skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Because we have examples of when man tries to mess with nature for the sake of nature and they usually end up going awry. For example when ecologists introduce natural predators to control populations of nuance animals. Nature's solution to excess Co2 is to grow more plants.
I can confirm that the article has step-by-step instructions for enabling the run command if you really need it, as well as the global key combination to open the dialog.
But in a very, very different way than every other business that gets talked about here.

They were profitable first, became very profitable over time, and they took funding years later when their revenues must have been in the millions/year (while still being only a handful of people) - and the only reason they took it (they claimed) was to get access to Jeff Bezos, the investor.
Selection bias.

Most small businesses that visit their local business center are like that.
"if you only consider the factors in its favor"

What are the factors that are most in favor of China?
Not really. That was just enough to get me to read the Wikipedia article to figure out what the heck they were talking about in that movie. It made the student sound super smart, but most people I know didn't have a clue what they were saying (including myself).
You're right. That was unnecessary.

axiom, I apologize. I don't know what got into me.
A similar case that comes up every few years has to do with copyrighting the phone book. The publisher contends that while the information contained within it is indeed not copyrightable, the arrangement and ordering of it is, and so you can't just recopy it and republish it for free. The wannabe publisher says that it's free information in no meaningful order, so they can republish it all they want. And then they go to court, and whatever happens happens...

Another example (and similar to the one you mention) is Carl Malamud's public.resource.org - he's taking WestLaw's court records, removing the copyrighted bits, and publishing them himself online. The problem then becomes how to cite them, since WestLaw's numbering system is somewhat of a de factor standard.

All-in, you're quite right - this is nowhere near as clear as the article thinks it is, and it's certainly not a domain that I'd rely on a non-lawyer's opinion for.
although it's very simple

Parenscript's simplicity is by design and is one of the best things about it. It makes it easy to read and debug the generated JS, and allows for efficiency while still adding a ton of abstractive power.

Now if only I could have a cxml-stp style DOM in Javascript

I don't know what that is. I googled it, and still don't know what it is. Could you give a brief description and an example or two of why you like it?
Ok, now be sure to read this in Vader's voice. It's required.
Manufacturing Reports Show Depth of Global Downturn
Computer Programming 101
"In China, the purchasing managers’ index by the brokerage firm CLSA showed the manufacturing sector had contracted for a fifth consecutive month. The survey showed the steepest decline in its history.

"'With five back to back P.M.I.s signaling contraction, the manufacturing sector, which accounts for 43 percent of the Chinese economy, is close to technical recession,' said Eric Fishwick, head of economic research at CLSA in Hong Kong, in a note accompanying the release."
Don't hard drives use voice coils to move the arm back and forth?
JPG: the crowdsourced magazine...has shut down
Very Kaizen of you. I have used these small thoughts/questions in the area of fitness, diet, social awareness to great success.
What netbooks come with only 512 megs? Most of them that I've looked at come with one gig standard, though I upgraded my MSI wind to two gigs.

For the record it's running Ubuntu, with some of the netbook remix packages installed.
While I do agree that social interaction is key to innovation, it is also becoming less and less bound to geography.

All the studies and books presented are based on the data that is older than the Internet. Hacker News is as good as a city sidewalk for the exchange of ideas. And it doesn't cost me 2k/month in rent.
It is a fortunate historical accident that Eich was infatuated with ultra-dynamic languages like Scheme and Self when he came up with JS. For all its flaws, JS retains enough of their DNA to have given rise to the wonderful world of web apps and, effectively, take over the world. When you consider how many historical accidents went against this style, I think we're lucky to have JS. And it does seem to have been an accident, given how hard Eich has been trying to turn it in to something else (for "serious" programming don't you know).

p.s. I've written this here before, but can't track down the link.
> We need a word for "being a jerk to people here and then being smug about it" online.

meta-trolling?
Windows 7 Screenshots
Not totally related, but http://twitter.com/darthvader is fantastic.
On perspectives
THINK: Then and Now
Digg Tips for Success
My version of Vista shows free disk space quite easily. I see it under My Computer.

You can also customize what is shown for file listings.
I'm fairly certain the first is an option you can show and I know for a fact that file listing are customizable under Windows Explorer. Not sure about the second. I don't have Vista in front of me to check.
Netflix and Amazon know the days of physical discs are numbered. I don't think Amazon needs to acquire a business to dominate a dying vertical. They already have digital distribution and a huge brand, just bank on that.
While I agree that JS probably can't be treated like a machine language and just ignored, my project has gotten huge value out of the generated-JS approach.

I see from another comment that you've used GWT. This may be why our experience differs. Java and Javascript are so far apart (ironic given their names) that to generate one from the other is inevitably going to be complex. We use Parenscript, and the semantics of Lisp and JS are much closer. As a result, I've been consistently surprised by how suitable JS has proven as a target language and how simple the whole approach is.

We've even extended Parenscript into a pretty expressive subset of Common Lisp compiling efficiently to Javascript. We never set out to do this - it just spontaneously evolved - and it's a small subset, nowhere near all of CL. But it covers enough that we can write large portions of our app to run both on the server and in the client, which turns out to be valuable sometimes.

That being said, we pay close attention to the generated Javascript, so I agree with your suspicion of X-to-JS compilers in that sense. What we do is a semi-abstraction.
Amazing Possibilities
I like the calculator. Beyond simple addition, that's the second most common thing I have to calculate (finance related), and going back to excel and trying to remember the formula names is a pain. As long as it's a mode you can turn on and off (like the scientific mode), that's a great idea.
On a related note, see also N.N. Taleb's answer to The Edge Annual Question 2009:

http://www.edge.org/q2009/q09_10.html#taleb
The days of physical discs will last for quite a while. First Amazon would have to provide a TV-centric solution that matches Bluray's power, and then they will have to provide a drm-free solution so buyers aren't tied to Windows Media.
There's no reason why such a netbook couldn't have such apps. There's already a Java port of OpenOffice called NeoOffice. My understanding was that most of it was done through a transliteration of the OpenOffice code.

I think most users want something like a Google managed Android netbook. Just give them something that works, where they don't have to worry about compatibility issues, DLL hell, viruses, and malware. The vast majority of users would love that.
the real problem is overall probability of the experiment can't be relegated to only the second choice.

if it were so, then the second choice is simply a 50/50 because the goat makes no damn difference at that point. it's one or the other.

whatever choice you made in the first step of the experiment has no bearing whatsoever on the probability of the second step.

it's incorrect to calculate overall probability of winning as if it matters
I would assume he's taking any obligations he has into account when he says 3-4 years. It's not like anyone would say "I have 3-4 years, except when you take into account my mortgage, kids, student loans, eating, bills..."
The point of the article is more around the value of the subscription business - particularly in economic down turns. I think the demise of physical discs is a longer term theme... but the demise of purchasing those assets is near term. Netflix helps there.
Is It Stupid to Trust Twitter Apps With Your Password?
Enjoying the show, avoiding the flamethrower: life inside Apple
No, I'm advocating being realistic about your tolerance for risk. If 3-4 years of runway isn't obviously long enough, then you probably don't have the stomach for a startup.
> I want to say something about leaky abstractions and caution the reader that writing code that you then pass to something that generates some other code is a very very scary thing by and large.

You are aware that programmers have been doing this in essence since Assembly Language was invented right? Programming directly in binary is just too much for our human minds to take.

That said, you are much more correct than you realize. Even programming a "simple" or "direct" translation, like compiling from C to object code is rife with pitfalls...

http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html
Very useful posts, I would add you don't have enough determination and you don't have a plan. I think a lot of startup fails because they don't have a clear plan and they don't know where they are going
IE Market Share: Down Nearly 12 Percent in Two Years
I think the Internet will strengthen the trend, rather than weaken it. People outside of a specific innovation cluster can take part in it through the internet. People that live in that cluster can participate through the Internet and in person. That's a big advantage that will only become more pronounced over time. Face to face is so much higher bandwidth that important parts of it will never be reproduced online. Why do you think YC requires you to be in person?
I prefer:

for (;;) {
int days_in_year = IsLeapYear(year) ? 366 : 365;
if (days <= days_in_year) break;
days -= days_in_year;
year += 1;
}
For the impatient, here's a pastebin with the actual code:

http://java.pastebin.ca/1298391

A followup article to this one includes a link to his sourceforge project:

http://blogs.azulsystems.com/cliff/2007/04/nonblocking_has.h...
Isn't this the same idea as saas?
> Java port of OpenOffice called NeoOffice.

Yes, but Android doesn't use straight up Java, especially in terms of its GUI code.

I could see the appeal of the 'slimmed down' system, but I suppose we'll have to see what sorts of apps are created for Android, whether they're useful in something that's significantly different in terms of form factor. Good apps should be able to handle it, but it could be that what's good for a quick whirl on the phone is seen as a not so serious app for a computer that people actually sit down to use.

What is cool about it is it shows how cool Android is, and how people will end up doing innovative things with it.
Patent application filed for software research assistant
Steve Jobs' greatest Macworld video hits, 1998-2008
Plus everyone has a mailbox. Not everyone has the bandwidth to download HD on demand.
So... the proper approach to conversation about serious matters is to harp on someone for using terminology you don't like even though its blatantly obvious from context what they mean?

And honestly, I only ceded the point about the terminology because I thought it would prompt you to finally make your on-topic point. "Fluctuation" can certainly mean "movement from low to high" without being in error - read your own definition. I guess you really don't have anything to contribute, though.
Crude. effective. YouTube doubler
The argument I've always heard against Amazon acquiring Netflix is that Netflix has distribution centers in something like 45 states, whereas Amazon only has them in a handful. So that'd be 45 states in which Amazon would then have to charge sales tax.

If Netflix were a solely streaming operation, it'd make sense for Amazon, or if tax on ecommerce was already charged in most states regardless of physical presence it would make sense. Not sure it does otherwise, though.
There's an SEC rule that effectively forces you to go public once you have 500 shareholders.

http://news.cnet.com/SEC-rule-may-nudge-Google-toward-IPO/21...
seano nailed the way I interpreted the (poorly-phrased) version of it:

"Both of my kids are driving me crazy! Just yesterday I had to pick one of them up from the police station--I grounded her for a month!" - given just the information in your quote, the odds are 50% of a boy and a girl.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=416555
What do Google Android netbooks mean for Apple and Microsoft?
I just tested this with two Terminal windows running under OS 10.5.6. I didn't get the + icon indicating I could drag, but dragging still worked.

It helps if you lift your finger slightly as you click. It doesn't detract from the speed of the operation and makes it much more reliable.
This never made intuitive sense to me until I heard it rephrased this way:

In front of you are 1002 doors. You pick a door, and then Monty Hall opens 1000 doors to reveal goats. You have the option to pick the remaining door or stick with your original choice. Which should you do?
Shameless plug: I thought it was a neat idea so I built a similar app in with FeedVolley: http://feedvolley.com/oops - no code required :)

If anyone's interested, you can clone this with the "Create a page like this" link on the top right and use your own HTML and search terms...
This was a beautiful line: "I have long known that prayer was a placebo; but upon learning recently of a study that showed that a drug works even when you know it is a placebo, I immediately started praying."
Also in a numb3rs episode. And Allen Paulos in one of his books outlines the script of a movie based in this game which could help to interest people in Mathematics.
Ya that's fair, but it's reasonable for someone to ask a question without being judged.
Benoit B. Mandelbrot: How Fractals Can Explain What's Wrong with Wall Street
Amazon seems to charge sales tax based on where the goods are shipped to, not where they are shipped from:

"Items sold by Amazon.com LLC, or its subsidiaries, and shipped to destinations in the states of Kansas, Kentucky, New York, North Dakota, or Washington are subject to tax."

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=4...
I don't know anything about qualia, but it sounds like the sum of the interactions that a concept can have in your brain. So while the colorblind alien might know what wavelength of light corresponds to red, would qualia be the effect that "redness" has on my brain? All of the feelings and implications from hot, stop, blood, sunburn, lifeguard, etc?
Actually, I think that will be more important is the ability of people to come and go. It's the velocity of social interaction between talented people that it's important, not the amount of aggregated "human talent capital". YC requires people to be in person, but only during the 3 month period. That is the time it takes to make all the social interactions that are needed for that stage.

If Internet access, smart people and population density were important to innovation, Tokyo would give birth to the majority of tech startups and cultural achievements. It doesn't.
I like this. Even though the way you perceive it is an illusion, something's there outside the illusion. And the way we perceive things has such good internal consistency (usually) that it has to be a pretty good approximation of what's really out there. Plus, everything has to be perceived one way or another - what would it even mean to "see things as they really are" when it comes to matter, light, etc?
Nokia E63 Ultramarine Blue Smartphone Unlocked 
The Nokia E63, designed for people who need to manage their business and personal lives equally well.Nokia E63 brings the QWERTY keyboard form factor to a broader audience at a great price.
The biggest socio-economic failure of the past 50 years is the insistence that the environment you grow up and live in is unimportant to your day-to-day living and your ability to conceive of the choices you have, much less your ability to actually choose them.

That was the conclusion I came to after thinking about the bigger implications of this article for a bit.
Incorrect, since you don't update days_in_year on each loop iteration. If you really want...

while (days > (days_in_year = IsLeapYear(year) ? 366 : 365)) {
days -= days_in_year;
year += 1;
}
And then there's the wrinkle of trademarks. Look and Feel is certainly in the realm of trademarks, and I'm sure that 37 signals has their designs trademarked, and their logos, and "getting real", and everything else they've ever created.

Intellectual property laws are interesting. It's a giant game, moreso than crime or other torts, since everything is made up with little basis in physical reality. I'm not opposed to the idea, but it's fun seeing the law operate in a self-created vacuum.
I think those are the states in which they have a physical presence. I know their headquarters are in Washington, for example, and that they have a big distribution center in Kentucky. New York, though, may just have laws taxing ecommerce (I'm not certain).
His point was that if Amazon has a physical presence in the state it's shipping to, it must charge sales tax in that state.
Yeah. And what was that whole business about the Newton-Rhapson method?
I think this would be more useful if we also got a statistic of total tweets per hour vs. total oops-related tweets per hour in order to chart some sort of unscientific likelihood that someone on the Internet will make a mistake.
Someone at QA it's going to be fired. Corner cases like 1st and last days of a year(leap and not), 29th of February and the like are the first candidates for proper blackbox testing.

I wouldn't put all the blame on the programmer (who probably is now scared to death).
Tangentially related, but something I found interesting: google seems to have retained "writely" as it's internal app identifier for google docs. If you're not logged in, docs.google.com redirects to https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=writely
Population density and personal interaction are important to innovation, but only certain kinds of innovation are highly profitable. SV has a big edge there because it has the highest density of people with the resources (mental, financial, relationship, etc) to produce tech startups. Ditto for film in LA, fashion in Milan, finance in NYC, etc.
Nope, Amazon has distribution centers in 8 states, but they don't all get sales taxed:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon.com#Fulfillment_and_ware...
Has 37signals copyrighted any of their products?

Other than their book it appears they have no copyright registrations filed.

So? You don't need to register copyrights in order for something to be copyrighted, it just proves you're the owner, which could help if you need to take legal action.
Wetware Refactorings
I always knew that I preferred cities to suburbs but couldn't explain why. I wasn't much more social when I lived in Chicago, I didn't actually go to most of the events and places there, but it was somehow ... better. I only recently realized that it's so much richer in information, and when I moved to the burbs, I get so much less information that I feel starved.

That's also overlooking the fact that I meet fewer people, fewer kinds of people, and spend more time commuting.
> These guys were paying ZERO for their content and they still couldn't make it work.

Not true. They offered a bounty of $100 and a free subscription for photos and stories selected to be run in the print edition.
Hey, I built this :) - thanks danw.

Edit: moved @replies around.
How To: Raise Money in a Down Economy
the Heliodisplay ... does achieve the star wars effect

In what way? R2D2 could project a mid-air 3D image.
This is silly. Imagine a world where this would be enforced.

There is no way to know in advance that your look and feel doesn't accidentally resemble some of the existing millions of websites.

This holds even more for 37signals type of elegant/functional style as opposed to something more artsy/ornamental.

You cut away cruft till there is left just a necessary minimum. Surprise surprise, if many people follow the same process, they will get similar results.

In nature, this is called convergent/parallel evolution. If there is a similar environments/evolutionary pressures, the same features will evolve multiple times.

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_evolution
I guess it would depend on the sales tax laws in each state.

Some states require sales tax on ecommerce if there is a physical presence, some do not. Some require tax regardless.

The argument I have always heard in relation to Netflix is that if Amazon were to acquire Netflix it would mean charging sale tax to a much greater number of customers.

Netflix has many more established physical presences across the US: http://www.listology.com/netflix_tracker_reports.cfm?report=...
I won't be carrying around a Netbook until the form factor is a touch-screen tablet. I'd much rather carry around my full-featured 13" MacBook until then... The extra inches is hardly a burden on my shoulder.
Unfortunately, the issue still lurks.

Basically, some combination of puts to one of our models would cause queries to return inconsistent results. For example, the query:

SELECT * FROM MyModel WHERE property=True

would return N results, but

SELECT * FROM MyModel WHERE property=True ORDER BY foo

would return far fewer than N results.

It appears that _something_ we were doing exercised an AppEngine bug that caused the indexes to get corrupted. (Note that this would happen even from AppEngine's data viewer -- which is to say, we got N by paging through ALL results, not just one fetched batch.)

We worked with Google but designing a simple repro case proved difficult -- the corruption happened only under high load, and only on one of our models.

Trial and error showed us that if we manually fetched and re-put() the "broken" rows in our table (aka the ones that didn't show up when we used ORDER BY,) the indexes would right themselves. So I wrote a bit of code to do this, and started running a cron job on a local box to invoke that code regularly. Lame, but only temporary.

Last time we exchanged mail with the AppEngine team, they told us they were aware that this was a bug on their end and were working on a fix. However, to my knowledge, they're still working on it...
Just did a search and found something on what I was talking about: http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=5302

Had my facts a little mixed up (it's 43 distribution centers, not in 45 states). Anyway, take it for what you will. :)
This entire reading "looks and feels" so subjective. How the heck is someone supposed to know what to do if quotes are needed around words to describe it?

Copyright law makes my head spin.
The fact that Amazon has a handful and Netflix has 45+/- distribution centers shows how inefficient the USPS mail system has gotten compared to the likes of UPS and FedEx.

Amazing.
Why would it have to be DRM free? DVD and Blu-Ray are riddled with DRM and they are still popular. This is to do "rental", not purchasing. Only makes sense to have some DRM on there or else the purchase business will end.
Twtpoll: Poll your Twitter friends
If someone came to you with this idea and asked you to invest your entire annual salary into it, would you do it?

If you can answer that, then your course of action should be clear.
And once you know that the mistake happens ... http://xkcd.com/386/