skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
For my money, there's still nothing better than a good newspaper. We get the Washington Post here. On TV, the broadcaster controls the order and scope of reporting (you're fed the news). On the internet, vital information can easily become unreachable due to developer mistakes or usability problems.

With a newspaper, everything is in front of you and is in the same place. It's been in that place for years and will remain there in the near future. If there were an accepted (and acceptable) format for online news, this would be a non-issue, but until then, I'll continue to get my news from the newspaper. It's durable and only requires reading light.

It's also nice to avoid using a screen for everything.
Not so much about our startup per se, but this is definitely the worst feedback we've ever received about the site:

"I will be bringing this [site] to the attention of my attorney who maintains a list of abusive web practices."
You should have mailed him a letter saying that you were sorry that he didn't like the game and to please find enclosed one (1) plastic spork.
Yes. Absolutely. From the /details page "Yes. As long as you and your team can be in Boulder, Colorado legally for the summer, please do. We have accepted overseas founders in the past."
And now, someone at the front line does what they were trained to do perfectly and you raise a fuss

That IS the problem. They shouldn't be trained to blindly follow "rules," they should be trained to help customers. That means knowing when the rules shouldn't apply!
The wikipedia article seemed to indicate that these sorts of systems don't see much use outside of limited fields in medicine. Do you know why that is? It seems to me that the problem should be very similar to that faced by those 20 questions games, yet they seem to do fairly well on a wide variety of topics.
Why Microsoft should forget about Yahoo and buy Palm
Fake praise does a lot more damage than mean-spirited criticism.

I don't think that's true. Bogus praise is self-correcting in a way that bogus criticism isn't. If bogus praise gives you an unduly high opinion of yourself, you at least keep working, and the resistance of the medium may push your opinion of yourself back down to where it should be. Whereas harsh critism can discourage you from working, so you never get the successes that would have corrected your opinion of yourself.
Clock ticking on worm attack code
Who's going to add the Whitehouse blog to their feedreader?
I'm fortunate enough to work at an office building with a pier overlooking a lake. Every so often I take a non-smoking break and walk out to the end of the pier and focus on the tree line on the horizon at the opposite end of the lake.

I have no science to back up any claims but it certainly feels good to do that, and looking at the LCDs again afterwards feels nicer too.
"it's ashley, this website ROCKS ! haha jk !"

That "jk" was just devastating.
Tag Clouds of Obama's Inaugural Speech Compared to Bush's
The intensity of emotion people describe about being an entrepreneur makes me wonder. Is being a laid-back, take it day-by-day kind of guy an advantage or a disadvantage?
Yes it is. Research Alcoa
Whitehouse.gov also has a new robots.txt file ( http://www.whitehouse.gov/robots.txt )

If you search google for 'whitehouse' and 'robots' then you can still see the cache of the robots.txt file of the Bush Administration (http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:tCfemw3M-aUJ:www.whiteho...)
Mm, seems like a kind of thing that shouldn't be on the web... How about a reliable tested platform and a web interface on top of that?

These guys have done something in that direction: http://about.psyc.eu/

Or perhaps just plain IRC.
Interesting to look at. More interesting would have been to compare it with W Bush, Clinton, HW Bush, and Reagan and see how it evolved.
Mindblowing Numbers From the Obama Inauguration
great, thanks a lot for the links ;)
Eh, I already saw this in the season finale of Reboot. I'm pretty sure we need to find Hexadecimal.
Wow. If my wife were an operating system, this would be her description.

Except for the part about missing your old favourites. I think.

Maybe I should make a video based on your comment...
Rename 'origin' to 'github' in .git/config. This is from the 'ENLIGHTENMENT' section in the article.
PowerShell ABC's - T is for Type Literals
Ask HN: What is your favorite TED talk?
I really like Hans Rosling, Clay Shirky, Richard Dawkins, and Nick Bostrom's talks. I've found TED talks to be pretty hit-or-miss, so I'm reaching out to HN.

I'm also aware of this thread:
http://www.imminst.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=16384
but I'm more interested in what you guys think.
Five Ways Obama Could Govern Like a Startup
I'll second that. I always like pouring over schemas that have been tested by heavy use - and wikimedia sure has.

The only thing that would make the png more valuable would be some accompanying discussion: I'd like to know

who was/were mostly responsible for the design. Seems like I had searched through WP itself one time but found surprisingly little.

what refactoring lessons they encountered during the history of the project.

Much good karma to someone who can get proper credit to the database team!
Someone needs to figure out how to mass-produce this stuff from algae farms and sell it as "LiqWood"... :P
Obama is smart enough to realize when he is veering into self-parody. Thus, the early campaign slogan of "hope" and "change" eventually gave way to "yes we can!" and other such rhetoric. He needed something fresh.

I would guess he briefly touches on the old slogans to give his supporters a familiar, comfortable feeling. But he will probably roll out a new slogan or two that he will really work and focus on (nothing this trite, but along the lines of "a new America"). These will be incorporated into the headlines tomorrow.

Has there ever been a President with such a mind for style?
For anyone who wants to know more about branching and workflow processes, I'd recommend checking out the book Software Configuration Management Strategies and Rational ClearCase by Brian White.

Yes, I know it's a book on a commercial vcs and doesn't directly have anything to do with Git. But ClearCase with UCM has an equally powerful branching capability and in some ways is easier to use and manage (from a developer perspective). And there's probably at least 10 years of development and actual large-scale use behind it. It's good stuff, or at least the theory and workflows (just tune out the CC implementation parts).

FYI, my background was as a consultant in enterprise version control dealing with a number of different products: PVCS, Dimensions, Harvest, Starteam and ClearCase. All centralized and all working in completely different ways. I'd spent over three years on ClearCase architecting, implementing and managing a large-scale deployment before picking up Git.
Note that this is not a game, but a tool for actual snipers... a real killer app.

(Sorry, had to be said.)
We had our firm get reviewed here on HN (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=347359). Actually the comments here were pretty good overall. I remember going to a tech meetup in town here... describing what we did seem to personally offend some people. I had people practically yelling at me that what we were doing was terrible and stupid. A few months later, we are featured on GigaOm with a pretty positive article (http://gigaom.com/2008/10/27/more-money-i-game-developers-wi...) :)
I used some IBM mainframe keyboards that didn't have [] keys (but the computer did have a C compiler installed).
Why do airplanes float in water? A better answer from Fluther.
If you want to learn about hardware, then start with something like an Arduino as others here have suggested. You'll have a long, hard road ahead, but it can be done.

If you just want to get something working, find existing hardware (iPhone, Android, tablet PC, etc) that does what you need and code for it. This is by far the cheaper option until you get into selling thousands of copies. Since building thousands of units requires even more tens of thousands of dollars, it's a fair bet that you'll be better off with expensive hardware for a long time.

I am an EE/SE with plenty of experience who sometimes takes on contract work. I was actually asked to build a device like this recently. Small quantities, say 5-20 per year. My suggestion to the buyer was that we use a mini/micro ITX board, standard off the shelf electronic hardware and a simple custom designed hardware interface that I would only charge him about $1k to design and that could be built for about $70 each. And this is a very simple board that has 1/1000 the complexity of a NIC card that you can buy at MicroCenter for $10.

Custom hardware in small to moderate quantities is expensive make no bones about it.
The main big block of text next to the picture is a jpg, and looks like it has a ton of compression artifacts. tsk tsk! =)

Other than that it's an awesome site, definitely the best government agency site I've ever seen.
Even better, it's valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional: http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.whitehous...
I misunderstood your comment. Original comment deleted! I agree that it needs to be cheaper than plastic (and this thing might be). All I'm saying is that any articles talking about alternatives should attempt to discuss economics of production as well.
I don't have any idea, but Blue State Digital did his campaign site and a bunch of other dem 08 work, so perhaps it was them.
It's not meant to be a nasty comment (I've been using Linux since 1994) but I've never liked using Linux as a desktop system. Personally I think there's more entertainment to be had from spoofing all these "Hi, I'm [brand name]" videos than actually making serious ones :)
Google's Gdrive arriving in 2009
# Have a backup machine.

# Have a video version for backup.

# Run from localhost if you can.

# Identify goal of demo.

# Script the demo accordingly.

# Follow the script.

# Be ready to run an adhoc demo without the script (ie. be familiar enough with the product).

# Go slow.

# Don't move your mouse unless you need to.

# Consider using something like OmniDazzle.

# It helps if the features you show have obvious visual impact (this may sound obvious, but I'm sure everyone has seen demos of someone clicking a button, waiting for 10 seconds and then say it has finished processing).

# It may help for 1 person to talk to the audience and looking at the audience while another runs the demo. May be useful if the latter is a techie who also happens to be not able to do the talking as well. Still having the latter on stage allows him/her to help answer questions.

# Practise with different groups of people.

# Don't use overly high resolution for demo. The projector (or whatever display) you will get may not support it.

# Test run the demo through a few different screen resolutions.

# Bring your cables, charger, adapters, and whatnot.

# Sleep the night before, if you can't, practise more.

# If people fall asleep during the demo, ignore them.

PS: need Markdown or something similar
Nepal: Laptop School
Trying to charge for your service is one way to quickly find out what people thing.
I'm particularly fond of Steven Levitt after reading Freakonomics. I enjoyed his talk on the pointlessness of mandating car seats for children and what should really be done to improve their safety:

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

I also like the SeaDragon/Photosynth demo (along with various other talks that have come from Microsoft Research)

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/blaise_aguera_y_arcas_dem...
Ramachandaran's talk had a profound effect on me (neuroscience/brain). Mark Bittman's talk was great, but I like everything that man writes (food). Clinton's talk made me feel like I knew him better after watching it. It felt very personal. Dave Eggers' talk was beautiful (learning). Ze Frank's talk was good if you follow his stuff. Murray Gell-Mann gave a beautiful talk (physics). I bought Dan Gilbert's book after watching his. Alan Kay was, obviously, very good. Sir Ken Robinson's talk was absolutely great also (learning.)

This is just a small sample of the ones that I have seen and liked. I haven't seen most yet.
Watch Nip Tuck Online | Watch full Nip Tuck Episodes
Watch 24 OnlineWatch 24 Online
I swear I would have.
DBDesigner 4.
I never understood why people were doing that. Many Reddit comments about your essays were extremely vicious.
The ideal example of price to volume in manufacturing product is probably portland cement, it's produced in astronomical quantities and is literally cheaper than dirt.
Frederik Pohl, 89-year-old legendary science fiction writer has started a blog
God Bless!!! A geek's definition of Freedom!!! What a diff.
urban areas aren't all white collar, there are plenty of other jobs around.

But thats just part of the problem. Why would a company want to build an office building in the middle of an ocean at the huge premium....when they can just build one on land? I mean if a company wants to put its offices in the middle of nowhere there are plenty of cheaper alternatives.

You have to remember, that the cost of living on something like this would be huge, since they'll need to import all their food, and living space would be at a premium.
You’re trying to divide by zero
I'm especially going to miss local and regional coverage if newspapers go away. I think that the internet does a better job with national and international news, but I rely almost entirely on newspapers for local coverage. In the Chicago area, at least, the Tribune has done an excellent job with local news. Not only do they do a decent job with most major stories, but they've put out a lot of great investigative series in the past. Among other things, they were key in exposing corruption to the public in a number of cases, including George Ryan. The paper has already been cut back considerably, and if they go away entirely I think that it will be a large loss for the Chicago area.
This is an interesting idea..but keep in mind that you're locking yourself into a particular brand of each of the products. If you suddenly find that you hate the rice, toothpaste and underwear, you're out of luck.
It seems pretty slow - I guess that's a good sign (many people looking at it?)
We need a licence to print our own money
I am sure this has been discussed to death somewhere else (point me there?) but what is the advantage of adding [ ] for defining arguments to a proc/lambda? I assume it is to help it stand out a little more? What I love about lisp/scheme is the symmetry and simplicity in syntax - though it does clearly state in the scheme spec that [ ] are reserved for future language revisions.
Gmail icon makes sense, it looks like mail. Next to that I have a G Docs icon which looks like some sort of painting and while it does stick out, it makes no sense whatsoever.
Dan Benjamin - Is Flickr Still "The Place" For Online Photos?
How to browse the iTunes store without installing iTunes
Nor does it mention the actual energy required to make the stuff. It very well may require more fossil fuels in energy to make it than using the same oil directly in plastic.
Probably... it's Google.
SkaDate, the online dating software, reached the version 7
Me too. I installed SAP the other day - it doesn't even install if you don't have 20 GB free disk space, and it creates something in the order of several ten thousand tables. There ought to be job titles like "Corporate Simplificator".
http://app-store.appspot.com/
Also would be interesting to use the same font and color scheme for the different clouds. I can't help but feel (just by looking at, not reading) the two clouds that the Obama one felt "warmer".
Definition of a startup
Please no, the LAST thing I want is our President running this company like a VC funded startup.
Obama's Stagecoach
>The winner will receive a free trip to Tokyo, Japan to participate in the Linux Foundation Japan Linux Symposium in October 2009.

Cool idea, and a trip to Tokyo sounds nice. But it's hard to get excited about going to a symposium.
I like Joshua Klein's talk about Crows: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/joshua_klein_on_the_intel...

I, for one, welcome our new crow overlords.
But why are they using some external commercial company for visitor analytics? (webtrendslive.com)
I once had a startup which was basically an online database of professional actor and model videos. My all time favorite put-down came when we first got into model videos.

We did some test shoots for a couple established agencies (Elite, Q Models) and were looking to get into more doors. My partner's girlfriend at the time was a model so I asked her to get us a meeting with her bookers. Her [strong] opinion was that for a variety of seemingly good reasons (too long to list here) web video would never work in the modeling industry and we were pretty much wasting our time.

Five minutes later, on a completely unrelated topic, she mentioned that her best friend, also a model, was going on a video shoot that week. Turned out her agency (Wilhelmina) thought this new online video thing was, ya know, promising.

I am still scratching my head over that one. She wasn't your stereotypical 18-year old airhead and she was clearly sympathetic to our cause...
Ask HN: What Would you want in a government API?
I'm marveling over the new whitehouse.gov and thinking that the government should have an API. I imagine it would create a thousands of government jobs, boost every sector of hardware sales, foster the creation of thousands of start ups and bring accountability and transparency to government, among other things. I'd say my first request would be this function:

getEveryDollarSpent, which would accept as parameters paidTo, authorizedBy, minDollars, maxDollars, dateFrom and dateTo.

What's yours?
There was a really good one by the guy from Archive.org
The article suggests that Microsoft should spend 1-2 billion USD to buy Palm because the Pre is an innovative gadget. The unanswered question is: would it be worth that much to Microsoft to acquire a mobile phone company that has completely lost its relevance and marketshare outside North America, and has little to do with Microsoft's business-oriented Windows Mobile strategy?

Palm under Microsoft would become the "Zune phone" -- a vertical integration experiment detached from the goals of the rest of the company. But didn't Microsoft already buy Danger (maker of Sidekick/HipTop/whatever) not long ago? It's possible Danger is already working on something along those lines, but with more Windows integration than Palm's web-oriented Linux+WebKit device provides. Where would Palm fit in?
"The Secret Service has since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, required that presidential limos be destroyed upon retirement to preserve their secrets."

Neat, reminds me of the Far Side cartoon where the plane passenger discovers the "wings stay on/off" toggle.
The most striking thing to me was that he explicitly mentioned curiosity. It's not just hard to imagine Bush doing that; it's hard to imagine any recent president.
I think it's probably this one: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/william_kamkwamba_on_buil...

"When he was just 14 years old, Malawian inventor William Kamkwamba built his family an electricity-generating windmill from spare parts, working from rough plans he found in a library book."

Though the actual interview is a bit awkward at times, I found his story to be very inspiring.
I think I'm prepared to forgive the President for not having the time to post on Twitter.
Can't it be said that undue praise will make the author work less hard, having achieved the dopamine high of accomplishment? Where as criticism can spur harder work from people set out to "prove themselves." I'm not saying either way is good or bad, I'm just saying both of our examples are anecdotal and either can have the desire effect. All depends on the criticism and the outlook and personality of the recipient.
Human nature. They will love you first. Hate you second. And when you are gone, they will love you again, claiming that all those things you wrote/said were prophecies, visions.
linkbait article titles ftw
"But they already created that". To which I respond "how many pizzeria are out there, how many gas stations, how many shoe manufacturers, how many zoos, should we all settle for The One?"
So, when is tomorrow?
Oh I'm not going to think less of him should the account not be used again.
I'm all for accountability, but I also think added bureaucracy is a waste of money. Someone has to pay for these new jobs, and I can't tell whether this will return more than it costs to set up.
AJAX frameworks: Global namespace pollution
Recently I had an idea about checking the most popular javascript frameworks & APIs to see how they differ in terms of global namespace pollution...
according to @sacca he'll get back on. And by him I mean his PR machine.
All the URLs in the former robots.txt seem to end in "/text". It's likely that they just didn't want the text versions of the articles to be indexed.
> we try to not go tooo far down the evil path

So what have you done on the evil path so far?
Basically /every/ large-scale industry causes environmental harm. The question is to what extent.

The issue with climate change is that this is one of the things we think may have caused mass extinctions. So your number seems to be off by a few orders of magnitude.
//<![CDATA[
Why is this good? &amp; why is it better than HTML4.01 Strict? XHTML is not beautiful. //]]>
I think the fundamental problem is that writing essays seems presumptuous to a lot of people. They're used to the old print media model in which the only people who got to publish essays were credentialled experts in whatever they were about. That restriction is now gone. Online anyone can publish whatever they want. But I think it still seems to a lot of people that anyone using the essay form is implicitly claiming some kind of authority.

The right approach, obviously, is to judge an essay by what it says instead of who wrote it. I think things will tend to move in that direction. But not too far, because it's more work.
Obama's New Robots.txt
Clifford Stoll, guy was all over the place, but I found his talk rather amusing and even a bit enlightening.
Kurzweil ftw,
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ray_kurzweil_on_how_techn...
Sounds like an Aristophanes play.
I vote for the API equivalent of "svn blame".
IT BOOM
For Peruvians, Baskets for the U.S. Market Bring a New Way of Life
No problem. We can specify all properties are read only, that way we avoid any added bureaucracy.
The second Hans Rosling talk where he swallows a sword at the end.
This isn't quite getEveryDollarSpent, but check out http://usaspending.gov/. The site tracks all federal contracting dollars spent. It has an API and a fairly detailed set of data.

Rather than one giant government API, we will probably see each agency slowly create more meaningful ways to get at their data. I expect there to be some exciting open data initiatives from the Obama administration.
My eyeballs just killed themselves, and now my soul aches.
Jill Bolte's talk about her stroke.

Her talk illustrates the different processing styles of our right and left hemispheres. This is a fascinating subject, that often gets trivialized because of all the New Age BS revolving around it.

Her experience is remarkable, and very powerfully delivered. Don't be fooled by her "spiritual" overtones, the science she references is very real and convincing, and the way she ties it to her own experience is fascinating.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_power...
WSJ.com : President Obama's Inaugural Address
My major issue with this concept is the added expense of integrating the Palm OS and Windows Mobile. That's no small undertaking and it would find Microsoft stuck between them until it could complete the integration.
Brewster Kahle?
Why should huge companies merge? What's wrong with a lot of small companies with different visions? It keeps the market agile and innovative.
shutdown()
I'm sure that's just coincidence.