skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Well that's good, but it doesn't scale. If twelve kids in the county want to do volunteer work then it's easy to find places for them, but if five thousand kids in the county need to do volunteer work they can't all be accommodated in "sensible" programs.
That's something the Bush admin would do, I sure hope an Obama admin won't.

I think you're doomed to be repeatedly disappointed over the coming years as we all remember that government incompetence isn't some weird temporary anomaly, it's just the way things are.
Multiple incompatible branches of webkit in an ecosystem that still has multiple incompatible branches of IE doesn't sound better, as it geometrically grows the number of renders that need to be tested against. There are some things that I wouldn't wish on even my worst enemies, and while multiple incompatible branches of webkit sounds like it would be better, it's still an undesirable situation.

If Microsoft uses webkit, I'd like to think it's because they have realized that a consistent web browser experience from a developer point of view is enabling across the industry, not because they just want to leverage all the hardwork of other companies and open source developers just to get a leg up on their marketing. The last thing I want to hear is Microsoft marketing saying "We use Webkit, the same engine that powers other browsers like Apple's Safari" and the masses eating that up, but when we, as developers, know that isn't the case.
The other good thing about doing it this way is that you can get device _and_ user level authentication (by using client certificates and password authentication). No more lame MAC filtering on your wireless firewall to limit access. The access point becomes just a dumb ethernet <-> wireless bridge.
Notably pushing RIM from the #2 spot.
Now I just have to spend some time reading the pdf and replaying the game....

I'd love to get the equivalent for zak mac kraken, day of the tentacle, monkey island and basically any of the old lucas art/lucas film games ....
the story of the Rebel Alliance victory from the perspective of people who worked [in the Death Star]

I hope that Randal from Clerks is credited in the author's acknowledgements.
Interesting mathematical properties of network structures
I wish this had been about AI Gore: a new endeavor to better inform politicians through heuristic analysis of the blogosphere.
Real-time 'AJAX' JavaScript Progress Bar
Hah! Fair enough, but my point was that those claims aren't legitimate. Especially those claims about C
Right, so year-by-year, it'll be the same order of magnitude of cost as the Iraq war, except the war was always planned to end eventually whereas the "community service" plan is planned to go on forever.

Justifying one enormous waste of money by saying "Oh well, at least it's not as big a waste of money as that other waste of money" isn't a good way to run a budget.

Would you run your personal budget that way? "Aw geez, well I bought a $300,000 boat last month, so I guess it's okay to buy a $100,000 car now."
I think people upvote it b/c a number of people here consider global warming skepticism to be one of those "things that can't be said" that pg mentioned in an essay, and think this article is evidence supporting that view.
CSS Tip: Making Lucida Readable
Facebook settlement amount with the Winklevosses 
I heard from a family friend that the lawyer's cut was 130M worth of Facebook stock, and that the total settlement was for about 550M worth of stock. This seems like an unreasonably large number to me, but I thought I'd pass it on anonymously to see if anyone else had heard anything similar.
I still don't understand why everyone subscribes to this conspiracy theory...

Microsoft builds web apps. Lots of them. The IE issues suck for those teams too. Microsoft is building an online version of Office which needs to work in IE, FF, and Safari. They are also building a huge collection of Live services web apps. Why would they make it harder on themselves?
I doubt the sound has anything to do with mushrooms. For one, sound quality is a subjective thing, and to speculate that these particular mushrooms improve sound quality in exactly the right way to produce a Strad sound is really stretching it.

For another, I heard that the wood used to produce a strad was from logs that had been kept chained under salt water for a large number of years. This produced a "partial fossilization" or something. I'd think that it would have a fairly strong anti-fungal effect, too.

Any way, I've heard so many things that could be the reason for the Stradivarius sound... old growth wood, special varnish, etc... It seems that once every year or so someone discovers the what causes the sound.
Who killed the blogosphere?
They've had a long time to do this. A very long time. Electric cars are not a new idea. Check out the EV1 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EV1 ) which was in production in 1996.
2008 Data Mining Shootout
Points I found interesting:

A power law distribution of node degrees shows a network is not randomly constructed. Randomly constructed networks follow a Poisson distribution.

Power law distribution networks much more are resilient to random node removal than randomly constructed networks.

Node degree correlation (whether the degree of a node is a good predictor of the degree of nodes it is connected to) is a significant indicator of deeper network structure.

A node's spreading capability is dictated by the square of its degree, instead of just its degree.
I disagree that the "blogosphere" is dead. The rise of TechCrunch, HuffPo, etc. have succeeded in increasing blog readership. The personal voices are still out there, are still part of the conversation.
"Community service" doesn't involve just picking up trash. It branches out to a lot of services that are really invaluable for a community. In my hometown, a group of students completely renovated an old police station, and turned it into an entertainment center. Bands go there to practice, kids play games, they hold arts and crafts nights. It didn't take long, maybe 20 hours for three kids, but it made a place that turned the town into a better place.

For my bar mitzvah, I spent a similar amount of time fixing up an old, old path in the woods. It used to be a hiking spot, but it fell into neglect. I walked along it, a group of girl scouts painted trail markers, and over the course of a year we had something new in a boring town.

College is a big problem. I'm in a public school, and tuition is rising rapidly. Something has to be done to fix things. And I like this plan a lot: it means that in exchange for $4,000 students are really expected to do a lot. A hundred hours of service means that a lot can be done. I doubt 10 million students would really take this offer - there are a lot of rich, lazy kids, and a lot of kids with scholarships - but if, hypothetically, 10 million kids each spent 100 hours doing community service, we'd have a billion hours a year being spent trying to fix up things around the country. That's a pretty incredible force.

And Obama hasn't delegated that money yet. He's proposed it, because he thinks it'll work. If you have another plan, one that you think will work better, there's a webform you can fill out to send your ideas. Who knows, it might be worth a shot.
I understand that, I know we're not going to abolish government incompetence, but lessen the degree is something realistic to shoot for.
Shameless plug for my school :D

> The goal was to use weather data to predict flight cancellations and pre-reserve hotel rooms and rental cars for stranded passengers.

This kind of stuff is fascinating.
Don't you know? - he invented it!
I've had a similar experience. Not 100% reproducible -- more like 5% -- but annoying when it happens. Ubuntu 8.04, Firefox 3.0.3.
Not compulsory volunteerism, but I think the government has the right to make you do community service in exchange for, say, free education. My college is a public school, and we need to do 8 hours of community service as it stands right now.

As much as I don't like volunteer work, I think it's a reasonable trade. If you don't want to do the work, you go to a private school.
> 3. Discover the relationship between effort and reward.

I think that's by far the biggest stumbling block. Once there is a direct relationship between effort and reward most people behave appropriately and put forth a lot of effort. It also smooths over a lot of the lesser issues. Doing very boring things can be very exciting when doing it well results in big increases in reward. It becomes a high stakes game.
The only thing I'd add to this article is that in the earliest stages of the company (where there's just a handful of people), the CTO is also the VP of Engineering and also the programming lead.
Not sure what to think about this. On the one hand, I have nothing but antipathy toward GM for squandering every opportunity to modernize their business and fighting the regulations that would have forced them down that path. If any business deserves to fail, they do.

What gives me pause is how much damage a GM bankruptcy will inflict. The auto industry represents about a third of the US manufacturing industry. If GM (or Chrysler) goes down, it may take everyone else with them. The job losses would be unbelievable. I don't really want to contemplate what the economy will look like after construction, finance, and manufacturing have all been wiped out.
Yeah, I knew all that but my comment was already pretty long. Still, 10M/sec * every waking hour of life is still a lot of data.
Three titles: VP/Eng, CTO, and Chief Architect. Each one you have on your team, I predict your dev cycle is 5 months longer. If you have a CTO, VP/Eng, and a "Chief Architect", then before your Junior Director of User Interface Quality Engineering has laid down his first line of JSP templating code, you're looking down the barrel of 15 months of overhead.

The role of a CTO is to have a cool title in sales and partnership meetings. Make your CTO your very best sales engineer.
I'd like to think that the system will be designed to prevent abuse like that. I mean, this site is based on a grand overview rather than getting into nitty-bitty details. I think it's possible to create a system that prevents stuff like this happening. And I'd like to think that Obama's committed to people not gaming the system.
As usual, Nicholas Carr goes on his big rant against what he deems blogs and the blogosphere. Ironically, his rant basically validates blogs as being ubiquitous now, and being embraced by both the average internet user and big publishing companies.
If Microsoft adopts WebKit, they'll probably keep IE7 emulation mode in, as it is now in IE8. I doubt they'll try to port IE bugs to WebKit; there's just too many.
The Alaska hate is partly because of the Palin "horror stories" (her wanting to ban books, her abuse-of-power controversies, and her being popular despite that), and because Ted Stevens is a convicted felon who Alaska reelected.
Sonic Vox: Real-time voice shifter for iPhone
Moving to Flash, Part 3: Beginning the Actual Port
The 22 Step Social Media Marketing Plan
Maven Guide for Scala users
I discovered it not much time ago and it resulted in a sleepless night... very good game
Does anyone besides me expect grunge to make a come back?

How's the job market in the Seattle area?

We old gen X folk enjoyed the Seattle Sound when the economy was crap.

Do the millennials (gen Y) get to live through their own version of the early 90s job market?

Cheer up gen Y, it will turn around, and you just might get some good music out of it.

P.S.

Get off my lawn.
True at our company of two both the CEO and CTO are the programmers. CEO does a little more with the business side of the world. CTO spends a little more time on architecture. I assume the roles will become a little different and more defined as the company grows
more like 70%
Yes but trust me, it's an improvement for Win Mo.
The article presents a binary chioce between java applets and flash, with a side of objective C. I've been thinking about trying my hand at a game in javascript. It's the one universally adopted language, and with v8, Squirrelfish, and Tracemonkey gaining ground it'll only become better.
I really don't think he should be wasting time on Twitter. It's a big get in terms of PR but achieves nothing. The signal to noise ratio isn't worth the effort to try any conversation.
That's a good point. If you really do know what's going to happen, there's almost certainly a way you can profit from it.
How could it NOT show signs of a slowdown.

But China, unlike the US, is sitting on mountains of savings - cash.
They can and most likely will spend their way to at least an 8% annual GDP growth.
Most of their spending will go to infrastructure.

But that's the key difference between China and the US, they have savings, we have debt.
Can you explain more about this? You have stated what you think will happen. What leads you to conclude that a "L-shaped recession"/ "secular bear market"?

Thanks!
Sometimes people wonder how the market value of a company can be less than the value of their cash reserves in an efficient market. GM is a case in point.
Too bad that companies from other countries could not participate.
It's a big get in terms of PR but achieves nothing.

Ummm, as opposed to any of his other activities?
The blogosphere is not dead. Just like I used to ignore "mainstream media", I now also ignore blogs that are owned by big media companies. The Internet is what you make of it -- if you just do what's popular, then you are only going to see popular things. Duh.
2) YouTube's HD video is 448x336

"HD" is not an arbitrary term that means "higher resolution than what we had before". Unless perhaps you're in marketing.

If you told anyone on the Youtube team that their "&fmt=18" was "HD", they would probably laugh you out of the room.
From Birds that Compose to Method Advice
Should Kids Be Able to Graduate After 10th Grade?
Yeah. But that's to be expected: Apple doesn't amass diehard fans for no reason.

The bigger question is whether or not businesses accept the transition to Apple.
I'd love to see the original Maniac Mansion design doc, too. The influence of the choice of characters on the solution path gave it one of the most complex game designs in the adventure genre.
For the first in this series of posts there was a chance someone on here might know who the Matt guy was. After that I'm sure plenty of people wanted to hear how it ended.
Wow, illiquid university endowment funds!

I guess that means cash is king right now. The Fed has been attempting to flood the market with cash but it is not working.

The whole banking system might have to be radically reformed.

I bet they will try to move it closer to a counter cyclical business model, not the current pro cyclical one.

It's not exactly helpful that banks try to sell you umbrellas when it's sunny, and hoard them when it's raining.

I personally would like to see the entry barriers to the banking business lowered.

A few years back Wallmart tried to get into retail banking and the banks lobbied hard to stop them.

The banks won, but I think what we need now is new banks eager to lend.
I wouldn't characterize the "rise" of TechCrunch, HuffPo, etc. as part of the blogosphere. If anything, it's count-productive as those "blogs" are really now magazines that employ professional writers and they promote commodification and conglomeration of writers rather than decentralizing it.

A blogosphere -- an ecosystem of people contributing -- is hard pressed to be competing against 50 million pageview monsters like Gizmodo or 15 million pageview monsters like TechCrunch. As time goes on more and more people will tune in to those sites as it's simply a much easier way to keep track of information. You'll notice the trend on TechCrunch to gravitate towards more and more "mainstream" news and once an item breaks every other site has to cover it, even if they have nothing to add just for the sake of maintaining their audience. Like cable news.

It's why social media tools like Digg or Reddit or Hacker News are that much more important.
I always thought that was electromagnetic. Does The Island have impressive mass as well?
"the real Al Gore, or whoever is operating Twitter for him, doesn’t appear to have much to say."

Plus, does Al Gore need Twitter to get PR?
You may find the solution at

(1) http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/07/25/0329226

(2) http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.402425.9...
""Filed in 2004 when Facebook had a paltry 200,000 members, the lawsuit argues Zuckerberg's inspiration for Facebook came from a previous programming gig he took under Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra for HarvardConnect.com, now known as ConnectU.

The plaintiffs demand that Facebook be shut down and that full control of the site and its profits be turned over to them.""

550 mill does seem rough especially nowadays that software patenting is going out the window...
>So, "slavery" then? Who'd have thunk President Obama would be the one to bring back slavery?

Well, it took Nixon to go to China.

But I'll believe in Obama's labor service when I see kids picking up trash, and no sooner.
I've heard that it was a mini ice age, induced by a big volcano eruption spewing ash into the atmosphere, that's responsible for the Stradivarius sound.

It cooled the climate and slowed down the growth rates of the trees, slower growth - denser wood - better sound.

But as you say, there are so many theories about the Stradivarius sound, coming up with new ones must be a sport.
Yeah. And that's the big difference between the Internet and other forms of media. Anybody can have a say. Not everybody will have a huge audience, but at least they're allowed to talk, and the whole world is given the option of listening in.
LG KC910 Unlocked
The phone is just 14mm thick and known to be one of the slimmest 8 megapixel phones available on the market. When it comes to the multimedia aspect, this phone rocks! It really does. You would get to enjoy Dolby certified sound system for excellent audio quality.
I agree. This can be a difficult thing to learn, though, because most organizations obscure this relationship. And because effort is hard by definition, there's a massive mythology of low-effort success; fantasizing that reward is random allows even the slothful to identify with the successful.

Since quitting my job a few months ago, I've been learning this lesson as a consultant. It turns out that to squeeze a mere 30 billable hours out of a week, I have to work about twice as hard as I ever had in a full-time job. And I was the most productive hacker in the company. Now I'm working much harder on projects that aren't always as cool, but it's worth it because it directly affects my livelihood and the customer's desire to continue working with me and recommend me to others.
the day microsoft marketing says "We use Webkit, the same engine that powers other browsers like Apple's Safari" is the day they die (death by flying chair)
I get what you're saying, but it's not exactly a competition. There's more opportunity to find niche audiences now than there ever was before. Sure, numbers-wise something like Gizmodo or, say, Valleywag, will get more readers, but for every Valleywag there's a hundred Bynkiis and Angry Drunks and Uncovs. And News travels both ways: bigger blogs get their news tips from a lot of smaller sources, and those smaller sources very often get news from even smaller sources, and so on. Every blog is given the same freedom of press.
Our education system is horribly out of date, any option which allows them to exit the system or progress to the next stage quicker is great in my book.

I'll save a rant on the current public education system in America for another time, but the Internet has changed everything and the school system needs to adapt and change quickly or it's going to begin doing more harm than good.
You should send him your entire post, verbatim. If you have told him exactly what your problem is, and you guys can't come up with a solution in a grown-up manner, then it's time to part ways.
Well they have pretty much gone all-in on the Volt now, and have delayed or canceled all their other development projects. They are also planning to use same technology in many other models after the Volt debuts.

The Volt (and cars like it from other companies) is possible now because battery technology is finally hitting that tipping point... the question is whether GM can survive long enough to get it out the door and to paying customers.
Its funny how we Americans run like headless chicken when the unemployment rate hits 6.3% while Europe has rates like that in the good years.
Yep! Everybody has an educated guess, and so far most of them haven't helped to replicate the sound.

Hopefully one day somebody'll figure it out. A lot of what makes the violins sound good has to do with the musicians playing it, but the sound is still incredibly rich and wonderful.
>If they prattle on about how the current situation is bad, it will only make it worse.

I see how this could be the case, but I also suspect that having an accurate idea of how the economy is doing might help people. I don't think the consumer confidence index is something that should only be really, really high. If, for example, consumers realize they must tighten their belts, they may put less money on their credit cards, freeing capital so it can address the current credit crunch.
Love django? Have a Twitter Account? Follow @djangopro Aggregated django Development News.
Agreed. But remember that a year ago, the bulk of the "experts" were yammering on about how the Chinese economy was "untethered" from the fate of the developed economies.
Poor man’s query logging
I don't understand how what you said is related to what he said.

His rant is that blogs have grown up and are run as businesses. This community of just random folks talking about something they have an interest in is cast aside for the TechCrunch and Gawker and HuffingtonPost professional publications. Those sites will attract more writers, more content, more viewership and monopolize more time away from the blogosphere.

Where is the irony...?
I thought the iPhone is big in the US and Nokia is big elsewhere... Perhaps the US market has grown fast and that makes Nokia's markets less significant.
Sprint Nextel Lost 1.3 Million Customers in Quarter
Whatever happened to Tineye?
Today, I tried to use the virtually only startup of this season, which I cared about -Tineye. But, alas, instead of the search page, I got a facefull of ads.
Does anyone have any insights what happened to them? Did they let the page expire (highly doubt), gone bankroupt (very highly doubt), run out of founding?
Ooyala provides a service for other businesses. Justin.tv offers their service directly to consumers.

It makes sense that Ooyala doesn't get as much direct traffic.
That little comment from Ballmer has really been blown out of proportion. When I read it I thought to myself that Ballmer was just being polite to a developer who had just asked a ridiculous question. It's absurd to think that Microsoft is going to abandon one of the most widely used technologies on the planet after spending over a decade developing it.

The developer who asked the question was no doubt trying to push Ballmer's buttons. The easiest way out is to say exactly what Ballmer said. "Interesting. We'll look into it." It's a polite, noncommital response. What else is he going to do? Stomp on the guy for asking a stupid question? Try to justify using their own rendering engine? Acknowledge WebKit's superiority? It doesn't make any sense for him to say anything else because there's no question Microsoft is going to develop their own browser and rendering engine, and to get into a discussion of WebKit is taking the troll bait.

On an unrelated note, it's very disappointing to see that the Washington Post is now running lame TechCrunch articles. It's going to be much harder to filter them out now.
Buying Nextel for roughly $41 billion? Not such a great idea.