skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Of course they are. Humor is useful. We tracked down a bug in our code the other day to one of the hard-coded internal constants being too high... It had the comment "I sort of just made this up. Probably worth testing." If it had been commentless, we would have worried by moving it we'd fix our use-case but break some other use-case.
By the same logic he kept the market in check so that it wouldn't implode catastrophically, therefore allowing banks to exist and continue their business giving loans to start a business.
look into caching rss readers. They're very nice.
You mean there are people who don't like freedom and opportunity? I am doing well working independently in my 20's, but I hope when I'm in my late 40's I still appreciate freedom and opportunity. I would think that new opportunities would be beneficial for me, my kids, and my family as well.
The value of what he did comes in liquidity to the market as well as the returns his customers received.
there should be a confirmation msg with the order id. you should also get an email from amazon.

run detail first, so you know what you are buying ;)
I think this is the third time I see this posted on HN. I'm glad it's not presented as a "self-replicating" machine anymore.
YouTube Mutes Videos With Unauthorized Copyrighted Music
Yes now youtube is trying a new way of combating copyright violations on the site - removing the audio, leaving the video. Yes If you posted Unauthorized Copyrighted Music Video on Youtube and it was Copyrighted than they will remove the Audio
from the Video. The official notice from YouTube under the video says the following: “This video contains an audio track that has not been authorised by all copyright holders. The audio has been disabled.”
Currently the project remains some way short of that holy grail. Bowyer estimates that Darwin can replicate about 60% of itself, and he even extends the Darwinian evolutionary metaphor to this figure. According to the RepRap website, "this is an interesting coincidence: we can make 60% of our proteins."

Sadly I couldn't find a reference.
I.e., http://www.google.com/search?q=%22ideas+are+worthless%22

How do you get good ideas for startups? That's probably the number one question people ask me.

I'd like to reply with another question: why do people think it's hard to come up with ideas for startups?
Wow, if I had gotten your cluster, I probably would have never left Dreamhost a year ago...
How was his trade unethical? Shortsellers are not evil. Financial speculation is amoral.
How could they live that long without integrating livequery?
It seems that Apple will no longer ban apps that might compete with their products
i do tech, while my "parnter" does business. at the beginning he tried to convince me to incorporate right away and investing money (eg, 5k each) in a company bank account from which we would pay ourselves (eg, 10% of initial/mo). the problem is that as a developer i'd invest huge amounts of time in a product while he used the money to 'travel' for business meetings. if things flopped i'd come out with 0 compensation and opportunity loss, while he'd have used our money to network (and possibly use the product in consulting gigs to boot!).

he's actually a good, honest guy (just because a businessman is strategic doesn't mean he isn't honest).

anyway, the plan we went with instead is to stay separate and retain complete ownership of our work and costs until we each meet our goals. then we join forces. my goal is to build the demos, while his is to raise venture.

having a good business partner is crucial for success. someone who knows the market, users, customers and can sell the product. no reason why he shouldn't prove himself useful just like a developer. my main point is that developers tend to be naive and agree to proposals out of respect for teamwork and simplicity. don't give up ownership too easily.
i know. the transactions are executed on our servers and it's the same as the user would be running them from their browser. I agree, we have to be a little more explicit about certain things. We have a very long list of features and improvements.
Internet usage in China is booming
It makes you sound like a philistine. I enjoy learning things in college that have no value for my future career. I love talking to people with very different plans from mine who learn things that have nothing to do with engineering. Learning is a pursuit in and of itself that is extremely rewarding, and I would never give up my college years even if it does cost a lot.
Youtube starts muting videos with copyrighted music
This isn't a straight-up integration of liveQuery. We've been very hesitant to bring in liveQuery wholesale because 1) It's quite large and 2) It's very slow (especially when you start using lots of selectors). We didn't want to integrate something until we felt good about the performance. The combination of the new selector engine and event delegation makes this a reality for us, so we're quite happy.
Now that I look in my code I actually have:

import matplotlib; matplotlib.use('Agg'); from matplotlib import pyplot
Apple opens door for Flash on the iPhone
RunKeeper and the problem of free
"As of a few hours ago, it appears Twitter have changed their API authentication system to block this. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted… We’ll let you know here if there’s any update."

less neat.
I've read a few books on junk bonds, and if they were a Martingale / pyramid, how come Nelson Peltz, Carl Icahn, MCI, et al, became (and still are) billionaires? They made out like bandits.
Being able to go around to my co-workers desks and get old WSJs to use as bird cage liner.
Neither. Let me explain: In a train timetable every train goes from an A to a B. Because we want to minimize the number of locomotives needed, we have to reuse them. That means we have to decide what connection a locomotive serves next after driving A->B on Monday morning.

Train timetables also usually live in a cycle time (i.e. it repeats after a week).

So as a result you get a directed graph with the 'A->B's as vertices and the transition between them as arcs.
Will that podcast updating app be approved now? Or someone creating a calendar app would awesome. What other competing apps would be good?
60% is pretty good, but even if it was up to 100% it would still have this problem

"the RepRap can replicate the majority of its components at low cost but needs human intervention to assemble them into a working device"

But that's not that big of a problem on earth
but how do you learn. there is little meta-discussion of the voting rules.
Why would apple change its mind on this?
That independence isn't something to "settle" for, but something to strive for. She writes like it's a result of a bad economy, but I think many kinds of work would be headed in this direction anyway, even if the economy were sailing.

Well, yes, the implication of the article seems to be that this isn't something people are freely choosing, but rather that it's being forced on them by our current economic state. Whether that's borne out empirically is somewhat unclear, but by my own anecdotal (and thus virtually irrelevant) experience, most people like having some form of job security.
In Germany Youtube has signed a deal with our local version of the RIAA. Youtube pays for using their music there.
"Most profitable company among the 2,000 surveyed".

CAD/CAE is so ripe for open source competition it is not even funny.
What's useful there is not the humor but the information.
Humor is still useful, just less evidently. It helps create a good environment and culture.
I can see no reason why not.
This article is terrible. They surveyed 500 people on the internet. Over a hundred people said they did some consulting work, so therefore America is a "Gigocracy". Seriously?

She makes it seem like a negative thing that people can't describe what they do with a simple sentence. As if everyone should say Hi, I'm Joe the Plumber or Bob the Butcher.

Then she describes the "penny-ante slog" of working three times as hard for less money without raises. From personal experience, I'm making twice as much money and work maybe half the amount of hours or less. When you start a new project or gig, you decide how much money it will cost, and if it's not worth it to you, then don't do the project. If you want a raise, then you raise your rates.

She makes it sound like everyone finds their gigs on Mechanical Turk.
"Unethical" was tongue-in-cheek. I whole-heartedly agree with you. Short-sellers are necessary. Speculation is amoral. Trading is war. If one does not want to get shot, then one should not go to war, period.

It's soooo amusing to see the big banks who professed "free markets" and "deregulation" now advocating that short-selling is evil. It's the "heads I win, tails you lose" kind of thing. "Free markets" are only good just as long as they're winning...
This is not an Apple iPhone phenomenon.

Why do people pay billions for mobile phone ringtones? People even pay for them on phones that you can just copy an mp3 onto and use as the ringtone.

Mobile phones have a fantastic built in micropayment system - it gets added to your bill, and you probably don't even notice - there is no hurdle.
Exactly. Some comments on this:

http://www.automatedtrader.net/announcements-1748.xhtm
Mugabe wasn't horrible, and that's what's sad about all of this -- the land reform was a populist grab that was initiated when he started losing his grasp on the country. He's shown over and again that he's willing to put his position above the interests of the country in the last few years, and that's what'll make him go down in history as a despot rather than a hero.

I've got quite a few friends in Zim and spent a few weeks there a bit back. All of the friends that I visited that are under 35 have now left, mostly to South Africa and a few to Botswana. More than a third of Zimbabwe's population has left the country in the last few years. That's far above par for brain-drain.

The coverage in the west is biased, but the fact that people were voting for the MDC, under fear of persecution, which nobody I talked to a year and a half ago when I was there even took seriously, says a lot.

Some of the inflation has been due to external influences, but it's also true that the Zanu-PF leadership let the countries agriculture and industry fall apart. That there's no food now in Zim is nutty.
I'm totally opposed to that. You just can't burn steps like that. What do I learn in high school? Almost nothing. So, I should never go to high school and "start my own business" and make money. That's complete nonsense.

There are plenty of things you can learn in college. If you know nothing about nothing, you'll have to start your business AND pay someone else to do the job because you can do nothing. This is starting with a handicap.

And... college is fun! You don't have to be an adult as early in your life.
On a related note, I'm kicking myself for not holding on to my HBC puts I bought yesterday. Guess I was feeling a little too ethical.
I wouldn't say that Apple has come around too much. It's nice to see them being a little more relaxed, but these are kinda niche browsers. Edge Browser is a full-screen Safari (so it's just implementing Safari with a slightly different interface). Incognito is a browser that eliminates your history on close. Webmate adds tabs. Shaking web adjusts the screen as your hands move.

But they aren't allowing a full scale, other rendering engine browser in quite yet. These all have value added, but in the end they're built on top of Apple's stuff rather than competing with it.

I'm not quite sure what Apple's reasoning is behind wanting competitors off their platform, but if it's something like creating an experience for Safari-based apps that's consistent, these don't threaten that experience. Nor do they threaten the increasing Safari consciousness in mobile web development (especially as Palm and Google have both adopted WebKit for their handhelds). We'll see what happens if/when Moz tries to get a browser on the iPhone. Here's hoping for a more open Apple!
As a developer I am very happy too :). Thanks for all the great work.
There seems to be some confusion between the concept of 'newspapers' and 'news printed on paper.' This post jumps between talking about gasping for air under huge debt and tree farmers going out of business.

The only thing I will miss from 'news printed on paper' is the crossword puzzle. My grandmother would miss the obituaries.

I am confident that the news organizations which do a good job of keeping government in check will survive, though the delivery medium will likely become entirely electronic.
Joyent Acquires Reasonably Smart
My god, that's such fun! I posted 'I Love you Steve Jobs'
word. i think you're right that taking the long view is beneficial, especially with a community mature enough or long lasting enough to take the long view.

i once looked into the prisoner's dilemma a while back. there are at least two stable systems (for repeated encounters): tit-for-tat (i'll do what you do); and all defect (i always lie so that i'm never the sucker). the former, which can result in cooperation, yields higher payouts for everyone, while the later, which results in no cooperation, yields lower payouts for everyone. even though an individual can "win" in both scenarios, you win more when others win more. neat, yeah? that's like birds in a flock looking up every once in a while for predators rather than greedily eating steady and always relying on another bird to callout a warning.
A Kindle trick changes the reading experience
CATO zombies get out. If you think about systemic effects then it is obvious that libertarianism is a terrible idea. Capitalism works based on the rule of the law and you libertarians can't seem to understand that in order to have the rule of law you need a subsidized court system in order to the make the law and you need laws which regulate how people operate at an economic level. Oh but did you not read that far? Too bad.
The last chapter was removed because (from the preface of the 2nd ed):

"The entire fifth chapter of the first Edition has been omitted. It was felt that the subject of compiler
construction was somewhat isolated from the preceding chapters and would rather merit a more extensive
treatment in its own volume. "
The Economist is doing well I believe, as is the Atlantic monthly.

People are willing to pay for quality opinion.

People are also willing to pay for late breaking news from the AP and Bloomberg.

In addition to the option of paying for late breaking news, TV and radio both give it away for free.

The papers are just middle men. They add nothing of value to the AP feed that they just regurgitate.

And their editorial work is not anywhere near as good as that of the Economist or the Atlantic.

They add nothing of value.
Semyon gives Albania as a cautionary tale, but a cursory look at WP reveals pitifully little. Anyone with more knowledge on the matter, aside of it being simply a collapse from an overgrowth of unregulated Ponzi schemes? Is it that simple? Finally, is this a textbook example in economic policy?
He keeps yelling "say something intelligent", and yet he plays the Rickrolling youtube video in a foreground window.
Interesting -- in the end, inflation is what will let us make micropayments...
Only the winners are remembered and reported. Likewise is the world of "famous" fortune tellers.
The downvoting seems to work well enough for that.

A min time after registering would probably cut down on the number of lurkers or new visitors who convert into insightful commenters.
What's left is local news, investigative journalism and intelligent coverage of national news. Perhaps 2% of the cost of a typical paper.

I'd like to see a citation on that "2%". I don't believe it.

What will we miss? Obviously, the basic reportage function of newspapers is what we'll miss--the boring research, interviewing, verifying, and so on. This is something that bloggers cannot reproduce without a news infrastructure and being on salary.
Skype legend Morten Lund bankrupt
Nokia to license Qt under LGPL
Other iPhone apps that make excellent use of the devices features for innovative UI are Ocarina and RjDj, worth checking out.
But as far as I can tell, there were more junk bond successes than failures. But I admit, when Michael Milken was arrested, it all came tumbling down for Drexel, and I can't remember any book saying exactly who failed with Milken's attentions.

So yeah, I think you're right, and even books can dodge the truth.
Are IM command-line interfaces for everyone?
The data is wildly incomplete http://www.ohloh.net/. They only include perl modules EXTERNALLY hosted to CPAN. They don't include any ruby gems hosted at Ruby. So Python looks huge because it doesn't have any sort of organized centralized repository that people use, same with PHP.

Bad metrics, bad conclusions, bad methodology, bad whitepaper, bad article.
Motorola Q Verizon CDMA
Motorola Q Verizon CDMA gives the best phone experience you can get on a QWERTY keypad phones, has included a high-quality speakerphone, voice-activated dialing and Bluetooth functionality.
Groovier Spring
Best shopping cart software ever
This is actually very helpful advice. I, an INTJ, often wind up worsening squabbles with my ISFP girlfriend because she "feels" things while I'm a "heartless automaton".
I agree entirely, but I have learned that some major airplane manufacturers hold quite the opposite opinion.
Actually, I do know one thing I'll miss... I'll miss the cheap packing material for my dishes when I move.
I'm really interested in the new Sizzle selector component for a framework I'm working on.

This all looks really great! If I wasn't so eager to make some core changes to jQuery/Prototype, I'd probably give up and just use jQuery ;p.

Great job John, Ariel, Brandon, and Jorn (plus all of the unnamed contributors!).
Surely; but suppose Paulson didn't do what he did. The capital that didn't go into his fund would have gone into other instruments that produce effects elsewhere (ultimately ending up in some conversion to value somewhere in the chain, big or small). The money made from these other instruments will be used for X purpose. The money lost is simply lost.

Paulson simply sped up the reaction. At the cost of the happiness of others, maybe, but it was still a market inefficiency. There could have been 1000 mini-Paulsons, each making 1000x less, but the net effect, as far as the market is concerned, is the same. It's just very indirect and detached from noble intent (but who knows).

Alas, they're all of the same mold.
A pyramid scheme always has a few huge winners. They're the ones who get into the pyramid when it's small. Depending on how broad the pyramid is, oftentimes everyone except the bottom rung (the retail investors) ends up as a winner.
I ocasionally find myself writing, "Warning: obscenely hackalicious hackety hack", or something similar. When I come across it later, it makes me laugh and makes me refactor.
Very interesting argument.

I understand the article to imply that we need more government regulation because the market cannot correct itself for pyramid schemes without severe devastation to the economy (the Albania example).

For me, this argues conclusively that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may have been the triggers for the current crisis but not the cause (in themselves, they were not sufficient to cause the crisis). From the article's analysis, the real cause of the current crisis was the lack of regulation of mortgage swaps. The trillion-dollar mortgage swaps is what amounted to the Martingale system.
There's a certain irony when you consider that Xanadu (funded by Autodesk) could have been the entire Web, now she's picking up scraps of that in Yahoo.
I agree that a lot of financial magic often adds no value what so ever.

But I've always thought that short sellers have at least one function beneficial to society.

They are the ones either whispering or yelling the king is naked.

The sooner and the louder they yell, the more contained the damage is from the nekkidness!
Frequently Asked Questions about the American Mathematics Competitions
We did the analysis about 2 years ago for a charity and went with paypal - I believe the reduced fees for smaller payments only applies if you open your account in the United States.
Seating on a porch and spreading a crisp newspaper with my two hands while sipping on a hot coffee. That I will miss, but certainly not the content.
CNN Spam Exploits Israel and Hamas Conflict
The market probably wouldn't have imploded one way or another; just that if it was more stable, the risky earnings would either be smaller, or take longer to materialize. (as before, I'm treading in a sea of assumptions)

But once the market does calm down again, there will be a new Paulson. Perhaps the day this is ever fully prevented is the day that humans become permanently immune to all possible diseases.
I guess the surge of college dropout IT millionaire’s gets to the head of lot of people. Besides IT and arts in general I don’t know of any field where you can drop out of college and not end up cleaning dishes at local restaurant.

College kids beware, education is the foundation of whatever you want to become in your adult life.
Despite the financial weaknesses, Seth ignores one reason why newspapers remain valuable: influencing opinion. Look down the ownership of significant papers - it does not matter if they cost money, as long as they create goodwill / influence opinion in favour of their owning tycoon's other businesses and activities. Their readership figures may be dropping generally, but if you go to important opinion forming places - parliament's private chambers, college common rooms - there remains a vibrant newspaper reading culture.
How do coworking sites like Betahouse manage this issue?
Summary: The next time someone complains to you, try to ignore the content of the complaint and address the emotion behind it instead.

It's excellent advice, of a kind rarely heard in the hacker world.
We give people the option 4 weeks "Paid Time Off" or 3 weeks vacation and "unlimited" sick (although you move to short term disability if you need 5 or more days in a row). About 80 percent of people choose the latter.

We also give 7 fixed holidays and 5 floating holidays.
Prado and Google bring masterpieces to Web
Healthy Open Source Communities in 2009
Obligatory: Larry Lessig's TED lecture on why remixing shouldn't be illegal.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/larry_lessig_says_the_law...
You agree strongly that it's whiny then quote something not in the least whiny?
I am just questioning the motivation of AlJazeera. I used the word propaganda after reviewing the videos and headlines/content on their english page (which doesn't differentiate editorials from news).

Some headlines off their main page :

Gaza Tragedy: Almost 1000 Martyrs, 4525 Wounded //the number of hamas fighters out of 1000 is not given
Israel hitting Lebanon with rocket fire //its obvious they are responding to rockets
Gaza now Israeli weapons testing lab?
The Afghan scam
Ahmadinajad’s Christmas message
Can there be any doubt who the real terrorists are?
So what have Gazans got to complain about?
What is Israel's goal in Gaza?
Fighting Within
Obama v. Washington mythmaking

There are a few balanced headlines but they are the minority. I also noticed they specifically chose unflattering pictures of Western government/military representatives. They even devote a section to conspiracy theories on the main page.. come on.

I am not just some spammer i read the site a lot and wanted to offer my view on why they are going with creative commons. Call it a conspiracy theory if you wish.
Update: Microsoft updates free tool to remove persistent worm
Just wait until you have a spouse and kids running around the house. Sometimes I need to go to the office early to get some sleep.
Google unwraps Apps partner program
IT learns to do less with less
The ABCs of CES