skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The purpose of the "civil rights" movement is to weaken national unity and destroy traditional culture. That has been its purpose since day one, and the actual rights of man per se do not enter into strategic consideration. When the ruling class has to decide between alienating gays, alienating blacks, and alienating hispanics, it will do the first. When this becomes actual policy is difficult to say, since it isn't a straightforward headcount issue

How did you come to these conclusions?
Obama to post fireside chats on youtube
"Truevert gives you special results—everything comes back through green-colored glasses. So a search for 'SUV' brings back HybridSUV.com as the top result. A search for 'building materials' brings back results for green building materials."

Until you search for something that isn't generic, then it returns poor results -- or at least it did when searching for relatively simple things in Seattle.

"It is a Yahoo BOSS search mashup. Truevert is actually just a demonstration of some powerful underlying semantic technology developed at OrcaTec, a company co-founded by Roitblat and Brian Golbère. Truevert gets its search results from Yahoo BOSS and applies its own text-analyzing software to generate the most relevant green results. OrcaTec’s software could just as easily be used to create a fashion search engine, a startup search engine, or any of a thousand other vertical search engines."

Once it works.
I've never done any serious development on Windows, but I'd imagine you need/want a shell for the same reasons you'd use one on a unix system - using vim, scripting, an array of useful programs (e.g. whatever the Windows version of grep is), etc.
I am the Hunter. No doubt. I bring home the bacon.

Interesting take on startup dynamics.
Have you read any newspapers lately?
Advice for Peldi (Balsamiq Response)
This was worth reading just for the open command. Oh, how I have longed for exactly that! But I was woefully ignorant. Thank you, Tim, for showing me the way.
Economic indicator: Spam sales are up
I found this account enlightening:

http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfoli...
"Pecha-kucha" (ぺちゃくちゃ) is usually something I hear applied to girls chattering on their phones, but a good read nonetheless. :)
Goalkeepers' bias for doing something
I've heard of the product, but never anyone saying if it's good or bad, thus I never messed with it. Thanks for the heads up.
I think you all missed the joke. He's leaving his job (probably laid off), and wanted to write a column about it. He doesn't seriously expect to be the "CTO."
Not that the person who states is the guilty party, but this strikes me as an immediate sign that someone got tired of thinking and was compelled to feel a sense of control and certainty by turning what was said into a truism. They might be right, they might be wrong, but I couldn't fault someone for feeling a little lost of respect toward someone who would assert this.
That's largely what existed in Cali previously (minus the group thing unfortunately). That wasn't good enough for 52% of the population.

They seem to care about the semantics more than anything else.
Ask HN: What are your experiences with remote support software?
My company is getting close to a beta release and we need (1) demo/webinar software and (2) remote control software for on-the-fly remote support. Specifically, we need to be able to take control of clients' computers to do installs and troubleshoot problems.

The two big players seem to be GoToAssist/GoToMeeting and WebEx. Does anybody have experience with them or other solutions? We care less about features/functionality and more about our customers having a seamless setup. (ie. No screwing around with client firewalls.)

Any suggestions or advice is appreciated.
Civil unions also just sound a little too "separate but equal" to me. Despite not really having a dog in this race (I have one gay couple that I'm friends with, and the one I know best is glad there's no marriage here because otherwise her partner would want to and she doesn't) I just can't be happy with civil unions. It's better than nothing, I suppose, but it's not good enough.
Net Neutrality: AT&T Has Change of Heart?
Final Update: I eventually broke down and wrote the parsers myself it ended up taking me about three days, complete with a hundred-odd test cases.
you're quite welcome
COUNT() incurs no additional cost for a well-structured query

"Well structured" query meaning there is no WHERE clause...
Final Update: I eventually broke down and wrote the parsers myself. It took me three days, complete with a hundred-odd test cases.
Gay culture in CA, especially in San Francisco and West Hollywood, is unparalleled. CA is very liberal in terms of gay rights and civil unions. The tech companies in CA are also very liberal -- both Google and Apple broke their informal policies to condemn the amendment. Hence, CA is still a great place to live for gay people.

In only a few years since prop 22, an amazing additional ~5% of voters switched their vote. It's only a matter of time before the amendment is repealed by voters, if the courts do not remove it first!
I've had the benefit of similar illumination where I'm employed, although without the same level of patience. The same explanation was given time and again there, too; incurred technical debt due to prudence. They were small, and thus didn't have the financial wherewithal to afford a long term outage should some of that debt sudden become subject to a margin call, and so I dug deeper. And from that the true reason came out of why things had gone off the rails so bad. The political history of the company had been one where ego and authority ruled. The technical debt would not be repaid, because it would be an admission that the incurring of such debt was not inevitable. It would be a sign that one or more wrong decisions was made. And, due to the history of authority rule, no one would dare question the decisions, assuming both that the management was approaching the situation with full information and rationality, and any one else should assume to have neither. From what I've gathered, I'm not so alone in the universe with these experiences. But when the term "political history" comes out to explain something, I'll generally start reaching for my fine tooth comb, to better understand who it matters to and why.
The comparison to Apple is apt. Back in their heyday, Sun combined the right hardware and software into a product that was perfect for the market, first scientific workstations, and then high end servers, in both cases, best of breed, premium priced, huge moneymakers. I don't know how you get back there, because they seem tremendously unfocused. But Apple was there once too - in the doldrums, failing to perform, all over the map. And they came back.
By what metric is "Apple more successfully resisting commoditization of software than Microsoft?" Preaching the supremacy of everything Apple to the choir of Hacker News is a good karma-building tactic, but if you want to base your claims on inconvenient truths like software revenues, you'll find that Microsoft is more successfully resisting commoditization of software than every other company on the planet. Apple isn't even in the same ballpark.
Property in Spain for just 25 euros
This Property in Spain is the prize in a raffle, the place looks fantastic!
Interesting Dell Tip: Don't ever buy a computer straight off of Dell's web site. Set up a corporate account--our account rep always gets us 20-30% off of the list price on their web site.
Peter Eastgate - WSOP Main Event 2008 Winner
We congratulate Peter Eastgate on his incredible performance in WSOP 2008. Study the last hand of the heads up match.
Wal-Mart Now Going After Search Engines For Linking To Sites With Black Friday Ads
Google adding voice search to iPhone
When software builders become product stakeholders
You can watch this whole thing play out, and see how it ends, if you read about the Argentine bank crisis:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_economic_crisis_(1999–2002)

(I have friends in Buenos Aires, which is for some reason a security hacker hotbed).

In some ways I can think of, Iceland is much better off than Argentina was; Iceland is the victim of a short-lived failure of financial engineering, while Argentina's bank run was caused by long-term systemic corruption and unemployment.
What's 538 into $700k? Nate Silver Signs a Book Deal
Yahoo's failure is simple: they didn't stick to their knitting. I was a long-time user of Y mail and liked some of their other stuff (finance.yahoo...) but quit in frustration recently, the third time their search button failed to find emails I could see plainly in the Inbox.

Find something you're good at, do it better than anyone else, and keep doing it until it doesn't work anymore. Yahoo failed to do any of these things -- they've thrashed around for years, and don't bother to hire competent people to do the few things they were once pioneers at. Very sad.
Nate Silver of 538 Signs With Penguin In Two Book Deal
It demonstrates a conflict of priorities between you and most of those around you, if my rather unscientific gathering of data is tending toward the true mean.

It demonstrates a desire to improve and understand, both toward yourself and toward those who you ask "why?". Superficially, improvement is a good thing, and worth the devoting of a lot of rhetoric. But it comes with a lot of extra work, and with the admission that the way things are done now aren't optimal. So, it rubs people who are either lazy, apathetic, or egotistical entirely the wrong way. You'll also chaff indirectly those who are authoritarian in nature, and put faith in the management above; it's the same reason people get irritated when you question their deity's righteousness. If they're coworkers, they'll get spiteful; you're making more work for them now, and it either doesn't occur or doesn't matter that it means less drudgery later. If they're up the management chain, they'll wave authority in your face; it's the easiest way to short-term tranquility and an ability not to adopt a similar change ready attitude.

This is not an endorsement; just a reflection. This is the way it seems to be, but it doesn't have to be a truism you just begrudgingly accept. Being unpopular doesn't mean you're doing the wrong things, and jeopardizing your future and well-being. Maybe at BigCorp, but how long before misery and desire to do better would drive you away anyway?

Long reflection, sorry. But I hope this helps answer the why, and I hope your question was not rhetorical. ;-)
To be fair, his comment was at -2 when I replied. I assumed he was trolling.
I'm pretty sure that is a joke based on the story I relate in the comment.

But yes, I definitely need help!
But then they grow out of it...
What's with the Cringely hate on this thread?
I was most definitely the second type precisely because I had no clue what I really wanted in life, and couldn't pinpoint my passions other than reading science-fiction. All I was able to figure out was that I needed to find a job and that I was semi-ok at math, physics, and computers.

I wish I had made more of an effort at that time on self-reflection. At least now I know what I want. Live and learn.
Just be Glad You Aren’t Pythagoras’ Student…
Is there a defining moment/revelation/etc you can think of that might have tipped you into the first type? I ask because it seems that experience and the right people aren't sufficient conditions, and that picking up the books requires motivation from the first two sources. I ask partly for curiosity, and partly so, if it is the attitude someone around you conveyed, I can cultivate the same in myself and encourage those around me to become the first type.
I use WebEx in my work environment primarily for sharing deployment sessions that involve a GUI or for remote low-framerate group presentations. It's relatively easy to use and does the job.

For remote support, I personally use LogMeIn (they bought Hamachi out I believe) for my parents' desktop. That is a great tool for remote control software, provided you don't mind installing the LogMeIn client on the target system.
Cringely is pretty famously overblown and inaccurate about a lot of his statements.
I like FogCreek copilot https://www.copilot.com/
Tyler Cowen says "I genuinely cannot imagine what the endgame looks like."

http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/10...

Since you can see how it ends you should explain it to him.
It's not so bad...plus, you can always do what a Real Man (tm) would do - imlement all the missing shell commands as Perl scripts.
Yeah. I know people who would look at civil unions and say, "Well, at least they can't get MARRIED." It allows for discrimination, regardless of how equal the idea might be.
I used GoToMeeting as the customer (the other party was demoing to me), and it was pretty seamless. Worked out of the box, and was pretty easy to use.
How long until someone mails in a shirt made from a transparent shower curtain?

Ah, the internets...
Personalized Jewelry - Gold and Silver Lockets
14k Gold Lockets and Sterling Silver Lockets made with a photo to produce Custom Photo Jewelry, Picture Lockets and other Photo Locket Charms.
Well done, I always like a well written rant, and get irritated whenever I have to run through the CS installer.

It's the same for updates too which really annoys me.
Your post definitely was worth submitting as a topic, agreed. I don't think that it's worthwhile too often, but in this case it's thoughtful, well-written, and interesting. Better than most blog posts I've read recently.

I had a comment of mine submitted as a post a while back, and I was very grateful - I thought the comment was worth a post. If comments are valuable stories, then, I don't see a problem at all with your self-submitting this one.
SQL is Not C <example code>

I would be very surprised if the optimizer did not treat his two example queries the same.
It depends on what you define as theory, though. Things like analysis and extending algorithms, and understanding the concept of recursion, fall well into the realm of theory. People I've dealt with of the second type go completely off-course with this, too.

I've found they do ok when it comes to questions like "Define and give me an example of a ______", but become utterly lost when given a question such as "Design and implement in pseudocode a set of data structures/classes/etc. to accomplish vaguely-defined task x." As soon as you call upon them to apply their knowledge of theory to something they haven't memorized, they become completely lost. Maybe I'm just worrying over the semantics of the word theory too much.

I agree about how the lack of passion can be unbelievably annoying. Though, it's encouraging you've seen so many driven people, see them as a positive. I wish more people had that same attitude.
Fascinating story. I think it's worth saying, though, that the Greeks didn't have the same view on death that we do. For them, this world was brief before an eternal afterlife, and unlike nowadays that was really firmly believed to be true.

Doesn't make it any less horrific, but just a slight bit of context.
Full article rather than quick blurb: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=365190
Grand Plans - Starting Up for Under $1000 in 1999
All the best with your start up. If you don't mind what is the business model - your main source of revenue will be ads?
Getting The Fill (aka buying on the way down)
Shoes That Guarantee Comfort
I was recently looking for a good pair of shoes that I can use for formal occasions. This also meant that I was looking for a pair of shoes that I can comfortably wear for at least 18 hours a day! Don’t ask me about the quality of my social life, I know that I am one of those people who dedicated 80% of one’s day to work! Anyway,
Such a horrible presentation :( You can't see anything. He's actually using a pretty awesome screen recording tool that can zoom in into any part of the screen. It takes about 5 min to fix it in postproduction.
Why am I redirected to /stage/index.html with nothing on the page except a confusing error message stating that I'm trying to install adobe flash player on an unsupported OS?
Yeah you're right. What I was getting at is that they should be equal, regardless of the name. I was thinking more along the lines of what rms said his comment on here, where he thinks there shouldn't even be marriage but just be civil unions for all. I don't really care what that thing is called, marriage or civil union or some other term, as long as it's the same for gay and straight couples.
About a year old rather generic Fujitsu-Siemens + about 3 months old Acer Aspire One.
Susan Crawford named for fcc review.
And hence the reason why Vista hasn't met sales expectations. Most office PCs are single-purpose email-and-word-processing terminals. Why upgrade if XP and Office are getting the job done?
That's a funny way to put it but you're deliberately ignoring the point he was making, which is how he selected that particular coffee maker: "people who bought this also bought this".

I don't believe for a second that online advertising is dead, because advertising has been around for a long time and I don't see why it should go away just because like in every recession it's going to be severely hit.

But the issue is click-throughs. I do have my doubts whether people will keep clicking on ads as much as they did in the past. I don't click on ads. I never have. Not because it's some kind of protest but because I never felt it would lead to anything I wanted. And there has been a study (sorry I don't have the quote) showing that the more people are familiar with the internet (or even generally more educated) the less they click on ads.

The point Winer was making, that people will rely more on peer recommendations and generally knowledge about what other people do than on advertising campains is plausible in my view.
Yahoo is doomed.
Hi Kimboslice/Ryan Spoon.

It seems you submit every entry from your blog, and IMHO there's nothing wrong with that, but you have to admit it, you rarely get votes. Maybe it would be more successful if you change a bit your strategy looking for higher quality posts with more information and analysis and less opinion, in less posts.

http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=kimboslice

My $.02
If Facebook's ultimate objective is to be purchased, monetizing may be counterproductive if it renders the site less attractive to a purchaser. Realistically, no one is going to buy Facebook (at the valuation they want) based on its revenue-generating potential.
Thats exactly what i have done

www.abhayatech.com
This is, by far, one of the best written articles I have read in a long time. Thanks.
In the earliest versions of MySQL that supported subqueries IIRC you could see different EXPLAINs for what, to me, appeared to be equivalent queries. That is to say, I don't believe the query optimizer is/was MySQL's key feature at that time.

Then again, it wasn't that long ago (2003) that MySQL 4.0 came out. Before that the subquery format was a syntax error. :/
Seeing your comment, I decided to just download the FLV and watch that on VLC. It's quite happily legible, so I vouch for the download as fail-safe!

Great to see the exposure.
Freemium. The premium version will have more business-friendly features.
ZunaVision: Easily embed pictures, logos, and videos within other videos
Posterous does this and I think it's great.
Net Neutrality and Common Carrier status are kissing cousins. I can't, for the life of me, figure out why AT&T was hell bent on abandoning the Common Carrier advantages just so they could piss their customers off.
Although I cant say I fully agree with his use of eclipse europa and rad rails, I would tend to agree. Ive been more annoyed by macs than I have windows recently.

Although, Git support and proper shells are valid problems with windows. Powershell helps, but the git people really need to get a valid, working, non retarded git client for windows. Like Tortoise SVN which is freaking awesome.

Until then, windows will be an inferior development platform for anyone doing ROR stuff.
Wow I wish people would stop using "sexy" in ways that make no sense.
10 steps to winning YC
How can Electronic Cigarettes save your Dental Bills?
Besides many other health related problems, one of the issues that is common among the smokers is the dental problems. Medical statistics indicate that men lose almost three teeth every 10 years due to smoking and women lose 1.5 teeth every 10 years. This is double the rate of loss when compared to non-smokers.
I liked the simplicity of it, and the fact it "just worked" with my webcam.
Wikipedia says there are three different stories about what Hippasus discovered and what happened to him as a result, and that all of these are likely false.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippasus

(I've met Simon Singh; he's a great entertainer, but he's the last person I'd cite for something like this :-)

Another story I've read about the theorem was that Pythagoras himself discovered it, and sacrificed oxen because it upset his world view.

http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/~demo5337/Group3/hist.html
I've been programming on Windows for about 10 years and I can honestly say that I simply don't have to use a terminal outside of running the occasional command. For automation I use AutoHotKey or AutoIt. For searching text in files I usually use a program like Notepad++ or UltrEdit. YMMV of course, not everyone's the same.

I guess the reason is that I can usually find a GUI program to do whatever it is that I want.

I use Linux all the time too (I've built Asterisk boxes, LAMP servers, firewalls, etc. at work and at home), but I think the culture is just different, so it's natural to use the terminal for many things on *nix.

Actually I do use the Windows terminal a LOT (the Run box actually) for one-off things like "net start/stop some-service", "services.msc" or "ipconfig /all", something like that.
Yes it is better in the context of creating new life.
" The source code is just the manifestation of those decisions. In other words, the product is valuable because of its design, not because of the source code that describes that design. "

In many cases, this is true. However, there are many types of software (and, games being on of them) where its not true.

You may be able to see how the graphics are rendered on screen. But without the source code, you have no idea what kind of clever hacks and tricks the author put into the engine to make it work. These kind of things are invaluable and in many cases (like Id software) are what separates their game from others.

Id Software, incidentally, does release the source code to their game engines, but only after enough time has passed that it doesn't make economic sense to license the engine out.
The most popular website in the world is irrelevant? So what's relevant then - reddit?
Hopefully he will reveal more technical details about his statistical methods.
Update on the GDR that is coming for .NET Framework 3.5 SP1
Quick thinking. The download button is now "javascript:void(0)"
When you're making predictions based off complex models like he is, transparency gives you more credibility. There's actually a pretty good description here: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/03/frequently-asked-ques...

Go through that page with a basic statistical package, plus maybe Wikipedia for reference and you can probably see most of what he did.
I'm no fan of apple, you can look through my comments & see. I was just assuming on a per unit basis & only for the base OS, i suppose. The extra that's paid for apple computers is a lot larger than the $50 or whatever an OEM adds on for windows.
I completely misunderstood, I thought this article was going to be talking about sales from spam emails. Instead, it's about actual spam.

Still a great article, pleasantly surprised. Though as a person living in Hawaii, I haven't noticed an increase in spam habits with my friends: we regularly eat spam in spam musubies, in omelettes and fried rice - I think we are one of the top consumers of spam per capita, if not the top.