skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
PayPal, SecondLife, and other online payment startups have all at one time dreamed about printing a government-free independent virtual currency. The problems are that 1) the existing government really doesn't like that and 2) it's been too easy to abuse and devalue the virtual currency when it's exchangeable for any other recognized currency, destroying your internal economy (and business) to benefit aggressive virtual currency traders.
Often, simple growth in a company will create a messy schema. Version 1 is often clean, but as you iterate and more functionality is added, the schema often undergoes a hideous transformation from museum-piece to something not that.
The rainforest houses 80% of all the worlds species, how can deforestation not cause more ecological harm than global warming? I don't think my figures are off at all. over 20 million species at risk is accurate and deforestation will make easily 90% of them endangered because only a small amount thrive in different environments.

Not to mention, cutting down rainforests causes global warming to begin with so what's the point of reducing oil consumption if we're going to cause global warming by hacking down trees and thus reducing the worlds ability to remove CO2 and yes rainforests are responsible for 28% of all the worlds oxygen recycling.

Only around 20% of the worlds wood is harvested from sustainable forests, which means for this not to harm the environment sustainable forest use would have to be ramped up five-fold to meet present consumption. Not to mention the estimated demand for lumber is still increasing, meaning it would take around 6-7 times the present sustainable forests to cope with global demand by around 2020. Increasing demand through 'wood plastics' would make this even worse.
Microsoft doesn't need Palm. It already has the talent and the resource to build a great mobile platform. It just needs the will to start over. They are in a tough position, traditionally they have stayed away fro mobile hardware because of pressure from the hardware OEMs. This might change because of their success (sort off) with Zune and xbox 360. I think Plam has a great strategy about building apps using web technology and using a good browser (webkit) Microsoft should forget about their mobile browser and adopt webkit also. They should put aside the ego and accept their browser and mobile OS is not on part with their competitor. From what I have been hearing about Windows 7 so far it seems that they can still write good software.
Malcom Gladwell on Spaghetti Sauce

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spagh...

Replace spaghetti sauce with software development and Facebook versus Twitter Versus Hacker News Versus Reddit etc

It's all about users =)
Why do intensely personal attacks start with "Nothing Personal?"
Lietaer's book contains some economic nonsense, but for the most part it's a very compelling argument. The examples drawn from history are especially powerful.

But perhaps the best argument against the usefulness of alternative currencies is that they exist, but no one uses them. There are some modest successes, such as Ithaca Hours (http://www.ithacahours.org/) and there are probably some LETS systems that work, but that's about it.

In an extreme liquidity crisis, such as the Great Depression was, they were great success, but I doubt we'll ever see that kind of crisis again. We have far more tools for preventing extreme liquidity droughts now than we did then.
The includes folder looks like it's just JavaScript and CSS (including jQuery) so it has to be under the document root.
The larger the domain, the weaker they get.

Also, to differentiate diagnoses will frequently take tests and things that normal people don't have access to. A lot of things cause headaches, a lot of things cause nausea (damn near everything does, it seems like), etc. From an information theoretic point of view, it's hard to get enough bits of information from a normal person to diagnose anything. From a Bayesian point of view, it's hard to get enough evidence to diagnose a rare disease starting with low priors, but a system that only diagnoses common diseases is of limited value.

In a limited domain it can do well, or even outperform a doctor (who is also limited by having a large domain, that problem is actually fundamental to the problem space not just the intelligence applied), in general it can't.

I've half-self-diagnosed myself with Celiac disease (wikipedia article is the best on it I've found), which is in the running for one of the most under-diagnosed diseases currently known, precisely because the symptoms are relatively vague and quite variable ("Symptoms include chronic diarrhoea, failure to thrive (in children), and fatigue, but these may be absent and symptoms in all other organ systems have been described." - can it get any more vague? yes, but only barely.). This is an extreme, but there's enough medical conditions like this to make the general case very difficult to deal with.
That's just the syntax failing to support such a nice way of accessing those objects. Packages, classes, and methods are objects.

Of course, primitives are not objects, but autoboxing helps.
Ask HN: Need help finding a post
Somebody posted a link to a presentation made by a guy who's name sounds hispanic.

It dealt with the rise and fall of countries across many years in time. It also dealt with the US and Brazil being outliers in the aspect that most countries "contract" after passing their revolutionary state.

I searched and searched using google site search but no dice. Does anyone remember this post?
Just keep in mind that it hardcodes the operation to the last ten generations of commits, which is not necessarily what you want. See "SPECIFYING REVISIONS" in the man page for git-rev-parse (http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/v1.6.1/git-r...) for all the different ways you can format the HEAD~10 part.

Then again, I have an alias "git cia" for "commit -a"... Just remember where to look it up if you need something more elaborate.
Also see this related article, from about a year ago, declaring that Gdrive will arrive in 2008.

http://www.internetbusiness.co.uk/27112007/rumours-of-google...
For everyone writing articles like these, this is an excellent example on how to get people into a technology.

Instead of giving them 15 commands to try to figure out, you hand them three. When they get these three, you give them another situation and hit them with more functionality.

Had I known that I could do most of my Git work with a couple commands, I wouldn't have spent two days reading every last thing about Git I could find.
"It's actually pretty cool to get criticism IMHO, It shows people care."

As Oscar Wilde said it: "There's only one thing worse than being talked about, and that's not being talked about."
Efficency, marketshare, product consolidation, &tc.

Its one of the only unfortunate instances of self-organization I can think of.
You are correct. The text versions were present for screen readers.
He forgot the most important reason that governments and central banks don't allow these things to exist. They can't be reliably and universally taxed.
No! Palm is good. Don't ruin it!
Another good one not yet mentioned is Benjamin Zander on Music and Passion:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/benjamin_zander_on_music_...
"you need to be picky about which hardware you run me on - or I might not work" ... "Perhaps you should be pickier about your hardware"

;-)
"The "few" who manage to make money in the stock market are the ones who buy when the market is down and sell when it's up."

Not necessarily in that order ;-)

"the pros who work 12 hours on it apparently don't know either. Otherwise they wouldn't be in trouble now."

Not quite true. I was referring to the stock market. The current crisis was not caused by stocks, but my collaterized debt obligations and other arcane financial products which no one knows how to price.

"I'm not saying he should put money in the stock market, but humbleness before those awesome pros that he would be up against is not a good reason to stay out."

I don't like stocks as an investment, so maybe I am biased. I have known so many people who have tried to make a fast buck in the stock market and lost it all, that maybe I am too pessimistic.

It's not my money, so Kyro should do whatever he feels like. However, I think some realism is always desirable. But then, it's just $2000. That's peanuts. It's not like one's entire life will be doomed if one loses $2000, right?
you're probably aware of this, but : searchyc.com
To write great software though you have to be able to move fast and iterate. I don't think they can do that with the vast number of staff they have.

It'd probably be a good first move to get rid of half the staff - should speed things up a bit.
Greg Joswiak on why he thinks the App Store will revolutionise the portable gaming market.
Because they don't really mean it personally, since they know nothing about the person behind things. They are not thinking at all about the founder/writer/developer. They are just thinking about how annoyed they were for the past 2 seconds.
Matthieu Ricard: Habits of happiness

What is happiness, and how can we all get some? Biochemist turned Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard says we can train our minds in habits of well-being, to generate a true sense of serenity and fulfillment.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/matthieu_ricard_on_the_ha...
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_be...

The corresponding HN link: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=373041

Is this it?
I'll agree with you on the fog, a little. In the US, if a flight gets delayed for Weather, the airline still gets you home somehow. Ryan Air offered to refund my airfare only.

As for leaving earlier, I read this statement as "it was your fault you were late, you should have left earlier, and you deserve what you got."

I've flown Ryan Air many many times and I knew the airport well. I also knew when to leave to get there on time. Unfortunately the parking lot was torn up from construction, making the nearby spaces filled, and it took me a long time to find the poorly labeled alternate lot.

At the time I was annoyed because I felt I had done what I was supposed to do and there was nothing stopping them from providing the service. i.e. the security line was non-existent and I was there 35 minutes before take off.

The policy is what it is, but I think what really got to me the most then (and thanks to you reminding me) is the presumption that I did something wrong by not anticipating the construction and that I deserved to be punished by strict adherence to the policy.

In the US, we consider this very poor customer service.
no I was not and thanks
lots of hyperlinks != complex db
Not my startup, but I always think back to the initial Slashdot editor reaction to the iPod: "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame."

http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23/1816257...
It wasn't a TED presentation -- thanks though.
The problem with the VC model is that they look for a large liquidity event in the short term, and so push companies aggressively to reach this goal. With the number of IPOs so low these days, these liquidity events are much more infrequent than they used to be, yet the VC model remains the same. It angers me that nobody is doing anything to innovate in this space, as funding is hands down the most limiting factor for a new venture's growth. I found this slideshare presentation which includes some of the freshest thinking I've seen on the subject. Any thoughts? http://cli.gs/g3BA9v
I use istockphoto.com. It's not free but at $1 per image who cares. The images are all tagged so the search works really well.
http://www.poptech.org/popcasts/popcasts.aspx?lang=&; viewcastid=14

This.

(kill the space after the ampersand because the link got abbreviated)
the other day someone sent this message over a feedback box I have:

"either this site is fake or nothing works WTF"

The annoying part was they didnt use an email address and I could not contact them to see what the problem was. The bizarre part was that same user was the most active for the next 2 days...? Still not sure what the problem was...
GoGrid cloud API
New York Times doesn't need money - it needs visionaries.

It needs people to step away from the newspaper, and think how to evolve it.

Do what their (gorgeous) web design dept has done -- for print.

Newspapers can be saved.
but like a self-funded one, that'd be great!
Exactly thanks a lot sir.
I predict that every time the favicon changes, the consensus will be that the change is bad. Then after a week, nobody cares any more. So what should Google do? Never change it, ever? I would recommend that the new favicon not be judged until you have had some more time to let it sink in. After all, if you do keep one favicon indefinitely, you will spend a lot more time familiar with it than you will surprised by it.
Please Give Feedback on My Launch
The letter clouds are where the real insight is to be gained.
How not to promote your startup on someone else's site
Ask HN: Is the next wave a bunch of sub-$10m Web companies?
In the last 7 year Web cycle, how many Web "successes" do we know about that had greater than $20M in real revenue and were sold?

I can probably think of about 20, but not 50 or 100. My point here is that it feels like the “big revenue” opportunities for most companies are shrinking quickly.

The big revenue / market cap sites are getting diluted by the new free/lean model:

Ebay/paid classifieds = craigslist/free
Match.com/paid dating = plentoffish/free
CNN.com/premium news = digg.com/free

If that’s the case, I wonder if Web 3.0 is just about a bunch of niche sites in the $5m - $10m range that are run by a dozen (or less) guys in a room. I’m seeing more a trend toward smaller companies owning bigger categories with far less revenue and overhead. I don’t see the $10m venture funded business model really being all the viable if free/cheap is the future since you're not necessarily producing a revenue monster with free/cheap that is IPO worthy.

What do you guys think? It may seriously change the way we approach capital in the next round, or even our expectations for the entire Web/startup industry.
I don't know about e-mail - I've been locked out of several accounts, and have had a few scary false-positives with my spam filter.

On the other hand, I doubt any spam is going to come from a .gov domain...
Ditto. His humility and humor about doing something that so directly improves the lives of people around him is just crazy inspiring.
thing -> think

[ Sorry. Too late to correct the original comment. ]
Email in addition to what we have now would only help, even if 30% of the emails sent weren't received.
Check out http://www.whitehouse.gov/copyright/

"Except where otherwise noted, third-party content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Visitors to this website agree to grant a non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free license to the rest of the world for their submissions to Whitehouse.gov under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License."
$5M - $10M in revenue or in valuation?
Google bails on print ads
also, a good reason why we don't see may web success stories that have revenues over $20M is because large companies have people dedicated to sourcing companies to acquire.

If they're good at their job they'll acquire them before they have huge revenues - because its cheaper.
I'll take any feedback, mean or otherwise, for http://ourdoings.com/ especially for features I've implemented recently.
It's gotta be photosynth. The ability to stitch together disparate photos is really cool: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/blaise_aguera_y_arcas_dem...
Summary of the Executive Summary:

"The music industry is shrinking, hard copy sales are decreasing faster than online sales are growing. Innovation of businessmodel is urgent. Income for artists is moving towards liveconcerts, merchandise ans sponsorship. In the future it seems impossible to run a company solely on music recordings."

"The movie industry is still growing, although rentals are in steep decline. Future growth in Internet bandwidth may lead to decline eventually. Because of the inherent character of movies (people tend to view them once), file sharing may prove critical. The movie industry must not ignore this."

"The games industry is growing fast; at least in the console market. PC sales are stagnating. File sharing is less of a threat here. Besides that, the games industry is inherently more innovative and seeks out online solutions."

"The total market of music, film and games is relatively constant, but music is going down while games are going up."
Some context for this advertisement would be nice.
just build something people are willing to pay for.
Inauguration Breaks Streaming-Media Records
Charitable donations definitely reduce taxes paid via the relevant deduction - that effectively shields income from being taxed.

If you donate stock held for longer than a year, you can deduct the full market value. According to http://money.cnn.com/2001/12/07/taxes/q_appreciated/index.ht... the deduction goes against ordinary income, which is taxed at a much higher rate than long term capital gains.
(loads really slow & no favicon)

Interesting UI, are there any case studies on how recreating the desktop appearance works on the web?

How are you going to monetize this site?
My eyes, the goggles do nothing.
The design is a little loud for something that is content driven. I should notice topics and comments before anything else (my eyes were drawn to the nice looking background image).
Thanks! Will certainly read some of it online, and then maybe head out to the bookstore.

I have always wondered if learning the Math behind languages like Haskell will help me understand Haskell (and FP) better, and part of my resolution this year has been to "go back to the basics". I am certainly looking forward to having this book on my reading list.
Pandora has added ads
Just started hearing them...whats weird is the sound is a lot quieter on the ads, than on the real feed.
Macon Phillips, who is listed on LinkedIn as a "Director of Strategy and Communications for Blue State Digital" is now the Director of New Media for the Executive Office of the President: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/change_has_come_to_whitehouse...
if he governs like a startup...does this mean we no longer have to pay taxes?
I doubt MediaWiki 0.001 beta had this exact database schema.

MediaWiki is an open source project that has had thousands of man-hours poured into it.
"What is it? I really have no idea."
Presidential Gatling Gun-Equipped Suburban Badder Than New Cadillac Limo
Thanks for the input. I will definitely take that into consideration.
A congressional api. Pass either a lawmakers name and get their voting record. Pass a zip code to get the lawmakers for your area. Pass a bill # to get relevant data, etc
The problem is that in any large company, accurate evaluation of an individuals ability/contribution is nearly impossible. Deciding which half of the staff to axe would be better performed by coin toss than by any method a company is likely to employ.
I've found that using caption lets my shell update the xterm window title.

caption always
caption string "..."
If you found her talk fascinating (as did I), definitely check out her book (http://drjilltaylor.com/book.html), which covers the entire process in great detail. At times its a bit slow, but it successfully elucidates the challenges she faced, and the eight years of recovery which followed the stroke.

I think the spiritual aspect of the story shouldn't be ignored: our perception of reality is also 'plastic', and we can, to a large extent, retrain ourselves to respond differently to sensory input.
My partner is working on the slow loading and favicon. As far as monetization, that will depend on what traffic the site initially attracts. Eventually it will be advertising and employment listings after website format is converted to something with a larger database. I handle the marketing, I have a partner who handles all IT issues.

What is it you find interesting about the User Interface?
Why aren't we allowed to crawl their JS and CSS?

What are they trying to hide?
How did the game end up doing?
+1... My favorite talk thus far. Amazing content, from an amazing man.

The talk done by Clifford Stoll was probably the most amusing however.
DNA FOLDING!!!

A must watch.
"Early American newspapers tend to look like one long and uninterrupted invective, a ragged fleet of dung barges."

Makes me think of the blogosphere today. I wonder if in 100 years there will still be internet news, but it will have grown boring. Comment sections will be full of somewhat-intelligent-but-mainstream discourse, and antiestablishment types are flocking to the superinternet.
It brings up a good question -- is an essayist obligated to read people's responses? Or do you hire someone to filter out negative responses? (Not necessarily opposing viewpoints, just reddit level commentary.)

I can understand how demoralizing it can be -- short of re-evolving the human race, what is a good way to deal with this so you can stay positive and energized?
Phew! Attractive website, obviously somebody put a lot of effort into the design. I've never seen a site like this. There are seven themes?

I can't find anything I'm interested in actually reading. I browsed the categories, tag cloud, etc. Most of everything seems to be links and ads.

The page loads very slowly, and something about the theme produces visual artifacts while scrolling (the body of a content item scrolls one frame before its header, so while scrolling up it overlaps briefly). This is on Firefox 3 on Linux. So the site feels "sluggish" to use.

What are the buttons at the bottom? "Study Break"? There's no content there. Do I have to add it myself?

Who is "Dean of Students" and why does this person seem to make up the majority of posts? If it's you, why don't you use a name?
Business idea: backup all RSS feeds on the web. When services go offline, offer to sell people back their own content for $$$.

Guess it would be too expensive atm ;-)
Doing IT under anesthesia
New facebook scam: phishers hit up "friends" for cash
Google PageRank: A Strange Case Of Hyves
Whitehouse.gov passes XHTML validation!
Proof the new administration cares about our standards.
Eclipse PHP upgrade tackles object-oriented programming
Humm... maybe there's a little Obama on the way?

Doubtful, but you never know.
Note that this applies to the Dutch market only.

Here is a translation of table 5-3:

"Possible effects of downloading on the purchase of cd's, films and related merchandise."

Positive:

1. Downloading brings consumers in touch with content (music, films, games) which creates (more) demand; the so-called "sampling-effect" (Shapiro & Varian 1999; Liebowitz 2006)

2. File sharing (the technique) enables consumer to bundle their demands and this increases their demands.

3. Downloading increases the willingness to pay for and the demand for concerts and related merchandise (complementary demand).

4. Downloading increases popularity of products and creates demand with willingness to pay. (network effect).

Neutral:

5. Downloading supplies consumers which were unwilling to pay (would not have payed).

6. Downloading supplies consumers who where not met in their demands by producers. (e.g. movies for the iPod)

Negative:

7. Downloading replaces purchase of music, dvd's, games or theater tickets. (substitution)

8. Downloading delays purchase, resulting in a lower price for content.

9. Sampling leads to loss of demand by preventing bad buys.