
(Note: I was more referring to the fact that your various offerings are of varied level of quality, i.e. you don't have the laser like focus on remote storage like rsync.net, but your reply was entirely useful anyway.)

I don't worry about that level of quality and have e.g. used Google Docs for some very important things, I worry about the Product Manage level of quality. No in the trenches Google programmer up and decided to remove "+" as a search term (and were mulit-word double quoted phrases previously mandatory search terms?).

There's also the political problems that come with size and scope. Google is in the cross-hairs of many governments, and looking at history you can't say it's impossible that ugly things won't happen, e.g. a split that would put Gmail in a less capable smaller company.

Compounding that, to a degree uncommon in the industry, Google has made an all in bet on the Democratic Party and Blue State values. That strikes me as ... unwise in county that for many years has self-identified to Gallup as being 40% "Conservative", 40% "Independent" and 20% "Liberal".
Just wanted to say thank you! I am a very happy customer of the 2010 release. The tutorial was easy to follow and I am about to launch my first rails app. I was actually blown away with how nice rails is and how your tutorial explained it. I'm coming from the php world and my life has been much easier. Thanks again! One more thing, it was nice to see how you configured your dev environment too. With the 4 terminal tabs, browser, and editor. I've copied it and happily working away.
The focus on campaign finance reform is wrong-headed and risks fracturing the internet freedom coalition.

America has a strong tradition of individual rights and liberties, stronger than anywhere else in the world. This is especially true regarding the rights of free speech and the free distribution of information. It is possible to build on these principles to create a platform that appeals to a large swathe of the American electorate, an “Electronic Bill of Rights”.

We cannot taint this with other pet causes on the right or left. I am looking for allies right now to help push for pro-freedom legislation that will push the middle in our direction. I’ve explicitly written off working with freedom advocates that are too heavily invested in other high-profile political stances with a partisan lean.

For this to succeed, we need to reach both the Tea Party and the OWS crowd while not alienating anybody. The good news is that the mainstream is with us. President Obama and all four contenders for the Republican Presidential nomination oppose SOPA. Let’s take this momentum and use it to erect lasting bulwarks to protect internet liberty.

Let’s pass something that we can all agree on. Let’s not get bogged down arguing with each other over campaign reform, or other peripheral issues.
>The cloud is becoming the wild west

The whole internet is currently the wild west, where companies and people handle their own problems largely without government intervention and there is more illegal activity then more regulated sectors.

Eventually the government will reign in the internet and stop these illegal activities, making it safer for business. This will most likely ruin the internet as we know it.
I think a lot of people who can't "create" greatness can still inspire it -- especially when you've got a high profile like him. Regardless of what's he's done, I'd rather he write something like that an inspire a couple people than do nothing. Who's to say that's not greatness in itself?

I also agree with what he's saying in general, so maybe I'm a bit biased.
The End of an Era for Urchin Software
I agree with your conclusion, but your statement on political donations is contrary to my understanding of the process.

Donations don't literally buy votes, but what they do literally buy is face time. That is, people in Congress will hold fundraisers, and lobbyists pay to attend those fundraisers. The understanding is that the lobbyists who attend those fundraisers will have time to talk to the politician about the issues their clients care about.

This episode of Planet Money clearly demonstrates this: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/11/01/141913370/the-tues...

Now, if you have two sides to an issue, and only one side of that issue has active lobbyists who buy that face time with people in Congress, then you will have a situation where the people in Congress only understand one side of the issue.
They didn't need SOPA because they took the time and effort needed to get a warrant.

The argument against SOPA is not that sites could be shut down, but that there needs to be a very demonstrable reason for it--with warrants and evidence and judges signatures.
With SOPA, the site can be shut down based on accusation alone, and THAT is the problem.
zavulon was joking. It's an old Slashdot meme: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot#Culture
Except neither "cool things" nor "technically interesting" have much to do with the author's core message: doing great things and changing the world for the better.

It is especially humorous to see someone who worked on Facebook Beacon deride coupon startups and social games:

I do not doubt that services like social games and coupons bring delight to people’s lives, and I mean no disrespect to the hard work that has made them possible. But in the face of threats to humanity’s future on the one hand and the extraordinary potential of mankind on the other, at some point we must ask: are we capable of more?
I was hoping to find your reply on the top.

As so many I started my 'vim-experience' by adding a lot of plugins, rc-settings, themes etc.

Finally I almost used as much time configuring, backing up my dot files and tweaking as I used on real actual programming.

I understand some settings are crucial (or may be nice), but I would recommend you use more time thinking and implementing your application.

I firmly believe that the KISS-principle (Keep it simple, stupid) is as important to IDE/Editors as it is writing software code.
Here she is giving a talk on her project:
http://greentaildigital.com/siemens/2011/angela/f.htm
Curated list of influential G+ users.
Thanks. I have free pass for few days. I will go and explore more.
It's not that money gives lobbyists's words extra weight. Money allows their words to be heard. That is, without the contributions, you don't get to talk to the politician. Contributions are an entry fee to a meeting.
That's all self-help has ever been

There's an awful lot of people dissing self-help. But it's always vague. What specific books/authors/phenomena/trends/memes/etc within self-help is it that you have a problem with?
> The 10,000 hour thing seems pretty valid.

It's valid if it's understood: it shouldn't be taken to mean, "Randomly press keys on a keyboard for ten-thousand hours and you'll produce masterful code" but rather "work passionately and carefully for ten-thousand hours, learn from the masters, seek to emulate and extend their genius, and after ten-thousand hours you might be getting somewhere".

Simply trying hard isn't enough. You have to be smart about how you try. That's what I was getting at with that.

I agree, the snake oil is selling this idea that you /must/ improve your weaknesses or you're invalidated.

On your last point: exactly. The takeaway is that it was a rather obvious point to make: people who are gifted in in a multivariate of disciplines will thrive; I doubt many will dispute that.
See the future: Augmented reality head-up displays beckon
Textbooks, Technology, and Apple's Plans for Education
I also agree with what he's saying in general, so maybe I'm a bit biased.

What he is saying is that he wishes his startup didn't have such a hard time retaining tech talent from going and doing their own start-up. It's amazing how we see the same evil bitching from these founders deceptively repackaged as something more noble.
I mentioned EssayJudge above. Basically, it's the same service, but free.

The founder is also the one who goes over the essays. His comments are amazing, and his price can't be beat.

http://essayjudge.com/
Our computers + the internet have exposed information profiteering for what it is. Abuse of power ensues.

"Information" should not be property under any circumstances except to protect our basic human rights (i.e. privacy of an individual)
Could this be the only serious thing ever created by Maddox? His new homepage header is more like the Maddox I remember though: "I hope SOPA PASSES. Update: it didn't :("
What are the main disadvantages of using python for SICP?
> I think that mostly the admins and architects on these projects have simply never heard of nginx, or if they have, they don't really know what it does.

Then let those admins and architects be hired by your competitors. I mean, whoever is skilled at a craft, must - not should - be aware of a few alternative tools. Even when they are not productive with those tools, at least they should be knowledgeable about how they stack against their tools of choice.
Translation: My start-up is having a really hard time retaining tech talent and keeping them from doing their own start-up.

--

It's amazing how we see the same evil bitching from these founders deceptively repackaged as something more noble. First from Sean Parker, now this guy.
Eurgh. Regardless, I will leave my embarrassing comment there because it includes some useful info.
384 isn't that much you can easily get 500+ full fat cores in a full cab for HPC systems and that is leaving 2U for the infiband tor switch
The Full Valenti: Dodd Trades His Olive Branch to Tech for a Howitzer
Thank you, thank you, thank you!

I have been checking the website once or twice a week to see when the new version would come out.

I have one Rails site already, but really want to go through the tutorial again and learn about the new features.

In my opinion, this is by far the best Rails tutorial available.
The real loser in software piracy isn't who you think
Re-reading the DMCA yesterday was the first time I realized that it actually does require a service like Dropbox to remove every user's copy of a file upon receiving a notice of infringement even if only one of those copies is not allowed and the rest are entirely legal.
As soon as another vendor tries to negotiate with you, there will be a market. Just because it's less convenient for the casual shopper doesn't mean that it's not a market.
Yes, this is what makes me suspect the method hasn't been tested. What companies have tried Joel's advice? How'd it work out?
Muze Radio: a virtual musician in your browser
Well, I guess they got penalized and got upset. But it's honestly good if such pages are penalized. Nowadays time is very important, and wasting time on a normal basis just to look through the advertisements is a very annoying thing.
Another Cool Resume...From The Designer Of The "Bad-Ass" Resume
Theft requires that you deprive the owner of their property. "Intellectual property" is not legally property in any form, and copyright infringement is hence not theft.

That the copyright holders try to perpetuate this fantasy is all the more galling because they often try to attach more limitations to their products via licenses than they would be legally able to if what they sold was not largely predicated on it not being property.
Stupid Debate Questions
First test with wings (Man builds human powered bird wings)
On the one hand, this constitutes a weapon of mass destruction and should never be created by civilians in a lab.

On the other... if it is this easy to do, so that two virology teams can do it... then it needs to be done, somewhere. Is open academia that place?

I would imagine that knowing what genes need to mutate, that we could test for them to early detect an outbreak. Also, we could target anti-virals or other treatments against those segments.

Scary stuff.
If you give me a credit card and a problem statement, chances are that I can come up with a working webapp that solves the problem

Just so I interpret correctly, are you basically saying that if someone cut you a blank check, you can solve any problem? Or that with a blank check, you can take a stab at a problem?

Either way, I could give you my credit card and tell you of my personal problems, and I doubt you'd be able to solve them. I'm also not rich, so I can't pay for the possibility of getting a solution to my problem, I only want to pay for results.

Perhaps you could be more specific.
These features have often been demonized, here and elsewhere, but perhaps you're missing the positives that they have provided. With an audience of 500 million+ users, features like Pages do not only let a company like Macy's interact with its customers. They let charities do so, as well, at virtually no cost. They let citizens organize, at virtually no cost, against their oppressive leaderships.

The Like button may or may not be a terror of tracking, but it lets people share knowledge faster and further than ever before. It lets you read that thing you never would have if you hadn't friended someone you don't really know that well two years ago. That article that sparked an idea that had lain dormant for months, maybe years, and finally came together.

You may not think Pages and the Like button have a “great capacity to change the world” (his definition of greatness in this article), but I hope you can see how he may think that is the case. Indeed, how many people may think so.
I may be wrong, but I think his point is: even if they couldn't bribe politicians, they still could blackmail them with bad coverage.
Accidental down vote. Sorry.
There is a Kafka gateway packaged with Sensei, see sensei-gateways module.

We love Kafka!
sounds like the same thing as saying "I'm not smart enough to understand this".
Not happy with the direction my career was taking, I decided to learn Ruby (and Rails) about 8 months ago. Within a few months of that I got a Ruby gig that I totally love and am still doing. Of the resources available for learning Rails, I found Michael Hartl's tutorial to be the best by far and have recommended it to anyone and everyone who's asked me for advice on learning Rails since then.

So thank you, Mr. Hartl; I'm not sure where I'd be right now without your excellent tutorial!
Will Amazon Join the PaaS Race?
> How to show you understand not a single thing about the issue.

Ironically, I think your criticism here does the same.

At the end of the day the question really is: "Is someone able to earn money from labor X?" If the answer here is "yes" then they'll keep doing it. If the answer here is "no", they'll do something else. Can we at least agree that it would be a good thing to have music/movies/software/"creative works" available in some form?

The ability to freely duplicate and share creative works make it difficult to produce a "yes" answer to that question. How we as a society currently produce and distribute creative works make a "yes" answer even more difficult than it otherwise might be.
Thoughts on what startups need to know before they think about an M&A exit
>Since records have been kept, the presidential candidate who raises the most cash has won 94% of the time.

Correlation is not causation...I'd expect the candidate best at winning elections also to be the candidate best at raising money almost all the time.
If this format is intended to be primarily human-readable, why should compactness be so crucial? Looking at your example, I personally think that commas increase readability by visually separating individual elements (at the expense of space they take).
The same arguments that you make for Pages could be made for the so-called coupon startups and gaming startups he seems to deride:

I do not doubt that services like social games and coupons bring delight to people’s lives, and I mean no disrespect to the hard work that has made them possible. But in the face of threats to humanity’s future on the one hand and the extraordinary potential of mankind on the other, at some point we must ask: are we capable of more?

Hypocritical much?
The physical servers were taken from the data centers as evidence.
A LOT of people have fought very hard for campaign finance reform over the past 20 years I can remember. The result is more money in politics than ever.

Supporting campaign finance reform will do nothing. We tried that over decades, the supreme court shot it down.

You have two options:

1. Constitutional reform.

Make it specifically distinguish campaign finance from free speech. No plain law will ever stand with the constitution as it is today.

2. Greatly increase the number of representatives.

This may be a lot easier as it is just a plain law. At some point we decided too many members of the house would be too chaotic. So we hugely raised the ratio of people to representatives.

This favors the lobbying power of interest groups.

While individuals still have a lot of influence if they write or in person visit their representative, it is universally accepted that the fewer people are in your district the more influence each individual has. And the opposite is also true. This is why, unlike the senate, the house is supposed to be the people's house.

If you dramatically raise the total number of representative you bring power closer to the people.

Will this also result in grid lock? Yes! Is that still totally worth it? YES!
Megaupload is down, a fake Megaupload website appears
As I've said elsewhere in the thread, I think many people get the motivations confused. We don't have to assume that the politicians are voting on bills based on how they think the lobbyists will contribute to their next campaign. Rather, you only get to talk to people in Congress if you make campaign contributions. Those contributions get you into parties where you have a chance to talk to the person in Congress.

The tech industry does a poor job of lobbying. For that reason, only MPAA and RIAA lobbyists have been talking to people in Congress. Imagine a random person who did not understand the internet and technology in general. Now imagine that they had, over the course of many months, only ever heard the RIAA and MPAA explain their side of the issue, and had never heard tech people explain the other side. How do you think they would vote?

We don't need to assume a calculation of "If I don't vote yes on this bill, lobbyist Joe will not give me any more money." It's sufficient for them to think "Lobbyist Joe made a lot of sense when he explained this issue to me. I'm going to vote yes." Lobbyist Jane, who would explain why this issue is a terrible idea, does not exist.