skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is great news for consumers and for the companies that will make innovative use of this spectrum. (Dolly Parton's expert opinion notwithstanding.)
I spent last weekend watching ton's of PDC2008 Videos on-line, checking out the power points and source code that was made available of the sessions. Then I a email from apple telling me that the WWDC08 video are available for purchase.

As much as I love my Mac, in this regard Microsoft come out tops.
Why do people care what Apple does? They do what they do -- if you don't like it, don't use their stuff. Apple thrives on control; if you don't want to be controlled, use a Free OS.
Yep. Unless telcos dominate this niche, too.
Manhattan is a tax shelter? You certainly don't know much about Manhattan.

There were taxes prior to the income tax, they were just different taxes. A flat rate sales tax and no income tax would still be tax - it would just be easier to avoid.
Twitter scales to handle the election surge, for the most part
I find it informative to compare Silver's projections with the Real Clear Politics averages. RCP is a group project, but it's pretty clear that their editorial views skew heavily toward the conservative end of the spectrum. Assuming either is biased, I figure that Obama can't be doing any worse than RCP is projecting or much better than FiveThirtyEight.
Google Wins Big at FCC Today
Are they really executed in a single CPU cycle? I doubt it - many x86 instructions take more than a single cycle.

I also wonder how well this approach would work when you're working with an algorithm where the data access pattern is as important as CPU.
The 'Bradley effect' is only one of any number of possible phenomena that may occur and distort the results. Perhaps a new phenomena will occur and it will be named the 'Obama effect'. In 2004 the exit polls showed that Bush had very likely lost but this was wrong. Only after the event did they they came up with a explanation.
I've read all the conspiracy theories about the 16th amendment not being properly ratified, but honestly if we had to ratify it again today you and I both know that it would pass and so the whole arguement is moot. You are using loaded words to describe taxes. It is NOT stealing. Stealing is the unlawful taking of your money, if the taxes are approved by the rulers we all collectively voted for, then they are lawful. The fact that you disagree with everyone else, means that you simply disagree - not that taxes are stealing.
I pretty much exclusively read technical books. Most recently, Hacking Vim and Programming Collective Intelligence. I own all the classic tomes; GoF, Refactoring, Code Complete and so on which I re-read occasionally. I haven't read a piece of fiction in quite a while.

Although, when I did read fiction, I enjoyed Chuck Palahniuk, Orson Scott Card and for pure entertainment, Clive Cussler.
I've got a site running that only really sees traffic from students at my university. I see 70% firefox, 15% safari and 10% IE.
yes. there is one for the keyboard as well. the problem is that it doesn't remember this for very long (seems to be reset for me after suspending some of the time).
Actually they do tend to aggregate anyway because of arbitrage.
I'd prefer we left the rainforests alone and focused on other energy sources.
lawl. no design skills whatsoever. lawl. obvious statement is obvious.
hmm. from a sibling comment, maybe it has different settings based on if you have it plugged in or not, and I mistook this for resetting. will have to investigate when I get home.
I think it is unlikely that fivethirtyeight.com would be more reliable. The human minds are still more subtle than statistical methods alone. However even if 538 did prove more accurate its results would soon be incorporated into the market by betters. The reverse is not so likely to occur.

> Now, if there were a US-legal prediction market, that would be something.

You would have to think that involving US citizens would improve the market's accuracy. It's ironic that US-citizens can't bet.
so can i expect a wireless router that actually works now?
I hate standard wi-fi.
FCC formally agrees to open up "white spaces" spectrum
As a contrast, Apple gives you Xcode and all of the tools for free. Microsoft charges how much for a full Visual Studio kit?
A better syllogism:

major premise: A democratic republic works best when the democratic system elects non-tyrants; that is, leaders who will not violate the inherent rights of even the 49% of the people who did not vote for them.

minor premise: Both old party presidential candidates propose schemes which use government force to commit active injustice against non-consenting peaceful citizens.

conclusion: Unless you are going to vote for a third party candidate, or go to the polls and not vote to indicate your preference for 'none of the above,' by voting you are in effect sanctioning all of the harms the candidate you elect will unleash on the world.

You are also, by voting for a major party candidate, sanctioning the system that gives you only the sort of narrow choices that we have this year: on the one side, a warmonger who is a reluctant but willing socialist, and on the other, a socialist who is a reluctant but willing warmonger.
Harder to consistently secure and administer, but harder for any one party to steal the whole vote. We hackers consistently preach against monoculture, so I suppose it's time to step up with some applause.
E-Voting Machines Crash In Battleground States
It doesn't seem evil so much as misguided - isn't it best for Apple to encourage as many developers to use their platform as possible? I can't imagine the money they make off this sort of thing amounts to more than a drop in the bucket overall.
great... Its a nice starting point for those at the very beginning of product design.

I love these comments on how slow it is. You high-bandwidth people are spoiled. To me it was slow too; as is most every page I load from China ;). I sometimes feel I'm still in 1991 with my Hayes modem
I really enjoyed that article... he put in to words many things that I feel are true about marketing. (of course, he also seems to be assuming that Obama has won, and it's not over yet.)

"marketing is tribal" - seems key to me. Of course, I set out to create a product that I would want to use, so obviously, I am going to try to sell it to my tribe. But yeah. "cool" only applies within a tribe. It has been obvious that if I want to sell to corporations (that is, executive decision makers) I will need to get a sales person who knows how to handle that tribe.
I made this site just for tonight: County-by-county extrapolations for swing states
Sorry for the political posting... I just wanted to share my project with fellow HNers
I doubt Microsoft makes very much money off Visual Studio -- it is far more strategically important for them to have developers writing code on the various Microsoft platforms. That's been reflected in MS giving away various tools, like Visual Studio Express, the MSVC compiler, etc. I'd think a major reason for why Microsoft still charges for Visual Studio at all is to avoid killing off ISVs who make development tools for Windows programmers.
I find it amusing that a popularity contest (and one not really different from a high school one in any significant way) is used to decide who will take charge of a country.

I am also impressed to see otherwise intelligent people defending this scheme, and honestly believing it to be a great one or even claiming there is not better alternative.
LG CB630 Invision Unlocked
LG CB630 Invision Unlocked is a television on the go. Now, you can enjoy unlimited entertainment even while you are traveling. There is no need to miss out on your favorite TV shows. The phone is a complete entertainment solution for all those who consider taking their TV shows whenever they go.
I think he was saying digg and reddit wouldn't drive the type of traffic he wanted to attract, I don't think he meant to call them blogs.

...If that wasn't what he meant, then what I wrote is what he should have said :)
As far as I can tell, net neutrality is an interesting mythology that probably is not reducible to specific technical requirements in a long-term-meaningful way. One one hand, there have been good rulings from the FCC, e.g. preventing ISPs from (anticompetitively) slowing down VOIP traffic that isn't handled by their own VOIP service. But on the other hand there are intrinsic physical limitations to the way networks are designed, so it's perfectly reasonable that if you have a Comcast internet connection your VOIP packets will have a faster route to Comcast VOIP servers than to Vonage.

There's also a tricky distinction going on here. If you have a Comcast cable line going to your house, your network connection is already non-neutral. That cable carries video signals over IP on a certain share of the wire's bandwidth; this share is always dedicated solely to Comcast IPTV and no matter how many blip.tv videos you have going on your laptop your digital TV will always have the same dedicated bandwidth. Is that unfair? Comcast did a lot of work putting up wires to your house, navigating a bunch of annoying state and/or municipal laws, and investing in a lot of network infrastructure, for which they clearly deserve some reward. Is it OK to dedicate bandwidth on the wire but not over IP? Seems like a distinction that will get meaningless pretty quickly.

On the other hand, there are many good reasons to be suspicious of telecom conglomerates, and it might be a reasonable policy position to say that comcast-the-internet-provider and comcast-the-cable-service should be separate companies. All I've heard from the Net Neutrality heroes, though, is vague and inactionable invective. It worries me not because I think it might work, but because it's (1) likely to generate incompetent legislation and (2) crying wolf now when we might well need coherent opposition to specific industry actions or proposed mergers in the future.
We have many laws on the books that were meant to address situations that occurred nearly 100 years ago.
been looking for that. it alleviates the made-up concerns that old people have. ("why is that over there?! have we been haxored?!")
How Google Distracts Microsoft
That is correct. Although it is a niche, I want to attract as large of a niche audience as possible and starting from 0 readers is intimidating, even when you write good content.
He turned out to be abusive and incapable of collaboration. He would say things like, "From now on, nobody except me makes any creative decision. If you have a creative idea you need to clear it with me first." I know it's hard to believe, but that wasn't a joke.

I'm trying to remember some representative anecdotes for you... for example, our receptionist made the mistake of sending out an investor email without bcc'ing, so the email addresses were all visible. He made her handwrite a note that said, "I apologize for violating your privacy. [The CEO] has instructed me on how to properly send email. I will not do it again" - and write it out 90 times - and mail them to each investor. (You may ask why there were 90 investors... another story.) She told me tearfully that she got RSI from writing out the notes.

Anyway, imagine a whole bunch of examples like that and you'll get the picture.

It was fascinating to observe how the different team members reacted to this person. Most retreated into a shell and didn't speak up as he abused others. There were a few scapegoats who accepted prolonged terrible treatment. There were also a few who acted courageously. For example, when the CEO yelled at one designer for leaving work on a Sunday and told him he would have to apologize to everyone for "letting down the team", the designer said, "In that case, I won't be back" and left. But these latter were a small minority.

It will surely help others avoid it.

Maybe. Sometimes one has to experience things for oneself. The key thing I would say about all this is: if someone is abusive, it doesn't matter whether he's abusing you. What matters is what it tells you about his character. Don't make excuses for people like that. Just avoid them. (Counterargument - Steve Jobs?)
Obama Counts on Text Messages to Drive Turnout of Youth, Blacks
Don't you? Why else comment both here and RubyFlow? It's a non-story :) Anyway, you're a lovely person - let that love shine.
Come to think of it, he was both. He was restrictive (a control freak) and also changed strategic direction at least once a week. I once tried to convince him to let the team go two days at a time without having their project changed, and he refused!
Wireless routing advice to individual vehicles and/or dynamic tolls (or other 'soft walls') can probably achieve optimality without blocking any roads.
I keep telling my girlfriend that cleaning up the apartment before we analyze which parts of the mess bother us most is premature optimization. Somehow she is not convinced :-/
This bit of deregulation will certainly open up a new market.

Sometimes I wonder if broadcast TV would still exist if it weren't for federal law. They should auction off its part of the spectrum and see if anybody is still willing to pay to keep it in existence.
Alas, everything I wrote is true, it exactly happened the way I describe in my post. To be honest, I haven't seen a platform with as myopic a strategy as Salesforce, not from Microsoft, not from Google, not from Facebook, not by a long shot, so their situation is a bit unique.

In fact, several months after those events happened, there were people on their team who were uncomfortable with Benioff's stance. They tried to get him to change his mind, to no avail - a second set of interactions happened where one of their execs tried to get us in to Force.com, but he was vetoed by Benioff himself much to his disappointment and frustration (he ended up leaving Salesforce, so he won't be impacted when I say this). It was only after all that happened that I decided to go public with this.

We still stand ready to integrate our suite, just as we do with Facebook, with Google single sign-on and so on. The key question stands: would they let Zoho play in their ecosystem? If not what is the meaning of being "open"?

After all, Benioff compares Salesforce's "openness" with Microsoft, but consider the contrast. AdventNet, the parent company of Zoho, sells most of its software on the Windows platform (like most software companies do, no surprise there). We didn't have to seek permission from Microsoft to create applications on Windows. I don't know the terms, but I bet Microsoft would let us play on the Azure cloud platform, because they know a thing or two about empowering third party developers. Google lets us offer their users the option to sign-in to Zoho using their Google ID. Google lets us integrate Gears for the offline version - they even gave us publicity when we finished the integration. Google APIs are open to any and all vendors, including Zoho, on equal terms.
That's where I worked. I was never the network geek that most of my coworkers were, but I got to learn a lot. :)
Good luck
To all you American HN'ers, and maybe to the rest of us as well: Good luck tonight. It's been a bit of a drag having election articles being voted up here, but since it's going to have a major influence for hackers and non-hackers, Americans and non-americans alike it is probably warranted.

So with the hope that we won't be seeing any stories on the race the day after tomorrow: May the best man win.

So good luck and goodnight.
Exactly right. Relatively speaking, our culture is very anti-intellectual and backwards. Athletic heroes are praised by the entire community, while the math whizes are ridiculed and viewed as socially undesirable. In that kind of environment, not many people who have both options will go the way of the math geek.
Did you e-vote? How'd it go?
It is a rather large download, but you can get basically all of Microsoft's development tools for free from this download:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c7a...

The image expires at the end of this year, but expect a newly updated image to become available shortly after.
I think this is more of a problem with ruby gems then 3rd party libraries in general. Maintaining gems across dev/test/prod environments is probably more complicated than just packaging 3rd party source with your app.

It's certainly possible to package gems with the app, but I don't know of any established best practice for it.
There are people who can sell you anything. And it does not require any understanding on buyer's part.

Don't tell, sell it.
Wild Tangent’s chief Alex St. John talks about elevating COO, shutting game studio
What's a brand marketer to do in a down economy?
Bottom Line:
Google needs to re-tune their adsense tech.
Obviously it's not working correctly...

I set my channels to fitness, sport supplements, vitamins.
What I end up with is targeted towards other areas, including politics?!? They violate their own TOS.
I wish all websites witnessed similar numbers.
How can they dominate in an unregulated space?
At least we also had the "don't vote" counterpoint by freakonomics.
What kind of students?
Ask YC: What web services are you using for election information?
I'm just curious what services you guys have found for updated information. I'm sorry if this is a bit too political for HN, but I'm really wanting to know how the web is covering the election details.
Agile/Politics: On Losing
Make sure you take a peep at Hesse too. Narziss and Goldmund is a must-read - the kind of book that changes your perspective on life. He's Thomas Mann's intellectual equal, I would say.

As for Joseph, a word of encouragement: the further you get into it, the more the story starts to come together and pick up pace. The first 300 pages or so, it feels like you're reading random shreds of a story... but keep faith, it's all packed with mental wealth and well worth it!
Facebook could make money. They've just opted to focus on other things...probably to the detriment of their long-term health as a company. But, they've decided that the network effects of having the most users is the most important thing for them, and they've put aside all other considerations. I don't for a second think Facebook is worth $15 billion (but maybe the ~$4 billion internal valuation that people within the company are getting for their shares when they sell privately).

But, Facebook is having to try pretty hard to outspend their incoming cash. They've hired very aggressively and made decisions that are more befitting a much larger/older company. I don't know enough to say if it'll all come crashing down...but it'd be possible to make Facebook make money tomorrow, if they laid off some of those hires and got as smart as Google about infrastructure.
Web2 Ventures reaching out to the base of the pyramid
"A lot of students dread Hindi (an artificially imposed third language in South India) and to a lesser extent English."

I am voting you for that one,though I am not sure about the first part of your post.
One Reason Why I Don't Vote
via http://people.howstuffworks.com/question472.htm regarding the Electoral College:

"Most of the time, electors cast their votes for the candidate who has received the most votes in that particular state. Some states have laws that require electors to vote for the candidate that won the popular vote, while other electors are bound by pledges to a specific political party. However, there have been times when electors have voted contrary to the people's decision, and there is no federal law or Constitutional provision against it."

Just want to make sure people are aware of this - because I don't know a single person who is.
This Could Be Huge
How exactly does not voting improve the situation?
Where's the democracy?

"However, there have been times when electors have voted contrary to the people's decision, and there is no federal law or Constitutional provision against it."
That text is too HUGE. Needs to be taken down a few notches so I don't have to scroll so much.

The help page is not working so I cannot get more information.

The table at the bottom is too flippant for my tastes.
Narziss... looks good, I put it on my list. It's going to be a good while before I get back into classic fiction though ;-)

You might like Eco's "The Name of the Rose" since you seem to be into really good fiction set in Medieval Europe ;-)
Yes, and a lot. You can read too much about my reading habits here: http://jseliger.wordpress.com if you're curious.
Thats like saying why does rest of the world care what US does? I think it would be in Apple's best interest to make those videos available for the community. This would directly benefit them. You don't want people to complain, especially the people who contribute to your product that is making you tons of money. Just my thoughts.
Jeff Han: The inventor behind CNN's election 'Magic Wall'
I understand that, but it does not answer my question.
Right, because reading _Godel Escher Bach_, _Shock of the New_, and _Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain_ (my current reading list) obviously doesn't exercise the imagination.
Oh trust me, I did. But it sure as hell wasn't for your sake.
"A lot of students dread Hindi (an artificially imposed third language in South India) and to a lesser extent English"

Artificially imposed? Of the four states that make up South India, one state (Tamil Nadu) considers Hindi "artificially imposed.

Three of the four(Kerala, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh) have no problems with Hindi and don't consider it an "imposition".

Careful with the snap judgments!
I don't remember saying that not voting improves it. I also don't recall saying that voting improves it either.
Forget The Magic Wall. CNN Now Has Holograms
63 points for these "news"? A public rant about a competitor is "news" here? And how ethical is it to blog about such things? I've never seen a CEO of a company publicly bitching about how badly competitors treat him. Jesus I know for sure to never approach Zoho with a business proposal in fear of turning any potential dispute into a dirty laundry hanging in public.

And why is it even supposed to be interesting for anyone outside of Zoho/Salesforce? I wish we could see IP addresses of people who voted this stuff up: I wonder what percentage of originated from India.

Sridhar, here is an idea for you: write a post titled "Zoho shall pay no taxes" and make your workers vote it up on every public news site.
So if helping the situation is not your reason, what is?
The United States is not, nor has it ever been, a democracy; it is a republic. You are electing the electors who then cast their vote for the president. When the elector votes contrary to the popular vote, it's the same idea as a president who doesn't do what he promises during his campaign.
A lot of monopolies arise in unregulated spaces:

- MSFT and the PC OS market in the 1990s

- CATV operators in the 1970s

- AT&T in the first third of the 20th cent.

- Electric utilities (at first, GE and Westinghouse) over the same period

- The German chemical industry (again, over roughly the same period)

The Econ-101 explanation is that a competent first mover in an industry that delivers an especially high return to scale can cut prices fast enough that no new competitor in the market could ever recoup the cost of entry. So nobody bothers, and the monopoly is free to set prices until the government steps in to bring down the price or nationalize the firm.

In other words, most of the entities we traditionally associate with the term "monopoly" arise naturally and then get special legal status to recapture some of the value they generate.
Facebook Connect: Coming Soon to a Site Near You?
Pocket video projector
Pocket projector, battery powered, comes with iPhone connector. Engadget estimates $430. Fairly low resolution.
Script kiddies have awesome tools
Tuning in to unconscious communication
The Energy-Efficient $70 PC
Funny, cause Ruby variables aren't typed. (The values are.)