skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
quite, what is up with all these services? there most be two dozen now.
Do Passwords Scale?
This could be awesome if it takes off. I've always thought the biggest barrier to desktop app adoption vs webapp adoption is the problem of finding and deploying apps. If this takes off we could witness a rejuvenation in the market for desktop apps on Windows.

As a developer who is often frustrated by how much application development these days is limited to the capabilities of the browser, something that solves the problem of safely deploying and managing application installs, really appeals.

Good luck Baseshield guys!
> But: one successfully completed project almost always guarantees repeat business.

righttt.
That's brilliant! I know, how about I just write a bot that circulates the highest rated stories amongst all the news aggregators?

If a story can't be submitted, it'll just obfuscate the url. Given that these stories have a half life, where new members will not have read them and will find them interesting, all submissions are pretty much guaranteed good karma.

It'll be called nirvanabot.
So, no, having a gay uncle is actually GREAT for me.

In the hedonic sense yeah, in the genetic sense no (like obesity), because you could have cousins with extra copies of your genes. But that was just a digression - I wasn't trying to argue that homosexuality should eradicate itself genetically, I don't even believe that.

Why should a gay couple be any different, from a society's point of view, from a heterosexual couple that adopts or doesn't have children at all?

It's different because it has no chance of having biological offspring, while for hetero couples society can't know it in advance.

On your other points - I'm going into a corner to think. You made many correct statements.
Why buy, when you can found?
The IntenseDebate guys work hard on their product and are some of the nicest dudes around. It's good to see a startup like ID get some big exposure like this.
update: with the control in flash apparently set to off, flash still creates directories and saves a file. This is some bad mojo.
I would just be sure that you actually own the domain, not the service. Early in my life was a web developer, I made this mistake, and it took a bit of effort to wrest ownership of the name back.

I use Dotster, and have found their service and interface perfectly acceptable. They, too, sent me an email saying I should I should renew my domain name before the rates went up.
Wow, I learned so much from that article. Thanks for linking it.
Is this forum exclusive for only Ycombinator companies and not other incubator companies? There is no biased for posting Ask HN rate my start-up.

Congrats to the IntenseDebate team!
Unfortunately it's slow as hell. Scott's presentation at MAX showed his Doom port running fluidly, so we know it can be done. With any luck we'll see optimization tips shared soon.
How Safe is Your Email? | TechJaws
So, by the standards of his time, nuts.
No -- I get zero hits for 4 and 7 with this approach.
Performance on Rails
Quick and easy-to-read article about performance optimization with Ruby on Rails.
Said differently: Personal blogs are the seed for something bigger.
Saving Money on Crime Scene Cleanup Services
Expenses to be covered on crime scene cleanup can be sometimes highly taxing for the families that are grieving the loss of their loved ones. In most cases, if you have a homeowner’s insurance policy your expenses will be taken care of your homeowner’s insurance. For some reason if you don’t have a homeowner’s insurance policy or if your policy does not cover this expense
And 90% of computers ran an operating system from a single vendor.
This is how DNS works. It has nothing to do with NameCheap.
An Invisible CAPTCHA
> "CorePy makes assembly fun again!" (Alex Breuer)
What's the purpose of that book? It's published in 2002, so computers had been able to generate random numbers for decades. It's worthless as an OTP book, as it's probably the only such book.
This is my favorite writing by Yudkowsky: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/05/faster-than-ein.html
So, I agree (strongly) with the statements and feelings in this discussion. I am a transhumanist in the sense that I do also have this burning hope that we will defeat this inhuman universe and repeal death.

How can I get involved in helping with this? Where are the communities? How can I assist (other than donating money)?

Any pointers would be much appreciated.
Sensible response.
I think technologies would be much more cheaper if companies didn't implement such redundant features.
Multi Theft Auto - San Andreas Goes Open Source
I believe he misses some important points:

(1) The core problem are professional "free-riders" -- Linux distributions being the main candidates. As soon as they include his software in their repositories, his sales will probably stop to increase.

(2) For Linux distributions, it's also hard to make ready-to-go packages. Looking at his download page, there's no sign whether his package installs properly. Can I even use it? Is it RPM or DEP? Or some sort of .run package that needs to be made executable, first?

(3) Expensive software is unlikely to be sold under an Open Source license: think dental office billing systems, for example. Everything more expensive than, say, $25 will make people get the software elsewhere or use the source.

Nevertheless, I agree that selling open source software may provide some benefits for the seller.
Affordable Canvas Art through Canvas Prints
We would all love to have the opportunity to have an original piece of artwork hanging on our walls. With beautiful things like these, you can feel that your home is more complete. By having original artwork in your home you can feel as though you have moved up in the world of home decor. Original artwork can be an accent or center piece of any room. It can be a focal point and a conversation topic.
Inside Safari 3.2's Anti-Phishing Feature
Real timeCo, world wide, CO2 emissions, birth rate & death rate simulation
you finally made me sign up here (did u know they hide ad-clicks between the sites - only modem users would notice).

you really mastered your recruiting skills, you've always been good at presenting things - the slides look great and the idea is convincing enough to give it a try, not me though, i don't match the criteria and was wondering why there would be such exact fit necessary. i can see no reason for that (well, but match-making, are you sure you were not looking for a date intrinsically? irony), why would one have to fit into your scores table? i mean this wouldnt be a problem if you were contributing the most or better to say, about to manage the thing, however, you know i prefer being more independent, ie. not an employee. the idea of the team is a point clearly missing in your request, i only read staff. so pls tell why one would be off for such a deal.

> > But: one successfully completed project almost always guarantees repeat business.
> righttt.

optimists!
Not to be a know-it-all and I-told-you-so but how could they not see the problem with this model?
We know. I can name 5-10 services off the top of my head that do the same thing we're doing. This is more of a personal project, not a major site trying to compete with the likes of tr.im is.gd tinyurl etc.

We are planning on releasing the code once we finish it up so anyone can host a url shortening service on their own site. Just another stupid weekend project :)

Back to url.ie and their url copying - it uses the flash implementation meaning it breaks for anyone with Flash 10.
Integrating the Web Into Games
Mac small business share nearly triples over the summer
May I know how to download lectures from videolectures.net
You may like to look at the license used by TheKompany [1].

[1] http://www.thekompany.com/products/licensing.php3
Lower on the drama? People get killed in that story, with the reporter present! I remember that story very well. Made an impression on me. more exciting than DNS flaws...
Fluidity: “Discovery is the new cocaine”
How About an iPhone OS Or Android-Based Netbook?
I would guess their major problem is lack of mindshare. All other problems more or less come from that, including what appears to be a lack of focus.

They need to borrow a page from Apple's book and build a SPARC-based "Sun mini" that's cool, desirable and cheap. It should also be the obvious choice for a desktop platform for anyone who wants do develop for Java, Solaris or whatever Sun thinks is strategic.

Getting CMT chips in the hands of maverick developers is vital if they want people to develop for them. Parallel stuff is seen as cool and sexy and their CMT SPARCs are built for it. I would buy a desktop Sun to "test the water", but I wouldn't do the same with a rackmount server. If they have rackmount servers going for USD 2700, they sure can do desktops for about USD 1000. If they can make Ruby or Python do great threading with them, all the better as I have no real desire to program in Java.

Back in the OpenWindows or CDE days, Solaris wasn't a terribly nice desktop environment but today, with Gnome, it is every bit as good as, say, Ubuntu. The right people should start seeing the Sun logo more and the huge userland Unix-like OSs have is key.

And, while they are at it, the JAVA ticker was a stupid idea. Sun is, and should be perceived as much more than that. SUNW was not a brilliant one (as workstations were no longer relevant)
Is Open Source Software a Race To Zero?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_demon

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=110074
>Personal blogs aren't going anywhere, though.

Come on Seth - such a marketer's title.
Nokia 3200, 3220 Keypad Ways Problem 
3200, 3200 keypad problem, 3200 keypad ways, 3220, 3220 keypad problem, 3220 keypad ways, keypad, Nokia, problem, ways
The author would probably make a pretty good screenwriter for Sneakers2. I guess the dictionary word of the day is bombastic...
Here's the canonical reference on BSD make: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/pmake/index.html
Centralization. (OpenID)
Is it?

The rebuttals don't seem to align at all with Tim's statements... And the "What Sun Could Do" seems to boil down to: sell more hardware and storage... Doesn't seems like a killer strategy to me.
Clearly better than Emacs!
(j/k)
All hail the monstrous nerd. You are by far the SUPREME NERD GOD!!!
Ok, just to limit my embarrassment, I've implemented an
alternative solution -- though not as good as the others.

First convert rand5() to rand2(). The LSB from rand5() has
a uniform distribution for the integers 0--3:

int rand2()
{
int n = rand5();
return n!=4 ? n & 1 : rand2();
}

Now we simply build a three bit number:

int rand7()
{
int n = rand2();
n |= rand2() << 1;
n |= rand2() << 2;
return n;
}

This gives the proper distribution as well, but it's
not branch free, so really nothing new here.
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Dollar ->

"Community currencies may present problems for users because there is little to stop the issuer from producing more currency."

ahh...brutal irony in a wikipedia article ;)
WinMo is fine, it's the theme or 'skin' on top of it installed by the hardware manufacturers that makes the difference. The HTC Touch has a horrible default UI, but iPhone-esque themes are available to help a bit. My Blackjack II UI is OK, with the best theme being from Samsung.

The underling OS is not the issue, it's the interface that matters. Oh and mobile IE sucks, without a "zooming" feature all mobile browsers blow.
> Any pointers

The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence http://singinst.org is Yudkowsky's organization.

> How can I assist (other than donating money)?

Donating is good. Here is some writing on 'activism.' http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/writings.htm#techs...

There is also the OpenCog http://opencog.org open-source project sponsored by SIAI.

> Where are the communities?

See these email lists:
http://www.singinst.org/discussion/
I wonder if the high prices are something we "normal" guys simply can not understand. Maybe they just trigger the "reassuringly expensive" button at companies that don't care about money. Or there are some complicated tax evasion schemes or whatnot at work, that make it mandatory to waste some money.

I've witnessed it for years in the Java world where every application had to run on Bea Weblogic and Oracle, when Open Source applications would have been available and actually were more suitable to the task.

Also, it seems to work for Apple...
The problem being is that not having a good grasp of logic can cause you to reach wrong conclusions. It can be a direct cause. In which case, it is a valid point to bring up as it supports your argument.
Another one: http://www.getacoder.com/projects/programming_c_87390.html
Based on the backcover flap and the existence of a "foreword," RAND probably republished this as a historical curiosity, not for serious use.

That said, having a book to flip through physically to a "random" page introduces a semi-non-deterministic element that most computer PRNGs lack, so it could have casual use in experimental endeavors in that regard. Also, since each line is indexed, it's a number sequence that reproducible for those kinds of simulations or projects that require the same (but at one time random+) sequence for each trial. (Probably for reproducing or comparing to experiments from the pre-digital era of 30-50 years ago.)

+ See http://xkcd.com/221/ for an example of this rationale
See some of his other posts on OpenID.
Where the Wild Things Were
If you start making a good amount from adsense, I think Google take an interest.

I was contacted by Google and offered an "Optimization" - basically they looked over one of my websites, and moved a few things around, changed a few settings on the adsense, and emailed me back some mockup jpegs. They just said "We think this will work better, it's up to you if you'd like to try it" - I did, and it increased revenue... They mailed back a little later to say it looked like it had a good effect etc.

I know it's not an automatic clever machine based system, but it worked well for me.
Thanks for submitting! This was really important news for me.

I'm actually a huge fan of Prosper - I'm a lender with $500 invested, and I've actually gotten a 20% return because I spent a lot of time screening my borrowers, who have still yet to make a late payment, much less default.

I only accepted B and above credit ratings and generally just used common sense when selecting a borrower; very well written, well thought out profiles got priority, limited (1 or 2) late payments in the past were required. I always checked how much of their credit they were using versus how much they made, I never funded a loan near the $25k borrowing limit to avoid a hit-and-run default, I only funded good causes that suggested the borrower spends wisely, etc. Prosper gave a lot of financial information about these people, so I felt that I could make a pretty educated decision.

I hope Prosper registers with SEC so they can continue doing business. The platform is pretty amazing, and I think they really added value to the world. I was totally looking forward to scaling up my selection system by automating it, and Prosper was working on an API that would actually let me do that.

I never bought into their math, and didn't even really think about it. My plan was always to pick loans very carefully so that very few if any would default. In retrospect, I'm glad I didn't do any subprime lending. :)

That said, I probably jinxed myself now and everyone in my portfolio will default...
I think the coder of this service replied with a similar example. Apparfently he started from customizable js websites and did ads later. I hope he moves the website thing to an open source project.
Government Can Determine Location of Cell Phones without Telco Help
come to think of it, sun may be the only company to have the entire stack of technologies in house... chips, servers, os, VM, programming language, development environment.. cloud computing seems an obvious direction.. perhaps they are doing that already?
Knowing the cause is useful, but to discredit someone's argument you need to find the mistake. Think million monkey's typing for a million years randomly recreating Calculus. The source is dumb but it works.
There's always innovation left for X. This algorithm determines if it's worth pursuing.
Lately I have read a lot about the singularity, and I am very confused why people are for this concept. Extending life through brain simulation, nanomachines support, and personality uploads does not sound like you will be still "alive". Does that make me a vitalist? A luddite I am not.

It is easy to debate for hours about the feasibility of singularity. I understand the accelerated returns and all,
but I think that much of these stuff and very-near milestones stem very much from wishful thinking by proponents. "Rapture" within lifetime, immortality. I think these are still too far-fetched, and I cannot understand how proponents of singularity swear by this timeline with utmost faith.

BTW, does cryonics work now??
---
Since Yehuda's body was not identified for three days after he died, there was no possible way he could have been cryonically suspended. Others may be luckier. If you've been putting off that talk with your loved ones, do it. Maybe they won't understand, but at least you won't spend forever wondering why you didn't even try.
How do I put my own app on sale on BaseShielf App Store ?
All you need is one programmer to make the binaries, and all the users can then use it with just as much ease, instead of purchasing from you.
http://www.facebook.com/cs_forms/fshelp.php
Supreme Nerd. Apply for a professorship at MIT now!!!.

(I flagged it, though :-)
Vim seems to add a lot of things you would rather expect from emacs (great extensibility) and emacs of course has always been able to emulate vi keybindings.

What are the major differences in functionality between the two?
The pictures in your slide deck do not inspire confidence in your ability to execute.
Agreeing that Dropbox rocks. I use it to share PDF's between computers so I can read them easily anywhere. I have code in there that I need between PC's that isn't on some kind of revision control yet, and finally, I backup my all my code using rdiff-backup which just crons it to my Dropbox every few days.

I love it, and the free 2gb is awesome.
"So you're saying that something can be objective subject to its relationship with something else. Isn't that subjective?"

Two is larger subjective to its relationship with one, but two is objectively larger than one.
The Marketing Skills You Can Learn From Obama
This doesn't do anything to dissuade me of the notion that the singularity movement is a religious movement. The comfort of hope in an afterlife and hope in scientific immortality seem quite similar. While research into singularity and anti-aging could be better funded, I'm not sure why we need to 'believe' in these things or make sure we join the correct denominations (transhumanist vs non-transhumanist).

Besides, unless the universe is infinite we're just arguing about timeframes. I prefer not to think about death as annihilation because death doesn't mean that we never existed, we each have our unique portion of space-time.
What I really like about emacs is extensibility in Lisp. I used vim until I wanted to be able to hack my editor. I have absolutely no desire to learn vimscript, a language useful solely for hacking vim. Lisp, on the other hand, is actually a real language.
Geek vs Gordon Ramsay - can a normal geek cook a three-star recipe?
I've not used nearlyfreespeech.net and they may well be as good as you say but the example you give does not demonstrate this. I have domains with namecheap and godaddy and remember being contacted by at least one of them the last time ICANN put up their fees.
Ultimate Arduino guide - The Open source hardware platform for prototyping
"Bureaucrat Conrad, you are technically correct – the best kind of correct."
I would prefer 1 slide with a simple idea to many with no idea.
You can script Vim in python.
His life story:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=99923
This thread reminds me of Islamic laws dealing with interest. Since you can't charge interest, the solution is to go into a trade like transaction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_banking#Modern_Islamic_...

So even if charging interest is forbidden in one way, there are ways to circumvent that.
I think both the .gitignore and .gitattributes examples are helpful, actually—especially for those of us not used to developing compiled projects.
The Shield - the shield - the shield
Is Email = Efail?
I think that the biggest boon to the users of GetACoder is the fact that this clearly demonstrates who the idiots on the site are.

I mean, take the first bid, the "kagtech" group/person. Not only are they obviously bidding automagically, but obviously doing so quite successfully enough to pay for a premium account.

There's nothing wrong with outsourcing to India in my opinion, but outsourcing to Idiotistan is worthy of a punishment that can only be delivered by an Idiotistan "coder."
IPhone Developer May Be Bribing Reviewers
An apple a day keeps the gay-healers away.

I sill can't believe what happened to one of the most influential CS people of all times :-(
That's called simple interest, as opposed to compounding interest.
The singularity won't happen: http://www.maximise.dk/blog/2008/11/why-singularity-may-neve...
Even with all it's features, Vim's direction has always been as a pure text editor. Plugins focus on making editing better, new features help with multiple windows, making modes easier, etc.

Emacs is really a platform who's main use is a text editor. The programming tools are stronger, and it has a few more interactive options when making extensions. This allows developers to create news readers, email clients, web browsers all inside emacs. Much of that could potentially be possible in Vim, but it would require shelling out, and would have a nasty interface in general.
From a marketing standpoint, setting your product prices much higher than the competition is one way to signal customers that your product is superior. But this tends to be more effective with consumer luxury products where buying decisions are based most highly on emotion and desire for exclusivity.
Thanks, those are interesting links. Still, nothing there that seems especially compelling.

Maxwell's demon assumes the energy cost for sorting the molecules is less than the net gain. That looks like another variant of the perpetual motion machine.

The fluctuation theorem says the 2nd law doesn't hold for very, very small entities, but its probability of being correct climbs exponentially as the system scales. So, it is fallacious to then say the 2nd law may not hold at the macro level due to it not holding at the micro level, since the theorem used to support this idea is itself an instance of the idea being false.
I wrote a few months ago about how dropbox was so awesome that I'd even pay for it, and I'm a software cheapskate!

http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/dropbox-makes-sync...
Resurrection Science
So now you have moved your position from tofu to soy in general and you still don't even present the slightest hint of evidence. You simply say "you've heard arguments". I'm guessing you weren't so concerned over trifles like evidence when you were hearing these arguments. Very insightfull.
And what do we do with combinatorial explosions? Stochastic algorithms and metaheuristics!
I realise I'm stating what for most will be obvious here but there is a reason why they stop selling tickets once they reach maximum capacity.

If there is a fire they may not be able to get everyone out safely if there are too many people.
I could dream up other possibilities but hopefully the idea is already clear.
Any links or resources for this? I would much rather do that than using vimscript!
I've heard you can freely move from team to team, but only if its one of the locally staffed projects at your office. Location makes a big difference.