skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>What makes me mad is that we don't have the choice.

If you don't like the social results in your SERP, you realize it's a one click button to turn it off, right?

Or were you talking about the +1? Nobody forces you to click on it.

I don't get the rage. Google owns a multitude of different sites. Being able to sign into all of them at once is a godsend as far as I'm concerned.

So much misplaced anger here..
One of the principles of the Data Protection Act here in this UK is:

Personal data shall be obtained only for one or more specified and lawful purposes, and shall not be further processed in any manner incompatible with that purpose or those purposes.

In my view, mobile phone companies have my phone number so they can connect my calls. Providing age verification with "trusted partners" would seem to be a step beyond that specified purpose.

The act also says:

Personal data shall be adequate, relevant and not excessive in relation to the purpose or purposes for which they are processed.

If you just want to verify age, or verify the customer uses O2, then providing their entire phone number seems excessive to me. Even if they want to bill the user, a UUID could be used that's unconnected to the user's phone number.

Even if O2 were just sharing the data with "trusted partners", it doesn't look like they were acting legally.
You're right. And it will only get worse as time goes on. IMO the upward trajectory of their stock price and how 'evil' they are willing to be, over time, will have a positive correlation.
Does anyone know if people from outside the US can donate?
If SOPA Is Dead, What's Next?
> Where are those activists now? [...] People are fickle on the Internet and they get tired of causes quickly.

What we need is a permanent, federated, worldwide organisation to fight for internet freedom. We could call it a "Pirate Party".
Partially due to all the couples going to sleep with their phones?
Are you a Comcast subscriber in NYC? The issue only affected people who use Comcast as their ISP.
As someone who used Windows all their life I can appreciate the unified hardware/software/simplicity model that Apple is offering and can easily see how why the average user would prefer it. After reading Steve Jobs biography I am baffled as to why Apple didn't succeed earlier (at the magnitude they are succeeding now). Were their earlier products really just "not there yet" or was it a marketing problem that got solved by the ipod introducing the Apple way to the masses?
Ah, you make a lot of sense. I'd heard about the 6-month rule for Chinese and Indian developers. Hopefully anybody else on HN in a similar boat will read this and find your advice helpful :)
Not everyone is cut out for college, actually, most people aren't.

That is me. Once upon a time, I applied to take CS at a number of institutions. I was rejected from them all. Not that it really stopped me, I just had to learn it all by myself. Now I get to play "lead engineer" on some pretty significant projects and have CS grads coming to me for help.

But the meme I see often on HN and elsewhere is that you need to go to college. What they fail to account for is that college is a protected class where most people do not have the choice of going, even if they wanted to. I certainly didn't have the opportunity – though in hindsight, it was probably a blessing.
I suspect there are much cheaper ways to bring hollywood into their orbit.
Nuevas herramientas y recursos para los diseñadores web
>>Still emerging from their student years, most have yet to translate their earnings into material tokens of success.

This sentence rubbed me the wrong way. I don't think it's a coincidence that the same people who command these salaries are the same people that would be smart enough to drive a Ford or Honda and not splurge on a 5-series.
Antarctica bans file sharing
The real problem is people don't really understand the context of "Don't be evil." If you read Steven Levy's In the Plex, or any first-hand account, really, you realize it's more about always thinking about the user experience first. It has nothing to do with personal information. As far as I know, when "Don't be evil" was coined, they used little to no personal information to provide search results.
It's not that simple. Boards have certain duties to act on behalf of the corporations, and not their own personal interests. Since concepts like "the good of humanity" are so vague, and can be interpreted in mutually exclusive ways, the theory is that those decisions should be made by shareholders with their own money, not with the company's.

Take a "sweat shop", for example. There is one view that they are exploitative and that low wages overseas should not be tolerated. There is another view that those wages generate income in areas of the world where it is greatly needed. How is a board of directors to decide which view to take? Which shareholders should they listen to?

So boards have been defined as the people who watch the business for the good of the business. And they're given great leeway in doing so. (You can't sue them for making bad business decions, for example - only fraudulent or grossly negligent ones).

Bundling charity with business is an interesting idea, but I'm not sure it's better than separating them, or if there isn't an inherent contradiction in the two when you apply it to large public companies.

After all, profits can always be used to better humanity without the conflicts I've described after they've been given to the shareholders.

I'm a little skeptical that it will change much, but we'll see. It will be interesting to watch.
Miracle Tree is Like a Supermarket
It can decode and output a 1080p signal. What more do you need from a GPU? :)
We are working on securing partners to receive the funding.

Lobbying firms are in fact by law transparent about their finances - but we will also draft agreements with any partners demanding transparency and analysis of any financial data be updated on the site, available to the public.

On top of this, we are setting up a system to update users on the activities of the lobbyists, where they will disclose what they've been up to.

As for "backroom deals" and the like - if you research lobbying, you'll find it's not quite as shady as it's made out to be. It's just controlled by one small portion of the population, which owns a majority of the wealth. We The Lobby wishes to balance that.
I wonder when the Google bot will start to respect DNSSEC?
"Q: Which websites do you normally share my mobile number with?

A: Only where absolutely required by trusted partners who work with us on age verification, premium content billing, such as for downloads, and O2's own services, have access to these mobile numbers."

But those trusted partners may share your mobile phone number with their "trusted" partners. I know Ericsson IPX does this at least in Germany.

It usually works via several http redirects and is unnoticeable even to the client application using the usual http client APIs.

You can prevent this by using a http proxy.
>very aggressive (and overreaching) patent lawsuits

I'm not going to disagree with you, but every time I hear people complain about Apple and patent lawsuits, I recommend the following: Watch the iPhone introduction video on YouTube. If you don't have time to watch the whole thing, skip to 3.40 in Part 1, and see the state of affairs, then watch at 4.00 in Part 2 [2].
Listen to the crowd reaction when Steve "Slides to unlock" for the first time in the world.

It doesn't matter who you are, or what your background is, nobody had ever seen anything like that before.

In my opinion, Apple clearly invented something "brand new" and they are defending the patents that have on that in court.
What's wrong with that?

I don't think anyone can deny successful smartphones today have almost nothing in common with the phones at 3.40 in Part 1 [1], though they look and behave a hell of a lot like the one shown at 4.00 in Part 2 [2].

1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5VTB7Lj_NA

2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VLb5XdxRm8

EDIT: I need to clarify: I'm not just talking about "slide to unlock" being brand new and patentable.. I'm talking about the whole phone..
> The problem with that situation is that the
> motivation never goes away, but the effort
> to resist it can fade.

But what they're doing isn't evil. Some people don't like the change of aesthetic, but that's hardly the same as evil.

I think choosing the motto 'don't be evil' was a dumb idea though, because there's a permanent population of people with too much time on their hands trying to show off by casting things as being evil.

I use Google, and I'm looking forward to the improved functionality.
> If they break search, they will die.

Agreed. And if they don't innovate search, they will die.

Big change has to happen. Whether this is the right move remains to be seen.
Researchers have been able to print organs from tissue. You basically have a gel medium for the tissue to grow in, and then you spray human tissue (stem?) cells into the medium, layer by layer, and given enough time, they'll grow into an organ.

By that notion, it's not too infeasible to print your own food. If you can print organs, you can probably print muscle meat, or plants. But this sort of thing is a long long ways off.
How to Run a Business That Doesn’t Suck: The Hank and John Green Rules
Unless it's Apple bashing.
Yes. Fire up multiple live-repls and they'll all be connected to the same address-space, and function redefinitions in one will instantly be visible in the others. Fun if you're playing around with Clojure's concurrency constructs.
(in response to thinkcomp's reply to this)

we are using stripe.com as a our payment processor, and they allow exactly what you've stipulated.

We'd love to have an extended chat about this - mind reaching out at contact@wethelobby.com?
That was my first thought, too. Then I realized that it just might be: the lifespan of an average baby is significantly longer than the lifespan of an average phone.

Now, if the statistic was Apple was selling more iPhones to new cell phone customers or even to people who'd never had an iPhone, then you'd be exactly correct.
100 offers of support for London Start-Ups
I checked out http://data.influenceexplorer.com/contributions/ .
It has other types of data as well.

MyDataOrganizer.com targets only individual donors for US 2012 Presidential election.
The complexity of a robot is mostly in the software. Input (cameras and microphones) and output (robotic arms, etc) have been around for decades, but robots have not been able to interpret a picture of the world effectively. That's a software problem.

The thing about software is that you write it once and then it's free to copy. The first general-purpose robot workers will probably run expensive proprietary software, but 10 years later there will be usable open source versions. The physical robot itself will become cheaper, if anything, due to economies of scale.
Ryan, You are correct. The graduation numbers are 74.7% nationally, but in DC it is as low as 56%!

(http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/high-school-graduation-r...)
Offer HN: I will build your startup for $999
Hi. I am a regular HN-er. I am using a throwaway account to post this.

I am a freelance PHP/MySQL programmer based in India. I mostly do outsourced coding work but I'm in a dry spell for the last two months. I usually get work via word of mouth, but haven't received any for the past few months. I've tried sites like oDesk and Freelancer but the quality of projects are very low and its difficult to bid against the "$100 for a facebook clone" coders, particularly with no feedback score.

I'm strapped for cash at the moment, so I'm offering my coding skills at a low cost. For only $999, I will build your entire web app. Of course, I'm offering to build just the MVP and nothing particularly complex.

But if you've wanted to build a web app (from scratch or using any common api like facebook, twitter, last.fm, etc.) I can create the MVP for you for $999 and within a few weeks.

Email me at codeforhn@gmail.com. Thanks.

PS. I am open to any PHP project of any size, just email me.
(Un)Fortunately this issue has been fixed as of 1400GMT today, cool hack though!
I realize it's just one data point, but I tracked my weight for a whole year basically and while my diet fluctuated somewhat, there did seem to be a strong correlation to weight loss and using cold therapy to activate brown fat.

When I did the cold therapy, I lost weight much faster.

Ice pack on the back of the neck for 30-60 min each night while reading a book works wonders.
Great products. We were looking for something very similar to mock up several UI's for our inventory backend. This has been a great help.
Buying a New Smart Phone for Data Roaming
Please provide your recommendations for making it simple interface.
Thanks
Techcity and the day after tomorrow for young entrepreneurs in Britain
I guess this would officially mark having code on github a status symbol for both developers and companies :D
> Apple and Google are in two different businesses. When Apple has a unified ecosystem, they limit what you can install/do right out of the box (they sell hardware that's tightly integrated with their own software). When Google has a unified ecosystem, they collect more information about you through different services.

Spot on. For example Google knows my exact porn-searches the moment I make them, either through their search-engine logs or directly through Chrome. Now imagine if it were to surface that Apple somehow logs and sends back to some server in Cupertino all porn-related searches made by MacBook-owners... (I chose "porn" as an example because it's a sensitive topic, I could as well have chosen "drugs", "depression", "cancer cure", "tax evasion" and so on).
<sarcasm intensity=100%>

I know! It would be horrible to have the service be free, and integrated with Google's other search and social features and therefore more visible to the world!

THE HORROR!!1
I don't know know what the legal issues associated with this are. But this is an excellent idea.
I'm debating it. I've been in contact with a local ISP about what's available, and I'm not too keen on having my bandwidth cut in half for $10/mo more and looking for a new Cisco 1700-, 1800-, or 1900-series router.

But I don't want to keep giving Comcast money.
yea because google is known for their extensive ruby usage
If you want to think about how Apple could throw their weight around, consider the subtler options. Their moves with strategic suppliers might give a clue.
OTOH, we might discover adding a social dimension to search results may yield better results for a substantial chunk of the general population. If I am looking for a how-to, knowing whether my geek friends found it useful would be a good indicator.

It has to be carefully balanced to avoid forming social echo chambers and perpetuating instantaneous events, but, in the end, it may prove useful.

And it's a bit of exaggeration when people gets worried about privacy when they voluntarily submit the data to the very machines they fear.
Detailed white-paper: "Privacy Leaks in Mobile Phone Internet Access"

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3510520
Thanks. I'm in America too, although I'm not American.

We agree completely on the need for some sort of minimal welfare state. No one wants to let others die on the street. I've said as much elsewhere in this thread.

We don't agree if you, like Friedman, think we need "a G.I. Bill for the 21st century that ensures that every American has access to post-high school education." I don't believe our current levels of spending are sustainable.

I suspect that the burden of making our current benefits sustainable, and adding new benefits to the list, will fall predominantly on me - I'm not rich by any means, but my household falls comfortably into the group that regularly gets singled out for tax increases. And I have plans for that money that involve my own family, my own business, and own community.

Like you, I would prefer a majority of Americans agree with me. But as it is, about 40% of Americans agree with each of us and the rest bounce back and forth.

I think it'd be relatively easy to negotiate an acceptable, sustainable amount of social spending if people of my ilk thought that'd be the end of it - if it were clear that this was a compromise between different worldviews, and that the concessions made wouldn't just get reopened in the next election.

But I rarely hear an advocate for additional social spending say 'no, a tax rate of over X% would be definitely unfair, whatever you make - we won't require you to pay that.' I've also rarely heard advocates for additional social spending say 'a welfare state above X would be excessive.'

If I'm willing to concede a minimum level of welfare state spending - most conservatives are - surely the other half of America should be willing to set a maximum level. How much compulsion (since it is compulsion, I'd much rather spend my money on my family) do you think is too much?
I do not really understand what the dis-agreement here is about. For me it is very clear that Apple was one of the first (or at least few) PC companies that really understood how to both engineer AND market to a broader range of customers. And I completely agree, most manufacturers and companies were and some still are selling you specs - while Apple sold you a shiny iPod, an easy way to buy a single song instead of a whole album and the passion of listening to music and being able to take your whole collection with you. And this is where they finally got decent market penetration and with enough market penetration, the iPod was selling practically automatically because everybody wanted one.

And then they applied that same principles and came up with a shiny smartphone and single-handedly created the smartphone hype we see now. And then they did it again with the iPad, even created a new market that has not existed before. And again, those devices ended up selling like crazy.

By no means were those ground-breaking innovations but they were the first ones in those three markets to offer something that ultimately "everybody" wants. They have shown how to elegantly bypass that specs-war and engineer and market on a completely different dimension thus catching every single competitor off-guard. (see also Nintendo and Wii) And they knew and understood very well what the majority of customers really like or care about: how it looks, feels and how you interact with it.
Yes, I'd agree with you that tight integration for Apple and Google provide different kinds of "systemic risk".

For Google, the risk is they control too much of your information.

For Apple, when Apple owns the entire software and hardware stack, the market price of hardware skyrockets (the opposite of the effect Microsoft had by commoditizing hardware), and by its monopoly on App Stores for iPads/iPhones, it is able to gouge content creators for ~30% of the price of books/apps.

IMO, tight integration of BOTH of these companies is bad for society, but I found the author's singling out of Google to be unwarranted.
Standalone JavaScript Routing
>It just occurred to me a main reason they chose "Don't be evil" as their slogan. The foundation of the company is a slippery slope

They came up with the "don't be evil" thing when they were young idealistic hipsters who just wanted to be different from the suit-wearing status quo. They had no idea of how big they would eventually become so it had nothing to do with reminding them of the "slipperly slope".

The moment large amounts of money becomes involved the whole "don't be evil" think goes out the window pretty fast.
That would require these various teams at Microsoft to act as if they were a single organization. This has historically been difficult for teams at Microsoft.
I couldn't agree more with the part about the search.

It looks like they're in a bad position already if they plan to deploy such a feature. I'm guessing they're having some internal issues, they must be concerned with their situation as a company.

'Don't be evil' went down the drain in the meantime.
Why not? Humans (hopefully) have a much longer lifespan than phones. This should stay true even if Apple merely retains their current market share.
Then a bunch of mice die, and we move on to the next iteration.
"...AAPL has very high growth expectations priced into the stock which they somehow need to continue to meet."

It only takes a minute to go to a finance site and look up the PE for AAPL and see that this is utter nonsense. The PE is 16. Amazon has a PE of 97.

Disney has a PE of ~16. Do you think they have "very high growth expectations priced into the stock" too?
Yes, I find it strange, that when it comes to Apple, some people who are reasonable otherwise simply stop thinking rationally, and don't hear any real arguments. So it really can be a waste of time trying to reason with such kind of people.
Now see, your comment rubs me the wrong way. After I got my first job, I splurged on a used 911 Turbo. It got terrible mileage, but made me smile every single day I drove it (which wasn't everyday).

Attitudes to money are varied, and the accumulation of wealth, like squirrel nuts, is not everyone's goal.
What do you mean by Google is moving towards a closed platform?
This IS today's version of the BBC Micro. AFAIK, the BBC Micro was a cheap design to encourage computer education since regular PCs were very expensive.

I too cut my teeth on a BBC Micro. My school had ~20 of them. If they'd bought PCs, they would have had maybe 5?

The Raspberry Pi will do the same thing today, especially in poor countries which don't have computers as a matter of course in their schools.

You're talking from an overly Western-centric perspective when you say that typing "python" is cheaper than the RPI.

The world has 7 billion people, many of whom live in poor countries. At $35 with the ability to use a regular TV as a console, this thing is well within the reach of poor person even in a poor country like India to buy as a splurge for his kid who he's told my their teacher is bright.

I, for one, think this is going to be revolutionary.

PS: I also plan to use it for some home automation projects. It can run off of batteries (!!!!!), and is a plain old GNU/Linux distro. How cool is that.
The paper was about several things:

1) accidental complexity is the source of a large number of bugs
2) implicit, unnecessary, tightly-coupled state is the cause of a significant number of bugs.
3) mostly-functional programming reduces the amount of state in 2
4) RDMS databases, with transactions and triggers, are a good way of reducing state as well

Clojure applies all of these lessons. lisp reduces accidental complexity in the language. FP reduces accidental complexity wrt to state. the STM and agents are close analogues to DB transactions and triggers.

"even the idea of functional programming over relational data is obvious". Yes, but where else has that been tried?
Nah, Apple has the best PR in the business; even posts about their revenue generate massive views.
I think the progress bar is the most brilliant part of this whole thing. I don't read reddit, not because I don't think I would find it interesting but simply because I know it would suck so much time that I stay away. I did the same as the above poster and found the progress bar a really great and satisfying way to limit my time on the site (interesting that most sites have been pursuing the opposite goal in recent years).

I'm one of those that thinks 'gamification' is generally a bad philosophy, but to the extent that this partitioning into discrete consumption units could be called that I think it really works and adds a lot of value to the experience. My only problem with the site is that there's no clear indication anywhere that reddit is where the content is being pulled from, and it took me a bit to figure out how to get to the original page — maybe clicking the image could bring up the reddit panel from the bottom as well, but with some content-swapping to insert the full-size image into the reddit page above the comments?