skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"...people have always used Windows because it was \"what everyone uses\""

That doesn't make any sense. Obviously there was a time when nobody used Windows, so what made them buy it before it was "what everyone uses"?

"When you think about it, its amazing that Microsoft continues to sell Windows at all....why should you ever pay for another one?"

You're amazed at this? Really? After thinking about it? Do you ask yourself things like "why do we have Automobiles when a Horse and Buggy is good enough"? Obviously, improvements are made and that's why people buy new versions of things.

"I've been fascinated with Microsoft defenders...for years, since they seem to gain nothing by promoting the status quo..."

And I'm fascinated by people like yourself who are so completely out of touch with reality that you actually believe your own bullshit. The status quo is kept alive because Microsoft has the best tools for business and enterprise. Other outfits have a few pieces of the puzzle, but Microsoft's got them ALL (good desktop, good server, good developer tools and API's).
you pick door 1. the host does his thing. now the situation is:

if it was behind door 1, you win by not switching.

if it was behind door 2 or 3, switching would win.

seems intuitive to me.
I read it, I disagreed with it, but it didn't seem insanely unsubstantiated, just wrong. For it to be insanely unsubstantiated, it would at the least need to be true that rent control was a stunning success, which it is not.
With a high traffic site, Twitter won't appreciate that sort of polling. Once every 45-60 seconds is probably suitable, wouldn't you think. Especially if you use a count=200 and a since_id. How often do people twhoops?
As Mandelbrot stated :

These techniques do not come closer to forecasting a price drop or rise on a specific day on the basis of past records. But they provide estimates of the probability of what the market might do and allow one to prepare for inevitable sea changes.

In my opinion multifractals can explain the Dow and Nasdaq fluctuations, but it is not enough to predict them. That the market has fractal structure as Mandelbrot noticed is probably very good assumption, but it depends on so many factors that the dimentionality of the fractal will be enormous, and one of the dimencions would be time. Also every stock history, every index, or whatever other value used is just a function of that fractal structure with respect to current and past time. Knowing the values of these functions can give a lot information about the structure of the market to estimate what would be their future values but this is not sure to happen. However some trends could be estimated but their time scale cannot be known for sure ( we have multifractal in which the time can be streched ). So we can say we expect that there will be crisis between 3 and 6 months from now on but we may never the exact that until it hits us.

Very similar is the situation with earthquake predictions, but there we have I believe much more knowledge about the underlying fractal structure (the Earth, continents, continental drift, internal Earth energy etc.) We can say there would be big earthquake in Cali every several decades but short term predictions are hard to make.

I will be happy to hear your opinion about fractals and stock market.
Three I don't understand:

- You’ll get frustrated
- The emotional rollercoaster will beat you
- You’ll get excited about something else

That's just crazy. I'd only ever stop because I need money. Even the most mundane startup should live in an idea space that takes years to fully explore.
PowerShell ABC's - J is for JavaScript
This is a fluff article. Tempting fluff that causes everybody to come to the comment section and offer up their preconceived ideas. But fluff is fluff, even if it's tasty.

I don't see what I would gain from reading Greenspun's opinion on economic policy matters that I wouldn't get from reading Hayek, Friedman, or Keynes, or modern empirical arguments from places like Cato. What comparative advantage does Greenspun have here?
tttjyyhyy
It would be like Jesus versus Santa in the original South Park. "There can be only one."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zudtoD-4vyo
From geek to online guru
I'm not sure if there are empirical analysis to support this, but I believe that investing in education has the greatest returns (up to the limit when your whole population is educated maximally--but that's a far ways off from where we are right now).

The empirical analysis is all decidedly negative. The U.S. dramatically increased education spending in the past thirty years with nothing to show for it. On a local level, pretty much every study of increased school funding has shown no impact. From my experience, formal schooling has very little value add on top of what kids learn from their parents, on their own, and on the job.
$6.2 Million: Wikipedia Reaches Fundraising Goal for 2008
I disagree. He bases his argument on the idea that rent control causes high rents as demonstrated in places like NY. This is patently false in my opinion, but my opinion is not what counts. The reason I say it is unsubstantiated and therefore insane, is that he provided no argument for the idea that there is a causation between high rents and rent control. The author falls into the all too common trap of mapping a correlation to a causation. That may be a good strategy to throw red meat to right wingers, but it is not a well constructed argument.
How the Lowly Text Message May Save Languages That Could Otherwise Fade
In Shanghai I thought the Pudong area was surprisingly empty, considering the tall buildings coming up everywhere. It is almost deserted compared to Manhattan, or even the other side of the river in Shanghai.

Did not notice this phenomenon in Beijing, however. I used to live there until recently, and know first hand that affordable office space is a huge headache.
That's life
Fun. But this isn't even a rails app. Make a static HTML page with some javascript that parses http://search.twitter.com/search.json?q=oops

You should put a tipjoy twitter widget on your page though :)
http://tipjoy.com/twittertools
Four Threats For '09 That You've Probably Never Heard Of (Or Thought About)
Internet Tops Newspapers as a Source of News
"Nobody has ever made a compelling argument for how having unionized teachers helps students. Nor has anyone ever made a compelling argument for how having tenured teachers helps student performance."

I agree with these statements. However, there are many public school systems in the USA that are successful. Why? That is the right question to ask.

The education problem is much more complicated than simply giving parents and students the choice of school to attend. The "good" schools would then be overrun with perspective students, requiring a selection procedure to determine who to accept. And so, the rest of your life will be determined at earlier ages by some standardized test. The top few percent get the good education while the rest scramble to get what they can. That is not a better solution and does not fix the problem.
ASk HN: How to reset your HN password?
I tried signing in last night under my account "daveambrose" and tried what I thought was my password for HN. I got a bad login. I then tried running through every possible password I would have used and also got a bad login.

How can I reset my password? I don't want to lose all my comments/submissions, etc by creating a new username. Any help would be appreciated.

- Dave
http://talkinator.com/
People seem to be in the habit of mistaking "description" with "explanation" or predictive power. I have no doubt that you can describe short term stock market fluctuations in many different ways (fractals and multi-fractals being one of them) that still doesn't get you anywhere close to explaining or predicting those fluctuations. There is good reason for this, of course. Mainly, that short term behavior is mostly psychological. If investors are happy (confident, bull, whatever you want to call it) prices go up, if they are unhappy (scared, bearish, etc) prices go down. To this short time scale behavior you have to add the long time scale component that makes the average market value increase at roughly 10% a year, and the "invisible hand" effect that makes individual stock prices converge (eventually) to the correct value.

IMHO, It's the combination of these three effects that make (short term) stock market fluctuations practically unpredictable.

Here's an hilarious description of this "market sentiment"...

“You have to remember two things about the markets.
One is that they are made up of very sharp and
sophisticated people, these are the greatest brains.
And the second thing you have to remember, is that
the financial markets, to use the common phrase, are
driven by sentiment.

What does that mean?

What does that mean? Well, things, lets say, are just
going along as normal in the market. And then,
suddenly, out ot the blue, one of these very sharp
and sophisticated people says “MY GOD, SOMETHING
AWFUL IS GOING TO HAPPEN! WE LOST EVERYTHING! OH MY
GOD, WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO, WHAT ARE WE GOING TO
DO?!? SHALL I JUMP OUT OF THE WINDOW? LET’S ALL JUMP
OUT OF THE WINDOW! SELL, SELL, SELL! Precisely. And
then, a few days later, this same, sophisticated
person says ‘you know, I think things are going
rather well’ and everybody else says ‘I agree with
you, I think we’re rich.’ [...] And that’s what we
call market sentiment.”

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/k2rLNuMggOKSJWHSpY
Send pg an email.
Anyone found a good tutorial for pointing mydomain.com to myapp.appspot.com ?

The process is ridiculous and horribly undocumented.

Also, custom domains can't have SSL. That's a deal killer right there for most startup projects.

I am using GAE for some basic pages. Where I would make a static page, I'm running Django. The deployment process is a breeze, and any of the pages can scale to be a proper app. I'll probably move http://kirigin.com there soon.
If we're listing the great Danes (sorry) of comp sci, let's not forget Peter Naur - Algol 60 and BNF.
10 Technology forecast for the year 2009
Corruption is as big a problem in India as it is in China. Deregulation however means that the Indian media is much more open and competitive. This, while resulting in tabloid sensationalism, also means that government scandals are highlighted and often magnified which help keep them in check.
As far as choosing a direction goes, anti-incumbency always triumphs because the disgruntled are always in sizable numbers. That, however, does not affect corporate policies much more that changing the governmental cogs that need to be greased.
In a nutshell, this is India's formula for growth: A patchwork democracy that moves slowly and clumsily, and sustainable corruption that allows enough breathing space for far more nimble corporate entities.
This reminds me of what is said of Italy: the economy grows at night while the government sleeps.
Really? You can't see how you'd get so frustrated you'd go back to steady work, or so freaked out you'd go back to steady work?
Here's a random idea:

I wonder if the "one password" paradigm is the problem. What if Twitter (and any other web service) could have multiple passwords per user. Now you can give away a password at will to whatever Twitter service you want. When you don't want it to be used anymore, just delete it.

Much simpler than OAuth!
Yes, you should be willing to explore new interactions as computing power increases. Many advances made over the years were due to such increases in computing power. Take for example: the mouse, the windowing UI, desktop search, and spatial navigation (this one hasn't really happened yet). Each item on that list required more power than was available to the previous OS iteration. Are you suggesting that this progression has stopped and our "WIMP" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIMP_(computing)) paradigm is the ultimate interaction with our computer?

I'm not saying that Windows 7 is leaps and bounds better than XP, but essentially that's the argument you are making. Or did I miss something?
Are we talking about the same article? In the one I remember, he backed his argument up with a survey of deviation from median rent in markets with and without rent control.
Gell-Mann didn't like Feynman, he has stated this on many occasions, because he says Feynman was too preoccupied with his image. It has always bugged me, out of curiosity, whether I would have liked him. I became a physicist because of Feynman's books (Surely You're Joking, The Feynman Lectures).
Thanks :) The avatars are in the Atom feed, so theoretically yes, but I currently don't have a tag that accesses this particular item. I guess I should some generic 'parse XML' tag..
Thanks. I just sent him a note.
I seriously underestimated the "emotional rollercoaster" in my last endeavor. If I learned anything of use for future projects, that would be it.
I wonder if the author is aware that "lixo" means garbage/trash/rubbish in Portuguese.
The title here is misleading to me... it sounds like the kerfuffle is about Power.com not using the proper APIs and instead choosing to capture login credentials. That's a real breach of security, and given that Facebook implements an alternate authentication method, seems completely unnecessary. Maybe I'm missing something; is there anything you can do with direct logins that you cannot with Facebook Connect and full permissions?
Except this isn't a problem restricted to passwords. How does an RSA private key help in social engineering situations? Biometrics?
Less corruption in India? Haven't been to India very often have you?
In Ningbo they look pretty full. But Ningbo is small, only 5 or 6 million people.
The difference between depression and recession
LG KE260 BLACK Unlocked 
The LG KE260 is a tri band slider form-factor handset with a 1.3 MP camera from LG, namely the LG KE260, has the "strange". The mobile phone weighs about 85 grams and size close to 80 x 45 x 20 mm. The display of the LG KE260 is a remarkable 256k color TFT by a 176 x 220 pixel resolution.
So, let's get this straight.

1. It is fair for Facebook to ask for usernames and passwords to Gmail, Hotmail, et. al. to provide functionality to their users.

2. It is unfair for Power.com to ask for Facebook usernames and passwords to provide functionality to their users.
I made a web-app yesterday, it printed Hello World except in l33t text.

And I think that's the problem with SOME developers mentality about software. Just because it runs and compiles, does not make it an application consumers will use for lots of obvious reasons. If you want to be successful in software development, I would toss out the textbook semantic definitions, and focus more on 'applications of' technology that solves problems.
Ask HN: Selling online
I have two friends that want to sell stuff online. They have asked me what to use. Do you have any recommendations, they know very little about technology and they have little money. One of them is going to sell clothes for dogs and the other one Christmas ornaments.
That's what I get for not reading thorough enough. Good catch.
Isn't this a security issue? If you put your e-mail in your profile PG could of course check that the request to reset the password originated from that e-mail. But what if you didn't?

Couldn't I send PG an e-mail asking him to reset the password for cpcerciva and take over you account?
The US may spend a lot of money on education, but there is an underlying problem that isn't addressed in either your comment or Phil Greenspun's argument. K-12 education is primarily funded through property tax. This results in wealthy communities having great schools with tons of resources and poor communities that are using decades old resources and schools that are falling apart. So maybe you are correct in saying that "more money" isn't the answer. The tax system that we use for education is not equal and is failing us as a country. If we want to maximize the ability of people we should give the most people the best opportunity that we can.
Do you have any actual problems with the article that would rate more than a DH0 response?
http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
The Rails App built by Dave Troy that I believe set the standard for 'he/she coded it in how much time?!' is http://twittervision.com

"He wrote it in four hours using Ruby on Rails."

http://scobleizer.com/2007/03/22/meeting-the-geek-behind-twi...
The successful public schools are successful based on parents almost exclusively. Where I'm at, the township schools that surround the cities public schools are dramatically better. The people that live in these areas as a whole have more money and more time to commit to their childrens education, and they value education more.

Clearly, the issue is more complicated than choice, but choice is a step in the right direction. But if we are to do choice, we much also do vouchers, so that the public tax money can go to public schools or to private schools. This process will eliminate the teacher union qualms stated by the article naturally, as people filter into private schools or functional public schools.

The best schools will be more competitive, yes. How is this any different than the rest of life? We use merit based systems for university and graduate schools, and on some level for job placement. Why would it not work in lower levels? I maintain that with choice, and vouchers, more private schools would pop up to cater to the excess supply of fantastic students, if such a surplus exists.

The real problem with this whole equation, just like in healthcare and other government services is the problem of the extreme low class. Parents have more of an impact, and without good parents, smart children may never become good students, which would prvent them from participating in the meritocratic system described above. I can find no good solution to deal with the parents who do not value education over all else, and this is the real crux of the problem.
Agreed. If it's not an "app" it's a "startup" these days. Back when I were a lad we said to each other check out this script I wrote and that was that.
I'm not talking about teenagers. I've seen the results of this in people in their 20's and early 30's.

I live in one of the richest counties in the US. (formerly #1 actually). I see children raised like this ALL THE TIME. It is far more common to see a parent explaining themselves to a child who is throwing a tantrum than it is to see a parent putting their foot down. These children grow up totally unprepared for a world that does not make every concession to their current mood. With the exception of the ones who have trust funds (quite a lot around here) and thus don't ever have to face the real world, these kids almost universally wind up as only semi-functioning adults.

I'd go so far as to say that it is inflicting environmental retardation on your child. You job as a parent isn't to be your child's friend. It is to socialize them and prepare them for life.
If you want to be friends, you'll have to wait until they're an adult.
Mark Guzdial's Amazon Blog: Problems and Syntax Permalink
shopify.info seems pretty good, easy to get setup and lots of power for later on.
very nice video.
Surely, psychology factors play quite a part in the way market works. And also having several variables determined by such factors in chain you can expect to have big fluctuations - exactly the ones that the Gaussian("normal distribution") portfolios fail to explain.

the last part of the video explains an example of such chain- and the effect- the subprime crisis.
There are references, supporting materials, and backup. Read the article again.

And are you saying that we got into this cluster F by listening to Phil Greenspun, or other amateurs? It seems to me that the well-paid "experts" in finance and the media deserve most of the blame rather than internet people shooting their mouths off.
These two items sound like they fall into the http://www.etsy.com category. I've never used the service myself but it comes highly recommended from a few friends who have used it.

Apart from that, there's always ebay.
Seriously, I had one of my friends ask me this question and I was stymied too !! Neway, the 1002 thing is really intuitive and I definitely agree that we think from the perspective of Mr.B and the point of the matter is that the host removes all the "bad" doors !
I think that's a good point. It seems to me that it should probably be legal to act as a proxy for a user and do anything that user could otherwise do themselves regardless of any TOS.
IPhone 3G unlocking software updated; should work now (hopefully)
Well, I presume that pg would use his (human) judgement in deciding whether to reset someone's password. Probably any account which is worth keeping has enough identifying information that pg could verify the owner's identify.
Whatever happened to circle of chat/conversation (I forget the exact name :-(

That was a nice one. This one sounds cool too, I'll check it out later.
With RSA private keys, users don't see or manipulate them directly (usually). With a private-key based security system, most users would go "Huh? what's a private key?" if you asked them to send it.

With biometrics, you can't send them over a phone or over the internet.

Social engineering will always be a problem, but passwords are far easier to obtain with social engineering. Biometrics and so on reduce the number of attack vectors.
It's twitter that's stupid for still not having implemented oAuth. What's keeping them from implementing it TODAY? They are putting people's passwords at risk.
That's similar to, but more sophisticated, than what FriendFeed does. FF has an "API password" that you plug into other sites, and you can change the API password at any time, but they don't have separate API passwords for different sites. If there's a rogue site abusing your account, then you have to revoke all sites.
My wife sells on etsy, recommended. Products sounds just right for it.
Regular work is also frustrating if I'm not making something real.

My point isn't that these factors don't matter. It's that money would stop me far sooner. If I'm making money from the enterprise, I won't quit out of frustration. That's what doesn't make sense to me.
I believe this issue was resolved when an email field was added to the profile page of your username. However, I never added my email to the profile page since I didn't go to my profile all too often once I registered "daveambrose" a long while ago.
I think that this use falls into the "my software works on it camp". Am I correct in saying that a new Microsoft OS that is orders of magnitude easier to use would be useless to you if your games didn't run?
this is a great site!
Feynman is awesome! If anyone hasn't read Surely You're Joking, they totally should
I know that Google provides an API for accessing Google Contacts w/o passwords, but does Hotmail provide similar? If not, then it is fair... you use what you can. Otherwise, if there is a better way, then it should be used. I don't think that legal pressure is the best way of doing that, but it certainly is understandable to me.
Ok, so it's probably not a money problem, although perhaps it's not allocated well. And while we may agree that the unions are sort of a hindrance, many other countries have heavily unionized teaching systems, and still do better, so I think it would be wrong to pin everything on that.

So what is it? I wonder if it's a cultural thing. I remember how important it was during high school to not be seen as a "nerd". In Italy, my friends can't really relate to that sort of mentality - it doesn't really exist there like it does in the US. Doing well in school is basically seen as a good thing. Maybe it's not foremost in everyone's minds, but it's not something to be derided either.
For those of us that idle on IRC from time-to-time, this is one of those situations that puts a silly smile on our face and makes our day.