skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
totally. I read the title of the post and I winced. Not even because I was especially teased.

the gist of the article: "Where teasing provides an arena to safely explore conflict, it can join people in a common cause. Especially when they’re allowed to tease back."

I would change that to say that teasing is an arena to safely explore conflict and bring about positive benefits ONLY when the teasing is two-directional. This is the difference between brothers punching each other and a bully punching you in the gut -- if you're not allowed or unable to punch back or throw back a punchline, it's bullying.

Unlike physical hurt, teasing can be used as a tool to tie a group closer together by highlighting its contrast with another group, or more hurtfully, specific things about a single individual. Greasers and preppies, nerds and jocks, boys and girls, Inners and Outers...etc. The punchlines are often something the group has in common, but which the excluded individual(s) lack. In other words, hurtful teasing aims to alienate; helpful teasing aims to bind together. Unfortunately, sometimes the two can happen simultaneously.

Again, the difference here is the ability to counter. The article brings in all these cases where people are on retaliate-able positions, even when inequality exists. The situation with the frat boys would've resembled the Stanford Prison Experiment if the Inners were allowed to tease the Outers but not vice versa.
Didn't get the "semantic web" part - isn't what the article describes simply keyword-sensitive ads?
"This is a GA I wrote to design a little car for a specific terrain. It runs in real-time in Flash.
The fitness function is the distance travelled before the red circles hit the ground, or time runs out. The degrees of freedom are the size and inital positions of the four circles, and length, spring constant and damping of the eight springs. The graph shows the "mean" and "best" fitness.
I should really make a new version with better explanations of what's going on."

http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7i22c/genetic_p...
This is exceptionally cool. It is actually on par and along the lines of the fractal compression ideas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal_compression
I live only 100 miles north of Boston, in a fairly "wealthy" state (New Hampshire) and my only option is satellite. That's just a sad state of the infrastructure.

Furthermore, broadband speeds vary from country to country:

http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/Images/commentarynews/bro...

It's not just penetration that we lag behind. It's speed too.

As for density, Canada's a fairly big place, and they have a bigger, faster broadband (see my link and yours) even as their GDP is 10% of ours: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)
Exactly. This is the same tired argument that we've been hearing about the FB's and MySpaces forever. Logically, it makes perfect sense. In reality, nobody has figured out how to actually monetize this sort of activity yet.
The government ensures that everyone gets postal and land-line telephone service if they want it. Considering how TCP/IP packets are used, are they really much different from those other services?

In this case it's not about picking a winner, it's about making sure people have access to resources. Once there's choice the monopoly can be disposed of, like we did with Ma Bell and the postal service.
From what I can tell and my limited genetic programming experience the idea is to create a car that is able to drive across the course.

A car is defined as being a quadrilateral with two wheels and two counterweights (I think that's what they are). It starts off by randomly creating 20 cars with variable car shapes, wheel sizes, and counterweight sizes.

It determines how well each car does on the course and uses this information to mate the cars together in order to get a more successful car. The way this is traditionally done is by evaluating a "fitness" function on each individual in the population and giving the higher scoring individuals a better chance of mating.

This process keeps on going on until some criteria is reached. On average, the higher the generation count the better the offspring should be.
Not true.

We use Braintree and they're great. We're not doing $250k/mo yet but had no problems getting signed up with them back in May.

We also helped a partner company get setup with BT recently. They're doing < $50K a month IIRC.

Have not run into most of the problems mentioned in the OP.
The strategy that provided you victory, may not be repeated in the same way.

--Sun Tzu
Interesting way to look at it. I'm not sure how practical it might be (in fact, it's pretty clear that it's not practical at all), but still, as a thought-experiment it's quite interesting.
Those paper cuts were something awful...
Did I act like you stated your personal opinion? Sorry if it seemed that way.

You can have that in Linux, but it's one thing for it to be possible and another for it to be the out-of-the-box default. It's the problem with choice: it's confusing and it takes time and other programs don't configure to the same standards.
Dean Kamen's 'LED Nation'
Perhaps the good folks who follow the cult of Rand could discuss for us the costs, as they see them, of unregulated greed.
I'm on IE6 right now because I'm at work, but I use Safari and Firefox at home.
I like how you found 2 people who support your argument, but there is a gap separating predictions from promises. Many classical definitions of AI have been surpassed, but because people are still better at a verity of tasks we say we don't have AI.

PS: A digital computer is the worlds chess champion or would be if we let them compete. Making a useful captia is hard, but computers don't compose poetry so we can still say we don't have AI.
Dang, this is an idea I explored doing about 4 years ago (using PostgreSQL as the engine and Sun Thumpers for the hardware). Underlines that execution is everything...

My main business concern was whether people who were already savvy enough to run a website wouldn't just as soon run their own database server (MySQL or PostgreSQL), which ain't really rocket science.
The cult of Rand may be what got us here in the first place.
>>So in order to maximally squander their education, we wanted them to receive new questions all the time.

Sometimes I think this is the true reason the internet was created.

(additionally, you can substitute education with noun of choice)
Sure, that may be bad, but steroids have much, much more downside relative to the other examples you have given.

Hard training at a young age can lead to amenorrhea and slowed hormonal development, but anabolic steroids cause irreprable damage to your liver and kidneys. And will ruin your joints.

There is no inconsistency here. It's not binary, it's on a gradient.
Ok this is the second evolutionary computing post of today that does something cool with little or no explanation of what's going on. Stop teasing.
This might be too niche to help but:
http://play.typeracer.com

As far as 'hacker friendly' maybe you're thinking of something like tetrisapp?
http://tetrisapp.appspot.com/static/howto.html

This isn't a browser game, but certainly could be and targets a less-targeted demographic:
http://www.zachtronicsindustries.com/pivot/entry.php?id=40
Hopefully they can do it on a site that's appropriate for the discussion of Ayn Rand and her philosophy.
Yes, and people seem to get stuck on the hardware, and gloss over the most amazing part of the demo: the NLS Augment software. Even though the web came along, there are very few pieces of collaborative editing software today that could be considered to rival Augment.

I remember using Augment, telnetting into to SRI on a glass TTY in 1973, which was pretty painful, but still pretty inspiring.
Big island hawaii vacation rentals
Way less efficient than [citation needed] The US government on average is not as bad as you might assume. Granted they tend to get burned when outsourcing work but bringing in third party's often increases costs or decreases quality. EX: Public school lunch programs managed by 3rd parties.
I certainly agree with the choice of Dropbox--it is a truly excellent piece of software. Not only does it allow me to keep important files synchronized across many computers, bridging operating systems without a sweat, it has fundamentally changed how I collaborate with many of my colleagues. Shared folders (with rudimentary version control to boot) are fantastic.
The US has not disposed of the postal service monopoly. It remains illegal to compete with the USPS in the delivery of "first-class" mail. Other services also may not use the same mailboxes, even if the customer wants them to. And the USPS has neither been privatized nor broken into competing units.
Is the WSTF one Web services forum too many?
Feedback on my startup
Just launched www.studentbites.com.

Any feedback would be much appreciated.
The confusion comes from the fact that "playful" and "hurtful" are, to a great extent, properties of the teasee rather than the teaser.

Fabienne [Pulp Fiction French Girl]: A pot. A pot belly. Pot bellies are sexy.

Butch [Bruce Willis]: Well you should be happy, 'cause you do [have a pot belly].

The net result of that conversation is NSFW in a positive way (here is the script http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/7606/pulpscri.htm).

I've had a similar conversations, and it doesn't always go so well. In retrospect, I believe the reason is that Fabienne considered herself beautiful and knew Butch was merely trying to get a reaction from her. Previous ladyfajitas didn't all feel the same way about themselves.
I recently used CyberSource for a project. I'm not the best programmer by any means but was able to get it up and running fairly quickly. (No affiliation with CyberSource)
Our Hacker Odyssey
Very interesting model. The big question I have (and can't seem to figure it out reading the docs) is how security is handled. (That's been the huge issue with JS talking to a DB.)

From the security FAQs: "It is the responsibility of the application to create secure queries and to perform appropriate security testing."

Ack! What the heck is a secure query?!
Agreed, it's not rocket science. But I think it's super important to explore these types of esoteric models and allow developers to "get creative".
"Dealing with failure is easy: Work hard to improve. Success is also easy to handle: You've solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve." Alan Perlis, Epigrams in Programming (#101) http://www.cs.yale.edu/quotes.html
Great article, and to be honest I have nothing to add that wasn't said but can I say -- The site design is very neat! Love how you switch themes on each article.
i misread the title and thought that at least one of the "Big Three" had finally gotten it, and was starting to make SMART-size cars. Dang.
poetry is a bad example. A computer still can't translate from one language to another at a level anyone would trust for something important.
Fiber could cost billions, and in the end, wireless might be a much better option. This is clearly a make-work project, and that is simply a waste of my money.
Here's one: American Express charges 1% higher than Visa and Mastercard, and is brutal to businesses when a customer tries to chargeback a legit charge. And yet, unless you're in a very low margin business, it's profitable to take AMEX because they have an excellent clientbase that you really want.

I thought about it a lot, decided I couldn't beat 'em, so I might as well join 'em, and got an AMEX Gold Card. The reason AMEX gives you all kinds of crazy-awesome rewards and bonuses and great customer services is because they stick it to business. 1% of gross is HUGE. If you have 10% profit margins independent of credit card processing, you lose 20% of your profits to Visa/MC, or 30% to AMEX. Someone's going to slay the credit card company beast someday, because they're evil and don't add that much value to business for what they charge, but we don't have free authenticated ACS debits yet.

So yeah, you need to take AMEX unless you're low-margin or the only game in town and very necessary. And they scalp you, but you suck it up.
"It is unacceptable that the United States ranks 15th in the world in broadband adoption," Mr. Obama said. "Here, in the country that invented the Internet, every child should have the chance to get online."

Why did I read that as "... every child should have the chance to download porn at a high rate"? Sigh, does anyone really believe that internet access is going to make a serious difference in the lives of those children who are struggling educationally or whose families are on the economic margins? All it will do is drag them down further in a wasteland of social networking sites (Facebook, Myspace) and (usually) much worse.
From hybrids to SUVs, unsold cars pile up
Ask YC: Review my startup, Userfly
Check it out at http://userfly.com/

In short, Userfly captures actual browsing sessions from real users as if you were looking over their shoulder. What we've found is that watching real users actually use your site can be remarkably insightful, so we built Userfly to accomplish that goal.

There's a screencast that will walk you through the basic functionality. Click on the demo button above it to mess around without having to sign up for an account.

Would love your feedback on the idea and its direction!
I'm assuming 'GA' mean Genetic Algorithm.
I know, let's create some government-sponsored enterprises, like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but for promoting broadband rather than home ownership!

After our big access push, the broadband intertubes will be a publicly-owned resource, like the broadcast airwaves. And we better not subsidize indecency or insensitive content with broad public resources! So content and corporate ownership structures can require FCC review, like over-the-air TV, rather than that messy anarchy that rules over books. (People can print anything in books and we can't fine them!)

Don't worry, though -- the FCC is always balanced, with 3 commissioners from the president's party, and 2 from the opposition party. All viewpoints are represented!

Remember, net neutrality for packets is only truly acheived when we have neutrality, equality, and justice for all people. Packets which contain hate speech, pornography, content inaccessible to the handicapped, political campaigning beyond the spending limits of the FEC, or an insufficient proportion of underrepresented viewpoints are not neutral. We won't allow them on our public nets!

Australia, China, the UK, and Saudi Arabia are all innovating in making their national networks serve national priorities -- the U.S. must not fall farther behind!
Genetic algorithms are pretty fun to talk about, but actually seeing it in action is awesome. Here, you can clearly see when a new car is born and when it fails, and see that the designs that manage to live longer are going to be more successful.
On Leaky Abstractions and Objective-J
Did you not just read the article where the cult of Rand described what it would have done differently, which bears no resemblance to what actually happened?

Note how I use the phrase "cult of Rand" as well. I'm not a fan. But come on, let's apportion blame where it actually belongs. When real economic policy doesn't resemble X's economic policies, turning around and blaming X's policies when it all goes wrong is just bullshit politics.

For all we know, Randism would be worse than what we have today, but what we have today is not Randism and you can't blame it for where we are.

This is like all those people blaming the crisis on "laissez-faire capitalism", where it just sort of goes without saying that "laissez-faire capitalism" is what we have, because if you actually had to say how the mortgage system was "laissez-faire", it would be obviously wrong.
Dean Kamen is awesome. He has an amphibious vehicle and replica of Stonehenge on his island!

http://www.longislandlighthouses.com/ndpics.htm

http://flickr.com/photos/timoreilly/2892279349/

http://flickr.com/photos/timoreilly/2893125074/

http://flickr.com/photos/timoreilly/2892284045/
Also for people without a business background: Gross profit is what you charge (Hamburger at Burger King: $1). Net profit is the money you make from it after you pay costs. Burger King doesn't make $1 per burger, since they have to buy meat, ship it to their stores, have it prepared, etc. Losing 3 cents out of every dollar to AMEX instead of 2 cents to Visa/MC doesn't sound like much, but it's huge if you're only making 5 cents per burger.

That's why fast food didn't take credit cards for so long - I hear the CC companies inked deals at lower than normal rates for some huge-volume small-margin companies like Walmart, McDonald's, etc. The credit card companies want more widespread use of their cards so people start using them for everything. As a small merchant, you're not going to get that and it's yucky. It's part of the game right now unfortunately, but that AMEX additional 1% of GROSS is really huge in many industries.
Whereabouts in NH? I'm from Bow, and wasn't aware of other New Hampshirites on Hacker News.

I had Comcast cable and I feel like most of the families in my town with young people in the households did too.
This one has docs and links to wikipedia, while being in javascript to boot

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=100521
Wow. Let me get this straight...

You would let companies like Verizon, who raised $70 billion to build out a FTTH architecture, get away with undelivered promises? The fact is we already paid for a faster Internet. We should already have broadband penetration at much higher rates, and most of us should already have fiber optics connections. Yes, you already paid for it. And some shareholder and CEO took that money and paid for an expensive car with an expensive house and an expensive yacht. That's where your money went. And what's why broadband penetration sucks, considering we're the country who invented the Internet.

You are all being taken advantage of, and you aren't even worried about it. No wonder CEO's jobs are so easy.
Speaking for myself and not for the general population, I'd say that you'll probably need to go freemium. A free basic service with for-pay extra features.

Maybe you could do what Instapaper is doing and charge for mobile software and not the service? Maybe let basic users store five or so pages, and let paying users keep as many as they want? I tend to put quite a bunch of pages in my instapaper queue before reading them all at once.

I guess you should spend a day or two to brainstorm a long list of features and let intended users rank them and tag them as "nice" vs "must have". Put the must haves in the free version, or most of them, and the nice ones in the paid category?

I have no idea what the usual way of dividing features between versions is, but putting the must haves in the free version should help build user base. And when you've started using it, those nice features might start looking tastier. On the other hand, if all your needs are taken care of in the free version you're not as inclined to spend.. Better ask someone who knows this stuff instead :)

$4 per month is more than I'd be willing to pay, and I consider myself fairly payment friendly - but I'm more in favour of one time payments than subscriptions.
First Maemo 5 SDK release targeting platform developers
Cool! We're in Newbury.

We'll be moving closer to Boston in the next few months, though.
There isn't any medical evidence for that. Overuse of anything is bad for you. There is no medical reason that, if used under proper supervision, steroids should result in any long-term physical damage. In fact, as is the case with cortisone, steroids can improve an athletes chances of recovering from an otherwise career-ending injury. These aren't drugs remember, just more of what your body produces naturally. If you want to ban people from adjusting their hormonal systems in support of their lifestyle choices, you'd have to ban the Pill too.
How To Guarantee That Your Software Will Suck
Nice! I played around with the demo for a few seconds, and quickly saw your value proposition.
If dropbox were to offer encryption, it would not make things more secure since I'd have to hand them unencrypted bits.

If I were to store bits that need encryption on a service like this I would encrypt them before I hand them off.
A cautionary thought:

If you bring unbridled resentment towards a person, you lose the ability to learn from their strong points.

Everyone human I've ever met is flawed. People seem to expect that once people become powerful, they should transcend and become unhumanly good, precise, unerring, and so on. It's hard. People are people, you just don't curse people when they make small mistakes that don't affect you.

I'm as guilty as anyone else of this - lots of successful people that I think are yucky personalities. But I try to segregate out what I dislike about them from what I can learn from them. Anyone whose accomplished a lot certainly has some great qualities. If you can harness those while cutting the arrogance, egoism, cavalier attitude towards the people in their care - then you can become stronger yourself and make the world a better place.

But I'm often guilty of the unbridled emotion thing, so take me with a grain of salt too.
People who have broadband always toe this line. Big country, hard to get it to everyone, we're doing fine.

I humbly submit that you've never lived in a place where broadband was available across the street and the telco/cable operator refused to bring it to your house. We have a problem. Here's hoping Obama has a solution. I've heard many politicians promise... this guy is the first one I'm inclined to believe.
Really cool and reminds me of self-modeling robots: http://ccsl.mae.cornell.edu/research/selfmodels/
Don't forget you can add an empty constructor constraint in c# generics.

public T AssignLiteItem<T>(ArchivingItem archivingItem ) where T : Item, new() {

T myITem = new T();

myITem.ItemReference = new ItemReference(archivingItem.Id);

return myITem;

}

I do wish the compiler handled constraints for arbitrary constructor signatures on generic types, however...
Oh the horror! Advertisers knowing what I like, dislike and want to purchase. The humanity!

Look I'm about as tin-foil hatted as they come but isn't this what we'd prefer instead of carpet bombing us with ads for shit we'd never buy?
there is competition, the problem is that since the whole broadband thing is just starting out, they companies are focusing their efforts on the big cities.

I mean think about it..why would the companies put all that effort and resources into laying fiber to and around a town of 10,000 people, if for only a little bit more they can lay down the fiber in a city of 10 million
"Sadly I don't think there is too much commercial value in extraordinarily CPU-intensive lossy image compression"

First, as commenters on that post pointed out, this is horribly inefficient. It's not even a GA, it's a blind hill climber! Hint: you need crossover; calling something "DNA" is not sufficient.

Second, even if it's a large image, and takes say 10 minutes on a laptop-class computer, that's 1 cent on EC2. Computing power has gotten ridiculously cheap.

Third, here is at least one killer app: mobile. B/W still sucks, and rendering speed could use some help as well. I can certainly imagine large websites benefitting from this. This is basically a raster to vector converter. You could start using this right now in SVG enabled environments.

Finally, I just thought of something truly sick. Note that you can draw arbitrary polygons using javascript. http://www.uselesspickles.com/triangles/demo.html Put these two together, and... dear God, I don't even want to think about it.
As inefficient as is might be, there are still some things that only government can build. There are plenty of places even today that the US mail goes to that FedEx does not. (I lived in one of them).

Sometimes you've just got to suck it up and swing that sledge hammer at that gnat, because there's just no private incentive to make a fly swatter.