skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> government is shorthand for "centralized decision making made by disinterested economic actors". Please note that "disinterested" is a value-neutral term - it implies that the decision makers don't personally & directly benefit from the outcome.

Govt decision making is not done by disinterested actors. The interests may not be immediate or the benefits may be indirect, but they exist.
Interesting, but I'd like some more depth/detail. The guy has been doing Erlang for all of 10 months, noticed some of the good stuff about it, and created a web framework with it. Ok... but... what does it really do that takes advantage of Erlang? They talk about the DB layer a bit, but isn't that really sort of the killer for most people, rather than Rails or PHP or whatever? Looks interesting, but I want to hear more than why Erlang is cool - I know that already, I want to know what they did with it that takes advantage of its strengths.
I never understood what the reason was for the recent spike in food prices. Does anyone here know of a good study that explains this?
So overall:-

- You can't base your choices on the results
- You can't base your choices on the teachers opinions.

…the only decent way I see is going and spending a term with the kids yourself, for an unbiased view. Not sure if that an option or not, but I see no other way!

Good luck and keep up the amazing work your doing! :)
> That's an absurd definition because no one has complete information.

Not really. Markets depend on complete information. Else, how can someone accurately judge the value of something? If I buy a candy bar that's actually only worth $1.00 to me for $2.00, there is a market failure. I might think it was worth $2.00 because of the ingredients on the back. Little do I know that the candy bar is actually made with cheaper ingredients. There is a market failure. Now apply this analogy on a large scale and you can see how incomplete information causes market failures.
He's using Trendalyzer, software he developed that Google later acquired.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trendalyzer
Let's work it out. We have 1e16 numbers. If each is 8 bytes, that's 8e16 bytes.

Dell do blade servers with 192 GB RAM. Call it 200 GB, which is 2e11 bytes.

You'd need 8e16/2e11 = 4e5 = 400,000 of them. At £35k each that's 14 billion quid. (Though with that big an order, you could no doubt build or get them cheaper). This is about gross world output for 4 hours. So it's doable, but not on the budget that most organisations could afford.
Agreed, the edge cases being the things that people absolute require: the essentials.
That's Tolstoy (Anna Karenina). But I agree with your point. It won't be my grandma's depression, it will be my own.
> The article addresses this; because the government can be more consistent.

Govts have no more inherent ability to be consistent than markets. And, if change is required, consistency isn't a good thing.

It's interesting that you keep comparing the platonic ideal of one alternative with the messy reality of another.

> How about a market that stops human rights violations?

Since markets create far fewer human rights violations than govts, markets are better here as well.
Should Newspapers Become Online Ad Brokers for Local Businesses? | PBS
It was a combination of the spike in gasoline/diesel prices, a diversion of corn to make ethanol, which pushed up the price of everything that depended on corn (meat being a big one), and a shift to more corn production (which reduced the production of other things, increasing their price).

The US subsidizes domestic ethanol production and heavily taxes imported ethanol. Brazil produces ethanol far more efficiently than Iowa does. For those playing at home, that's a govt failure.
I don't think it'd be worth it. Unless I could delete my memory.
Thanks for the pointer; it's interesting.
How much more advanced is government technology?
After seeing Quantum of Solace, I was reminded of a question I've wondered about for some time: How much more advanced are governments' technology (specifically the US) than tech that civilians have?

This comes up in a number of areas:

- Encryption / Ability to Decrypt stuff

- Computational Power (supercomputers)

- Satellite and GPS granularity

- Real-time surveillance and wiretapping

I've always found encryption and all that interesting, but there's always the question of whether or not the government can decrypt communications, etc. In my case, practicality has won out for the time being -- I don't worry about my generally-benign e-mails and other files stored in the cloud for instance, and the tedious nature of typing passwords each time I step to my PC, and to access my data, has yet to trump my perceived need for encryption and security.

I would think that if the government had some secret supercomputer capable of decrypting strongly-encrypted files, that technology would be publicly known. But with the stuff in movies about super-advanced tech, it's not an unreasonable thing to wonder about.

How much farther ahead is government tech than civilians? Are the dazzling displays of tech in spy movies purely fantasy, or is there some element of truth to the government's secret and/or superior technical knowledge or resource?
Bad Technology: A Call for Revolution Against Beta Culture
He actually did try to balance the budget for a while -- for the first several years, whenever he raised spending, he raised taxes as well.
Clickthrough rates for share badges in footer?
Anyone have any data on the clickthrough rates of share (e.g. Digg, Mixx, Delicious) badges placed in the footers of blogs or news sites, e.g. the Chicago Tribune (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-112308-allergens-whole-foods-nov23,0,241722.story) or CNN (http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/22/obama.vetting/index.html)?
Final Fantasy XIII Gamezone
A Model of Your Inbox
I would give myself a copy of "Disciplined Minds" by Jeff Schmidt. It explains so many things I didn't understand then.

It is probably the most important book that I have read in the last five years.
Why do you think that a govt decison maker is more likely to decide on the right mix of corn vs wheat (and where) than folks who directly benefit from making the right decision?
Anyone know some place that lists similarly funky Unicode features?
Today Is Our Second Anniversary
That's not absurd. It's basic economic theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_failure
> > That's an absurd definition because no one has complete information.
> Not really.

Feel free to cite anything about which you have complete information.

> Markets depend on complete information. Else, how can someone accurately judge the value of something?

There are no guarantees, so you act based on perceived value. When you're right, you're better off. When you're wrong, you're worse off.

Note that the lack of complete information applies to govt decison making as well, but govts lack diversity and apply force.

> If I buy a candy bar that's actually only worth $1.00 to me for $2.00, there is a market failure.

Huh? If that candy bar is only worth $1.00 to you, why did you pay $2?

Ah, because you think that ingredient cost matters. That's a failure of end-to-end thinking.

Note govts fail in analogous ways, and often with greater ill effect, yet you don't mention that possibility.
Actually, I did this math before I posted my comment.
What I don't understand is this:

With x% annual failure rate, are the failures uniformly distributed over time? I would expect that it's probably a normal distribution over time. (i.e., no failures to very few failures in the beginning, and the failures keep increasing with time).
Also, more information at the website:

http://www.gapminder.org/
Here is fully normalized relational model. I will adopt a simple notation

Table: <PrimaryKeyID>, Column1, Column2

where the <> denotes the column to be primary key and Column1, Column2 etc. denote regular non-key attributes. The notation ForeignKeyID from SomeTable denotes a foreign key referring to a row in SomeTable.

Persons: <PersonID>, Name, DateOfBirth

Men and Women are defined in separate tables, to enforce integrity constraints later, which is why it is not modeled as a Gender attribute in Persons table. These tables have no attributes, simply a listing of men and women. It is a perfectly valid relation that has only one column, by the way. Note that the foreign key here is also the primary key of the table.

Men:<PersonID from Persons>

Women: <PersonID from Persons>

This represents a basic marriage, the only attribute of which is the date. Many specific forms of marriage are captured below.

Marraiges: <MarriageID>, DateOfMarriage

MarriageID is the primary key for the tables below. The design below permits polygamy, so further integrity constraints would be needed to restrict it. If a marriage is not permitted to be dissolved and no polygamy is permitted, we can place a uniqueness constraint on both Men and Women attributes below. If all types of marriages are permitted in all jurisdictions, these 3 tables below could be unified.

ConventionalMarriages: <MarriageID from Marriages>, PersonID from Men, PersonID from Women

GayMarriages: <MarriageID from Marriages>, PersonID from Men, PersonID from Men

LesbianMarriages: similar to above

Notice how a marriage has to exist for a divorce to exist

Divorces: <MarriageID from Marriages>, DivorceDate

Some features of the model: if a person A & B marry and then they terminate a marriage, and remarry again, it gets a new marriageID.

Some integrity constraints:

a) Zero or One marriage at a time rule:

If a PersonID occurs more than once in the Marriages table, then order the marriages by marriage date, order Divorces by DivorceDate, and enforce the rule:

for all except last MarriageID in Ordered(Marriages), ensure Divorces(MarriageID) exists, and DivorceDate(MarriageID) < MarriageDate(next(MarriageID))

b) Polygamy would require more complex integrity constraints.

The nice thing about thinking about the problem relationally is that you focus on the data and its interrelationships, and avoid language considerations. Notice how a fully normalized relational model captures a lot of the constraints automatically, and only the most complex of constraints need to be separately stated.

Finally, note that this is an abstract model and should be separated from details of storage.
Yes, let's quote Wikipedia: "Thus, there is often a choice between imperfect outcomes, i.e. imperfect market outcomes and imperfect government outcomes."
I could see this being pretty popular for Facebook statuses, etc. I'd change the download links suggestion for one about Twitter, though.
(: ¿ʇuɐʌǝlǝɹ sıɥʇ sı ʎɥʍ

Because it's awesome. It may be subjective but it's the weekend and it's a cool site.

It's useful for passwords if you use a password manager or equivalent technology.
you mentioned that when you plotted score vs income, there was a clear correlation- i was suggesting using this data to normalize the scores.

if trusting teachers is an issue, there are two options.

- polling multiple teachers (hopefully eliminating individual bias)

- polling multiple students.

for polling teachers, you might suggest that each teacher recommend 4 students.

for polling students, you might suggest that each applicant write 2 essays: why they should receive the award, and which of their fellow classmates should as well.

correlating these with exam scores might provide a clearer picture still.
By what definition? And, by the way, why?
No, and the evidence backs this up. Guess who wanted the most to increase home ownership and pressed for subprime loans through stunts like the community re-investment act? Congress.

Guess whose legally protected rating agencies gave AA+ ratings to massive CDOs? Congress.

Guess who managed to figure out that subprime was going to blow and tried to guard against it? Goldman and assorted hedge funds.

Funny the double standards that we hold markets and government to.
8 ideas emerge from Lexington Startup Weekend
Exactly. DRM is usually there to make it difficult to do something that is illegal anyway. With music, it's just as illegal to copy (copyrighted) non-DRM music as it is to copy DRM-protected music. The reason the DRM is there is because people still share music, even though it's illegal. It's the same reason we put locks on our doors: if everyone were law-abiding law, we wouldn't need them, but we do need them because people do break the law. It's not about freedom at all -- it's about stopping people breaking copyright (and other) laws, laws which still apply even when DRM isn't used.
I don't think anybody runs on a platform of trying for a while, then giving up, and doing the exact opposite of what was promised, only in a more extreme fashion than any of your predecessors. If FDR could not keep his promises, he still did a bad job -- being an incompetent who fooled people into giving him authority doesn't make him morally superior to a mere liar.
Detecting spam from http headers?
> No one is proposing "regulation" on the level of the USSR.

Why not? We're told that govts must be in charge of essentials because markets fail.

> Does anyone really think the government can better judge and hedge the risk of mortgages than the market?

The recent mortgage crisis pretty much proves that govts are worse at judging mortage risk than the market. After all, it was the subprimes, pushed by govt, that caused the problem.

And, it was govt that provided incentives to invest in Fannie and Freddie.

And, it was govt's backing that gave Fannie and Freddie the ability to borrow money that their assets couldn't pay back.
Rephrased for chiasmus double bonus points:

Work hard on what you like, not on what's thought hard work.
That’s very cool indeed. However it doesn’t work well with my survival utf-8 characters:
The flip of à é è ç ô “ ” ‘ ’ € £ is £ € ’ ‘ ” “ ô ç è é à
Great idea nonetheless.
" So if the LHC confirms that the Higgs exists, it will mean all reality is virtual."

Headline should be "It's nearly confirmed" as the LHC has not done this yet.
"Hi, I'm you from the future. It's critically important that you visit $country ASAP. Heck, it's important enough that they sent me back through time to tell you! You! Here's some money, go to this place and speak to this person. Go on your own".

Hopefully, convincing myself to go. The place isn't important, except that it's more than a day's travel, and the person would be some generic description who's likely to be there, and the cash wouldn't be enough to get back.

Or maybe the place and person would be someone interesting who I'm yet to hear of. Not sure.

The experience, maybe it would be enough of a kick to change my life for the better. I needed it. (I still need it).
Failed to flip 
Not sure I'd agree. I would say that it's a huge benefit to have worked for a large company, but don't stay more than a year, two at the most. You don't really appreciate the hell of a corporate environment until you've worked in one for a bit.
Ok Can Someone Plz Come Out with The T Mobile G1 Phone Video capture applications I Hope It Doesnt be Like 20 sec Like The Damn Sk Lx Hopefully be Like 2 Mins maybe Its Update the Video Cam applications 4.0 or 4.5 pix
Before TicketStumbler I at one point had 90k worth of credit card debt to finance my first business. That business was a lot more stressful than TS.
I can't spend time with all 1500 students myself, which is why we need some method of determining the students. And if I spend time in a class and simply pick someone, that would appear too random, which will be demotivating to students who try hard.
I've been there, still could not come up with a good solution.
How is voting for a binding commitment a vote against personal responsibility? As Jon Elster shows, if we take hyperbolic utility discounting seriously binding commitments like these are a key part of personal responsibility.
This is actually a good idea, but one could just use normal computers. The school has 30 PCs or so with an internet connection.

All the same, you can't interview 1500 students over a webcam, and what can one learn in a 10 minute interview? It's like a job interview then, and they are a bit young for that...

The best would be if there were some type of test that one could administer that does not show the same bias towards the wealthier students.
Play along yourself at http://tools.google.com/gapminder/
The students get one teacher per year. I.e, they don't have multiple teachers for each subject, they just have 1 teacher who takes them for an entire year, then they get a new teacher.

The essay suggestion would work maybe for the 10-12 year olds, but the 6-10 year olds would not be able to write that well. Also, would they not just pick their 'clique'?
What if instead of an override link it made you answer a Mechanical Turk question? Then at least you'd be accomplishing something useful with your procrastination.
I think this is an interesting experiment worth trying if nothing else. You'll probably see the polls weigh against trying the change, but that's generally because people don't like change.

The way I look at it, no one loses anything by trying it... and it's not hard to put things back to normal if it doesn't work out.
His 2007 talk was better. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_...

Best. Finale. Ever.
It looks like you've completely skipped over the possibility that intelligence and ambition are heritable -- whether genetically, or through parenting strategies -- and thus that academic ability and parental income correlate very well. I think this pattern of wishful thinking over actual data is part of why aid to Africa has been so counterproductive.
Good idea! Noprocrast with override option is (for me) about as effective as hiding the ice cream beneath a bag of frozen peas would be for a kid.

You could limit the max length of minaway to prevent people from accidentally blocking the site forever. I think max is about 190 years at moment (although if a singularity occured that could become a relevant timespan for procrastinators).
Why is wealth correlated with test scores? Is it because wealth is correlated with intelligence (in this case presumably mediated through diet)? Or is it some other factor?

What is this scholarship and how is it expected to help the students?
Take a look at PISA results (just an example of formal evaluation of teens abilities):
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=245192
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=257836
This is a pretty old idea - see http://www.boingboing.net/2007/07/01/flip-text-upsidedown.ht... and http://pne.livejournal.com/398399.html
I've spent some time thinking about this - and you have a devil of a test issue. You need a test that doesn't correlate with income, but that can be seen as fair and transparent.

You're better off doing an evaluation that has absolutely nothing to do with actual skills. If you measured, say, reaction time, you'd end up with something that's just not likely to be correlated at all to income - just to innate ability and practice. Assuming all the kids from all the income levels would practice the same amount and that families of wealth do not have higher reaction times, you're going to end up with "winners" that aren't limited to the high income.

Doing a test based on reaction time seems incredibly unfair - you're not looking for kids who are the most promising from the get go - but you're guaranteed to not just get the wealthy. In the end, you'll be helping more kids who need the scholarship than you would be with an aptitude test. Since that's the goal, this plan has a net benefit. It's not perfect, and it's not pretty, and it's probably duplicitous, but you'll at least have a better outcome than you would with your existing tools.

Ideally, yes, you'd want to find a "fair" aptitude test that wasn't income-correlated, but that is going to be incredibly difficult to do.
I've always said that for each and every proverb, there's an equal and opposite proverb.
Flagged - you just can't post articles like this without the libertarians (or whoever is called out by the article du jour) frothing at the mouth and rendering the whole discussion nothing more than a repeat of a very old and tired internet discussion.
A site brings together the best of the web all to one page
Tried it out -- shows the user's cursor fine in my experience.
Internet Explorer 8 delayed until 2009
Can angel funding be "crowd" sourced?
I'd like to raise ~$100K of funding for my company (we're working on news algorithms, hoping for patents and such), and I was wondering if there were any legal issues with offering x% of my company and then offering people the chance to buy small stakes?
for example (and i'm doing these sums off the cuff) offer 20% of my company for $100K.

I'd offer investment in the form of ~$250 installments and that'd grant the purchaser the tiny stake of the company, and various collaborative "where the app is going/where it should go" democratic options.

Is it allowed? Has there been any discussions on this form of investment?

It seems like a really great way to get a) a good crowd of dedicated users! b) easy to raise future funding, c) good for end users to have a small investment in the web world.
This is an amazing statement. It is sad that those who want something can't get it, while at the same time those who are offered many chances take those chances for granted.

My comment is meant to be a blow to the children of the United States. I went through the U.S. public education system. I could never figure out why so many people chose not to take advantage of the education the state was required to offer.
I, of course, have never done this, but my hunch is that it should be easy to ask students questions that reveal some abilities. I am reminded of one of the studies cited in Gladwell's Blink about how you can thin-slice (speedily evaluate relative merit) a person's abilities in pretty diverse fields (speed-dating, classroom teaching) with only a 10 (or so) second video of the person.

No test administered by classroom teachers can escape corruption, unless the teachers are themselves unaware of what constitutes a right answer.
is a job as a male stripper bad?
Which problem(s) are you trying to solve? Is it simply the time sink?

If you think folks spend too much time here, then why not a daily limit? Make noprocrast a fixed limit for everyone.

If you think quality would improve during "open" hours, then why not limit submissions to certain hours? Read-access all the time, but write-access only sometimes.
you really think 1-2 hours per day will cut it? if you were the only one doing a startup, then, and only then, maybe so...
My current project is a sort of microfinance site that does exactly what you're describing. I recently pitched it at a pitch competition (lost.) Long story short, there are some legal obstacles, but nothing insurmountable. If you want to hear more, feel free to email me.
very interested! wanna drop me an email (cant find yours) -- peter@omgponi [dot] es
Are the test scores you refer to based on learned skills, or on intelligence? If the former, you could try giving the students a test like the Raven's Progressive Matrices. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven%27s_Progressive_Matrices It's a test of intelligence that does not require the student to be able to read, know math, or possess any cultural knowledge. It might be useful for finding bright students who were just not brought up in an environment that encouraged learning.

If that doesn't work, I suppose the thing to do is give the scholarship to the highest performing student who could not otherwise afford the tuition.
It's more hilarious than anything.
Well, there's also the possibility that he tried one thing for a while, which didn't work very well so he switched to something different. As to whether he did a good job or not, the fact that he was reelected three times seems to indicate that he didn't do too badly.
Digg was founded by a non-technical founder...