skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Is the prevalence of QWERTY the result of being stuck in a sub-optimal equilibrium? (pdf)
> Add a link to your startup please.

What, you want others to exceed the meanness level? ;-)
Also if you work through this make sure to take a look at this timely group: http://groups.google.com/group/hacker-news-reads-sicp
Liquid Wood Is Plastic of Tomorrow, Say Scientists
How to Remove Duplicate Songs in iTunes
Got a disk full of MP3s or other music files? If so, there’s a good chance you’ve got duplicates. Finding duplicates can be an exceedingly time-consuming task. But you can do this in iTunes with 2 simple steps. Here is the Way to find and Remove Duplicate Songs in iTunes Library.
When people are mean to your startup, it usually mean that you are working on something good. But you're right that someone may not want to link his product. I'll change it.
On Facebook, Sicilian Mafia Is a Hot Topic
How "global" are the Ajax frameworks and APIs?
What iPhone Users Want and What Developers Can Build ?
Yes, but I don't know how to create one, and I don't know how to find out if I've got enough karma to create one.
Creating a new poll requires 200 karma when I last heard. This is the highest karma threshold because polls can be frivolous...
My understanding is that a lot of the concepts and terminology of Haskell are rooted in category theory (e.g., monad, functor, etc.). I don't think its necessary to learn category theory, but it might help if you're mathematically inclined.
E-Cards on Rise for Notifying Partner of an S.T.D.
Probably the meanest thing you can say about someone's start-up is something along the lines of "Wow, we are really stretching the definition of a start-up here, huh?"
My 1999 startup did not fail because I made the wrong bet about the ancient IRC protocol. IRC isn't "growing" just because you stuck a web front end on it and started counting page views. Like I said, the overwhelming majority of your users could care less what the protocol is behind it.

You are the opposite of right; IRC is dying, and will be replaced with web chat systems with backend protocols nobody thinks about.
Personally, the meanest thing that has been said about TimmyOnTime - http://www.timmyontime.com - (a project monitoring app that works with IM) is that it has an old smell of an IRC bots written back in 1998.
A few months ago I convinced my team to start to use 37signals' Campfire to be able to communicate with each other, especially when someone was away from the office. It worked great for the first week, then after that people gradually started to 'forget' to log in, until in a few weeks time I was the only one logging in frequently. So I haven't even bothered to mention Yammer to anyone else on the team. I know they won't use it.

Yammer is just like any other collaboration tool. If you (or others) don't bother to use it every day, then it's virtually useless. But when used by everyone on a consistent basis, it can become an invaluable tool.
i bet iceland would be an extreme example of this. when i was there, it did seem like a lot of native icelanders looked alike.
That's very tempting. Could be a very good catalyst for an idea I've had:

Been considering creating a web 2.0 type financial modeling site that wizards you through creating various types of models and allows you to collaborate with your colleagues.

Important features off the top of my head:
* Export to excel
* Ability for others to plug in alternative assumptions to your data (i.e. different scenarios)
* Generates a deck of powerpoint slides.
* Once the wizard has been completed, models will be edited graphically as far as possible, with the minimum of formulae.

Anyone interested in collaborating?

Anyone know of other websites that make it as easy as possible for a layman to do financial models without resorting to tedious work in Excel?
"Minerva was soon invaded by the nearby kingdom of Tonga..."

No, you're not.
I find it rather depressing. Comparing the harm something like this could do (cheek swab and blood sample) and the potential benefit against some of the work scientists are performing on their own, healthy, children (there was a post on here about this a few days ago but it seems my searching abilities haven't returned from their lunch break yet) I really don't understand why he hasn't received more support.
Survey on Top Level Domain Names and the Secondary Domain Name Marketplace
I would agree that the market is not purely efficient (in the EMH sense). But I don't think the inefficiencies are things that an individual investor with $2000 can reliably make money on.
Busy with paying customers (just released new version of BCC, putting out brush fires). Check back on weekend.
It's really useful to see articles like this. With something like git it's not good enough to just know how it works and how to use the commands. The real power seems to come in learning the new working processes that let you take advantage of its power.

I say this as someone who's just beginning to see the amazing possibilities with quick branching. I've started working on all new features in their own branches and it's really making my life easier. I used to do a limited form of that in Darcs, but I just ended up with so many directories it got unworkable. With Git it's all neatly tucked away and I have Emacs and my shell set to always display the branch I'm working in so I never (ok, almost never) get confused.
yeah but the thing is, I think of twitter in the classic sense ("this is what I'm doing right now")

Combine that with a work channel - eg "I'm currently putting a coversheet on the TPS reports" - then I believe it could be easier to co-ordinate efforts if you're company requires you to collaborate with others on projects.

When you add in the additional functionality of directed chat (via @) and the backwards compatibility of having it work on older phones with SMS then it beats out IRC, Aim, Gtalk, Chatterous etc - especially in countries where internet costs on phones is too high for a staggered conversation to be useful.
Some PC makers don't know what to do with netbooks
Yes it will be worth the effort. Alternatively, if you prefer a more modern book dealing with conceptual questions of programming in multiple paradigms in a similar spirit as SICP, have a look at Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming (http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~pvr/book.html).
It's time to talk about it

Living well is the best revenge... but selling ~$30k of the app that would never have a single customer comes as a close second. :)
Depends on the size of touchscreen you want - there are a bunch if items you can get started on right away

1) Much cheaper to get started than a full touch screen as well. n770 or n800 can be picked up cheap.
Note they don't use a full implementation of X and they use maemo widget sets.
The advantage of the nokia is that they have enough storage and memory.

2) Another alternative is to find a small touchscreen photo
display.

3) iRiver PMP-120 or other media playing device with a touch screen.

4) If you are willing want a more customizable platform I would go with an Intel atom based chip laptop with a touch screen.
I think conflating pirates and governmental invasion misses the point. If pirates attack, you can shoot them (and modern-day pirates, at least, seem easily deterred by bigger guns). If a state attacks, such as what happened with Tonga, you're likely to be attacked by other states if you successfully defend yourself.
Is it wise to contact the RIAA and ask them if what I'm doing is legitimate?
"Instead of talking about building these things, they should be talking about a factory to build these things."

You sound like a Java programmer. :)

(Actually, it sounds like a good idea, but I couldn't resist a bit of Reddit level humor.)
Complexity is always easier to design and with CS, it is easy to get away with as computers make it easy to hide from the end user.
Agreed. I also agree with the author that Git feels weird if you're used to a centralized VCS (e.g., Subversion). The fact that Git is respectful (for lack of a better word) of your local file system leads to behavior that actually makes perfect sense, but is nonetheless surprising coming from Subversion (as a concrete example, the first time I created some new files and then ran git reset --hard, I was surprised to see that my new files were still there (because I hadn't yet added them)).

It's like the old saying that anyone can learn Lisp in a day, but it'll take three days if you already know C. Anyone can learn Git in a day, but it'll take three if you already know SVN.
Review-time versus Defects-found -- which way does the causality go?
The nickel version of A Random Walk Down Wall Street (which many folks here have recommended) is on Philip Greenspun's site:

http://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/money

I'd like to call out one small part of that essay:

"In every office there is at least one sorry loser checking the market every ten minutes, going home at night to read financial reports, running charts, and buying software to manage his complex portfolio. If he were a managing a $10 billion mutual fund, perhaps this effort would be worth it. But to try to beat the index by 2% with a portfolio of $50,000? That's $1,000 extra/year. Even assuming that he can get that extra 2%, he would have earned far more per hour working the night shift at the local 7-Eleven. Your time is valuable. If you must be greedy, then be greedy and smart and take a consulting job. Or enjoy the extra time with your friends and family. Don't waste it trying to beat the market."
It's worse than using Builder for XML templates. Builder rocks- it is much more concise and comprehensible. http://builder.rubyforge.org/

xml.form {
xml.label "zipcode"
xml.input :type => 'text', :name => "zipcode'
xml.input :type => 'submit'
}
That's a classic though still very popular among mean people.
I once worked for a company where we used it to parse source code (COBOL in this case -- a BIG market full of unmaintainable code), let people restructure it graphically, and then the system would regenerate new source code. The generation of solutions from a database of facts is one area where Prolog really shines and that's what I love most about it. It's definitely a "here's a bunch of data, here's my starting point, over there is my desired ending point, now get me from here to there and I don't care how you do it as long as it's valid" programming language. Plus, I love that a Prolog application is, in many respects, nothing more than a side effect of a proof being generated.

I also once used it in a startup for an system that could dynamically generate complex application user interfaces depending on individual users' profiles and preferences, but we ended-up scrapping that feature.
we got this one: "IF YOU TYPE TO ME ONE MORE TIME I’LL SUE YOUR BUTT OFF OF THIS COUNTRY!!!"
It's more start than up.
Nitpick: Barcelona-Madrid-Lisbon is a poor way to sample the Iberian peninsula. Geographical features and historical events divide the territory in bands along a NW-SE axis (roughly Atlantic vs Mediterranean).

Two interesting sample spots that are lost in this NE-SW sample would be the Basque country (a pre-indoeuropean culture) and Galicia-Asturias (remains of celtic culture, colonized by Swabs[1], as opposed to West Goths, after the fall of the Roman Empire, and never conquered by the Muslims).

Another reason why these would be interesting would be that Irish celtic legends say that their people come from the north of the Iberian peninsula.

[1] The Swabs also occupied territories in northern Italy. This might explain why Portugal (originally a Galician county) seems closer to Italy than (West Goth) Madrid and Barcelona.
You get a gold star for pedantry but if those risks aren't already covered by your home/apartment insurance, that should be the first thing you purchase.

If you don't have enough space to store extra rice and underwear, you're unlikely to have sufficient assets to invest in the first place.
> Do you want a 20% chance at $20 million or a 1% chance at $500 million?

The answer depends on whether I have $1M already. If I don't, a 20% chance at $20M is worth more to me than a 1% chance at $500M.

It also depends on how many bets I'm making. If I've got a couple of reasonably likely shots at $20M, at shot at $500M is more valuable to me than another shot at $20M. If I don't have any other big bets or only have 1% shots at $500M, a lower-risk, lower-reward bet is more valuable.

Expected value calculations don't tell the whole story. (Or, if you'd prefer, they only tell the whole story in a very constrained situation that almost none of us are in.)

BTW - Microsoft started paying dividends when that became a tax-advantaged way for Gates to get money out of Microsoft. He's the poster-child for "the rich don't pay taxes" and none of the "tax the rich" proposals affect that. (Almost none of his estate is subject to the estate tax that he supports.)
SBCL set out to make a version of CMUCL that was easier to build and maintain. I'm pretty sure that was delivered.

But of course that's not of much interest to the average user. I think SBCL is in general faster, is developed more actively, has more features that are relevant in the modern world (eg. lose a Motif interface, gain native threads), and currently runs on more platforms than CMUCL does.

My impression is that most people using CMUCL are ones who started using it 10 years ago and are comfortable with it, new users would tend to go with SBCL. But I'm biased, so it's quite possible that there are real and substantial reasons to prefer CMUCL.
The efficient market hypothesis says that you cannot predict stock returns using past prices and indicators; future price movements are due to news. Since news are unpredictable (by definition), returns are random.

In October 2008 there were some pretty shocking news and the market went down. I don't see how that invalidates the hypothesis.

EMH might have its weaknesses, and it might be even seriously flawed. But it's not invalidated because there was a crash or because people do "irrational" things, unless this irrationality is predictable.

(I believe the definition of "news" must be a bit wide for the hypothesis to work. If a big investor changes his mind about his risk tolerance and decides to sell a big chunk of stock, this is "news".)
Relationships. Why would you go through applying, having smart enough things to say to get chosen, and then "run off" with a "bounty" of 10-15k, while at the same time burning bridges to an extremely helpful and influential network of people (and possible future investors)? YC's benefits are scarcely about the money.
I only do that if the "bugfix" is miniscule; I've forgotten stashes, and had severely painful efforts to merge them back in. Now I only stash for a very brief period of time.

Otherwise, I use a new topic branch instead of stashing. Branching takes so little effort.
Hacker News is still different to Digg and Reddit because those sites have a sense of humor.
So what if they ask a neighboring govt for help?

Of course, if you think that one must respond positively to such requests, I could use $100.
They get there by combination: displacement, large surface area (the wings) and boyancy...

I saw very little in the way of outright wrong answers (apart from the pressurized rubbish and the 1 or 2 "floats in air" answers :P)... being a bit unfair perhaps... :(
Elevate Web Design at the University Level
I think everyone in the office just had a good laugh.

They are missing blinking bright vivid colors.
This isn't about PHP winning, it's about Ruby on Rails not winning, ie: losing.

Obviously C# beats the pants of both of these hippy languages so the argument is moot anyway.
I bypassed most of the article, but as for the favicon, I think it's an improvement. The previous blue lower-case 'g' was just bad. This syncs with the colors of their logo, and is distinctive.
Congrats David and Christian.
The interesting bit in the article is this:

"The new favicon is based on a design sent in by André Resende, a computer science undergraduate student at the University of Campinas in Brazil."
but you had to laugh at the "it's on a sandbar" answer.
The counterexample for bad rules in "The Knack" was the CEO of JetBlue, who served as the author's flight attendant on one of his flights; apparently, he used to do that a lot.
> Is total laissez-faire at all desirable?

Why do you care if someone else picks that option?

> You'll get drug dealing. Maybe there'll be polygamous Mormons.

So what?

Even if you choose to live in one of those societies, you don't have to deal (or use) drugs or "marry different".

If your choices are actually superior, you'll prevail over those who made different ones. Why isn't that enough? And, if your choices are not actually better, why are you unwilling to let them prevail....
The rise and fall of the metal airship
The article is interesting, even if the headline is totally irrelevant.
This isn't an inefficiency. It's a clear-cut case of a CSR being prevented from accessing their common sense. When someone calls up and says "I just survived a crash on a flight you booked me on", common sense says you don't ask for money.

I'm disinclined to cut them slack for this.
I have to say I was hoping to see a little more magic in there. I've only been using Git for two weeks, feel like I still don't have my head completely around it, and the only thing covered I didn't know about was "stash".
This was not actually said about my startup but a good friend of mine’s startup, before he even got a chance to finish introducing his startup to his former class mates one of them said: ‘Wow that’s cute!’ They all replied ‘Yeah that’s very nice!’

2 years later he had $20M in the bank and had employed 3 of those friends.
Recursion: do you know about recursion?
Difficult to say, but personally, I don't think the logo works that well. The most distinctive logos are usually made up of clearly defined lines with a very clear symmetrical shape, for example the Nazi Party or Mercedes Benz, or even the YCombinator logo.

The new google logo is okay, but it's a bit too mixed up.
Microsoft to offer Windows 7 free to Vista customers
Talk with a lawyer. Some things are under copyright, some aren't, and in some cases it isn't clear, for various definitions of "not clear".

Gather your content appropriately.

Also, find out what your obligations are if someone brings a complaint.

Design your processes appropriately.
I don't think you're right there. When a person with no vested interest is mean to your startup, it usually means you are having a communication or branding problem.
One of worst thing I have ever experienced was this comment on my profile on versiontracker:

This was the lamest thing I've ever tried. It starts by popping up disjointed out of place overlapping windows then an alert box pops up telling me that I don't have a 64MB video card just to make it appear to be an advanced piece of software, sorry I only have a Radeon 7000 32MB and that my computer isn't good enough for this piece of shit software. The UI is crap, it's way too buggy to take seriously and it's down right ugly. I felt like I had a red headed step-child with head lice on my computer. It does work great with AppZapper.

You are no PhotoShop, keep dreaming. I really hate when people spew things that just aren't true.
Argh, everything will look blue after wearing those.
The worst part of that story is that his friends probably didn't mean it. Probably the meanest thing is people that don't believe in what you're doing but don't want to say it. They think it will discourage you. So, you go on thinking "well, they liked it at least" when they didn't. That's bad.
Since we launched on Techcrunch, we were barraged with criticism. Some of it was constructive, some not so much. Honestly, none of it bothered me or my cofounder (tdavis) as we laughed up the ugly and took the rest as free consulting.

Except the comment about our passion - questioning how we could devote so much time to "making [tickets] a bit cheaper". As PG pointed out, it's never been about the tickets, it's about the event themselves. Think about the top 20 moments in your life, chances are one of them occurred at a sporting event, concert or show. That's why I love what I do. Oh and because all that stuff is now a tax write-off for me :).

Unfortunately, the link is to Hacker News:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=268339
Telegraph suggests that biblical jubilee may be the answer to the debt crisis.
Repeat of http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=441705
It probably isn't as simple as that, but in this case the downside of failure was nothing more than wasted time while the upside was a possible insight into a disease that had eluded diagnosis.

What is more troubling to me is the part of the article stating that he used this to justify canceling the MRI that had been advised by a doctor. I don't have much of a problem with people looking to unconventional medicine when areas that have been well researched have failed. This is especially true when the unconventional methods might have some basis for working and just haven't been studied enough. The problems often start, however, when people turn away from established medicine in favor of the untested methods. I know that he had reservations about that MRI beforehand, but using the gene sequencing to justify canceling the MRI seems to be a step in the wrong direction.
Connecting Apple's iPhone to Google's cloud computing offerings
To the extent that the recession is to blame, I think the cause is that tech books are largely a luxury item. So much really good information and support is available online, and often your $60 investment gets you flawed or out-of-date information. Plus you can't search or copy+paste from dead trees.

I love programming books, but I can do without buying them, for the most part, without a significant impact.
How is large surface area (of the wings) a distinct part of the answer from displacement (of all parts of the plane under the waterline)?
I'm in a similar position in that I'm a software guy and I recently started a hardware project, although I probably have less web dev experience and quite a bit more C experience. As others here have mentioned, check out http://sparkfun.com. From what I understand, Atmel microcontrollers are pretty widely used. (A microcontroller is basically a CPU with peripherals and RAM all bundled onto a single chip.) I bought a little SAM7 board and it has been working pretty well for me.

My app isn't as complex as yours, and I have found debugging to be quite difficult. If you're programming at the microcontroller level, you probably will end up needing a hardware debugger of some kind. I got a little JTAG unit, although I haven't made much use of it yet.

In summary, these embedded projects are certainly doable, but you're going to have to put a lot of time into it. It also helps if you find someone who's already done this kind of thing to talk to.
Yammer ups bet on the “Twitter for business” market
That one hurts! It's ok to attack ideas, functionalities, bad design, ugly UI but the guts of the founders... that is really really mean.
Rochester Podiatry - Massimo Pietrantoni DPM FACFAS - Rochester, NY
Rochester Podiatry LLP is headed by Massimo Pietrantoni and is located in Rochester, New York. It specializes in extracorporeal shockwave therapy, diabetic shoe dispensing, podiatric medicine, custom orthotics and foot surgery. Rochester Podiatry LLP is headed by Massimo Pietrantoni and is located in Rochester,
Did you type to him one more time?
I wonder how useful the algorithms used in those online 20 questions games such as 20q.net or akinator.com would be for diagnosing these sorts of rare diseases. The 20 questions games seem to be able to guess even extremely obscure objects or characters, so it seems as though it might be a useful tool for doctors in cases where the diagnosis is difficult. Obviously, a tool such as this would not be able to actually make a diagnosis itself, but it seems like it might be an extremely useful aid to doctors who are facing rare and obscure conditions.