skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"... has entered into an agreement to be acquired by Google!".

Does that mean that they are expecting some sort of regulatory review before it's a done deal or is it just standard speak?
Google Readies New Local-Ad Assault
This is a definite problem on expert. I had a few female friends in college who were insanely good at Minesweeper, able to clear expert more often than not and insanely fast (under 100 seconds). When I was trying to get better and would get excited to get a big cascade, they'd just chuckle knowing that it was just going to make my chances that much more slim.
Wow, I thought Meebo was on track for much more than a $100 million buyout. It has raised $70 million and apparently has a very large, active user base after all. I wonder what happened?
Thanks for the feedback, yes, we will include some great case studies in the near future!

I'm Rajiv, by the way, one of the founders. Please shoot me an email (rajiv at leftronic) and I'd love to help you get set up!
To me this makes sense as Meebo has really transformed themselves from a "chat" company to an "advertising toolbar" company.

They (for better or worse) absolutely dominate the annoying popup toolbar at the bottom of a website market.

Ex: http://www.slate.com
I don't think he is saying anything is "solely" anything else. Just that it's unlikely that #1 is the full explanation.
That's one way to interpret that, but not the only way. You shouldn't complain about someone potentially rushing to judgment at the same time you're rushing to judgment.
Introducing the Technology Bell Curve
World in Conflict - Complete Edition
This reminds me of a passage from Richard Dawkins' "Unweaving the Rainbow."

"We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here."
Worth noting that the Google deal had a big asterisk tied to it. Groupon was burning (and is still) through tons of money. There was a very good chance that the deal could have been turned down due to an anit-trust case or held up in court for 18+ months. Both situations would have crippled Groupon. Going public was just as big a risk as accepting the $6B, the former at least got the early shareholders a pop on their money for 4x what Google was going to pay.

I am still bullish that Groupon can become a sustainable business. They are a brand that the local commerce market recognizes, and with that they can package plenty of other services such a POS systems to diversify their income away from just deals.
Interesting... does Meebo have any patents? I really would've expected that Google could re-develop any Meebo technology for cheaper than an acquisition.
Yes, especially:

Benford's Law http://www.datagenetics.com/blog/march52012/index.html

Hangman http://www.datagenetics.com/blog/april12012/index.html

Yahtzee http://www.datagenetics.com/blog/january42012/index.html

Risk http://www.datagenetics.com/blog/november22011/index.html

Plus others ...
Sure, I perfectly understand how bars work. Like you say, it's totally possible nobody at the bar knew this woman was being harassed. Especially if this guy has plenty of experience being a creep and has gotten good at doing without attracting attention.

What I'm saying, though, is that the people around them at the bar are far more likely to be able to assist than a conference organizer who's not physically there.

"The point is that conferences should have a policy for how to deal with these kinds of situations. Those policies are probably going to depend on a certain amount of judgement from the conference organizer."

I totally agree that there need to be policies. But policies are just words, and they won't get the job done alone.

What will get the job done is looking out for each other. In social situations, particularly bars, we should all be looking out for each other, especially women, since they're disproportionally the ones on the receiving end of predatory/harassing behavior.

If she went to the bar with a group, every single one of them ought to have been looking out for each other. And yes, I've been in scores of similar situations where I and others have looked out for the welfare of others. You don't need to be an obnoxious "white knight" about it; you don't even need to be overt. Creeps tend to look for girls whose friends aren't paying attention.

Example: Your female friend is caught in a conversation with a potential El Creepo. Play dumb and introduce yourself to the guy in a purely friendly way. Heck, maybe buy a round of drinks. Just knowing that somebody noticed him will often nip things in the bud.
I don't think that (even) more developers for G+ will solve ... anything.
Simple CSS Grid System
Simple CSS grid system that works on all devices with only two states.
Bayesian Inference with Tears
US Navy hopes stealth ship answers a rising China
Being born talented is luck in itself. Without talent there's no true achievement, success. Random fortune, lottery win at best.
Freemium Ferrari
just a few comments:

- the cable for feeding your antenna is quite long. A shorter one would have much less loss
- transmission with a directional ant can easily exceed the allowed, effective tx power (i own an Alfa 500mW hooked up to a Biquad with something like 8 to 10db gain and 20cm feed... certainly not allowed in Europe).

- a circular polarized ant is even better for WiFi (multipath interference) but more difficult to build
And satellite surveillance is less useful these days.

1960s - we have photographed Soviet SAM sites around Moscow. We know where to avoid to send bombers in.

2010 - we have photographed a semiconductor fab in china. We don't know what they are making but we can tell where the fab is to an inch.
There are tools that support email integration. In PostFrenzy (http://postfrenzy.com), for example, you can take an email and forward it to the workspace you would like it to be placed in (the email address for a workspace can be seen at the top under its description). If you are looking to convert an email into a task you can click forward, enter the workspace's email address, edit the message (if necessary), then click send. If your workspace is already open in another tab in your browser it will automatically appear at the top of the list.
SimCity Social
We were early adopters of the API, and we still use it to demo integration of Splunk with 3rd party dashboards.

The beauty of the API is that it allows you to display relatively arbitrary data in very compelling ways.

For example, we have access to quite a bit of data at Splunk, from Twitter, server logs, etc. A lot of our customers ask us how they can use the data that is inside Splunk and present it in a 3rd-party dashboard, so we built a demo with Leftronic.
> I agree that Skyrim should skip the second screen, but imagine using the iPad as the map from CoD or BF3 - issuing commands to squads via the iPad while they control their characters with normal controllers.

I'm remembering commander mode from BF2 and thinking that if I had a second screen for something like that, I'd be in heaven.

Even if the functions of the "start" screen (squad/team/comms/weapons management) were relegated to a second screen, I think it'd be a big improvement. It's a lot easier to switch context in the physical space than it is to flick between screens with input lag and the fact that it completely obscures your view. It's a modality issue. You can't effectively divide your attention.
Guerilla Recruiting: Combating the Counteroffer
While I know everyone hates techcrunch and link-bait headlines, I've used my xbox as a cable replacement for a long time, and the recent addition of Amazon prime streaming and the other things mentioned here just make it that much better.

If it could get rid of the cable reqs for ESPN and add NFL it would be perfect for me. As is it is only a slight compromise for me.
I doubt the average consumer knows how much data is even collected about them, let alone what happens to it. Viewed this way, one shouldn't assume that they don't care.

Also, it may well be a 'minority of users' who care about privacy at the moment but this may change over the coming years.
Each type is on a different schedule.
Effort, but on what? Simply expending effort won't get you anywhere. As the moneyball example shows, you can help luck on it's way with maths and data.

Although I suppose if efficient market hypothesis is true, then even where you direct your effort must be luck.
That's the point of the joke.

In the real world you can build two bits of identical high tech equipment for little more than the cost of one - in military procurement the normal rational rules of supply and demand don't apply
"I did a lot of coke, and now I can't afford my mortgage"
The Bloomberg article you linked to as evidence was satire.
Nodejs in Production
If two random people were given equally fortunate sets of events in their lives, would they both exploit those events to reach the same level of success? Or could it be said that genius is recognizing those fortunate events when they come your way?
Looks like the site is getting crushed, I can't load the page.
>Unacceptable behavior does not suddenly become acceptable as soon as you walk out the door

Nope, but the sphere of influence of the conference organizer does.

>think that an unofficial meet up for beer would count as a conference event
...
>These informal meetups at a bar afterwards are still part of the sphere of events related to the conference.

I suppose so would paying a hooker and taking her back to your room or buying any number of drugs would fall under the convention organizers watchful eye as well? What about cheating on your significant other? After all you wouldn't have done either of those things there if it hadn't been for your attending the conference. While we're extending the conference attenders authority perhaps they should kick out those that don't tip enough at the dinner they have after the conference, or at the bar they went to afterwards.

You are trying to make it seem like splitting hairs, but it is not. The conference organizers only have any 'authority' over the conference and what happens at the conference. You are trying to extend that authority to basically anything that happens between conference attendees at any time or place during the days of the conference.

>we should probably try to do something

This phrase never, ever prefaces the right course of action.

>has been harassing me at other conferences, and I know they are likely to show up to another one, I may ask the organizers to forbid them based on their past behavior, even if it never happened at that particular conference

Sounds like a personal problem. One that should be handled personally, like, oh I don't know, choosing not to attend. You are now attempting to wield unrelated things as weapons against someone. Why stop at the conference, why not petition the airline not to sell this person a ticket? Or the hotel not to rent him a room? Or the rental car company not to loan him a car? After all, something should be done.

In your example, and in the event in the blog post, the group that should be 'doing something' about it is the person impacted by it, not the convention organizers. She walked off. She then tried to escalate her personal problem to others. That is inappropriate behavior as well, and it is asking convention organizers to police the actions of attendees.
Yes, but be wary of showing a prototype UI which works as if the functionality/back-end is also working. Even if you stress that its not, the client will understand that the functionality is already working if they can see it, and won't understand what you're doing afterwards or why the back-end is taking so long. Be especially careful with making assumptions about complicated functionality and back-ends, as they are difficult to estimate and clients grow very frustrated after they've already seen everything "working".
Perhaps we could draw it as the difference between "would pay" and "paid".

You can put a price on something, but until someone has paid it, it seems difficult to argue that the thing is "worth" your price... to anyone. But people routinely argue this, and others believe them.
This sounds awesome! Sign up complete.
How long do people think it will take Amazon to match or beat this pricing drop?
Accelerated CSS Filters Landed in Chromium
It depends on how close you live to a Redbox or if you stumble across them during the day. I only have to walk across the street to one & as as result have started using it a lot more over premium streaming services. They tend to have'm in grocery stores and other heavily trafficked areas as well. For reference I'm in the mid-west....
Ask HN: At what point is it not worth entering a market as a startup?
I had an idea a few weeks ago for a business/app/startup. Yesterday I found out there are both free open-source and VC-funded startups doing almost exactly the same thing.

As a technical individual without a cofounder, do you think it's worth getting into this kind of space as a bootstrapped company competing against both VCs and open source? I mean this as a general question and just posited my recent experience as an example.
Newest proxies-unblock orkut
Amazon Publishing Acquires Avalon Books
> Hardware vendors could already simply choose not to implement secure boot

You are right, but if we had an easily installable coreboot we could just ignore whatever comes with the computer and just flash coreboot over the existing firmware.

This is basically what Linux people have been doing with Windows in the past twenty years: see that Windows is preinstalled, boot a CD, overwrite the partition table, install distro. But this was possible because in most cases the distro you chose was ready to be installed on a whatever computer you had; the same cannot be said of coreboot.
Am I the only one who hopes they kill off that stupid Meebo web page taskbar thing? I find it one of the things killing the web in my opinion)
So I guess that means girls will be there too :)
PostFrenzy (http://postfrenzy.com), if you collect any of those items via email then you simply forward the email (editing the message first if necessary) to the workspace where it belongs. For a particular product you might have a workspace for features, another for bugs, and so on.
I'm with you on this Brad. This is also the first thing came to mind.
"then repeating and insisting on that mistake"

As they say in medicine, would it change management? Lewis worked for an investment bank and that is what was in his head when he made even the repeat mistake. Nobody is relying on that info to make a decision. Even Lewis is willing to write a parody (which was skimmed by people who would believe he worked for Goldman). To me, yes, it is a mistake but not a reason to down vote. Look everyone draws the line at a different point and for different reasons. Had he written "when Gates started Apple with Ballmer" that of course would be different.

"Calling the speech an article. "

Same with this. Ok it was a speech and not an article. But does that really matter that much?
No, but more users might.
Why not look into offering a premium platform on top of the OSS offering? What is the license on the OSS software, and are you comfortable offering open sourcing something you want people to pay for?

90% of everything is crap. If your market is underserved, then you have an avenue.
15.1 -> 18.4 is still a 22% increase. That's arguably "no effective increase" if you're counting per capita, but if NASA is the type of public good that offers the same amount of value whether population increases or not, I don't think a 22% is too bad. It just looks sad next to the other categories that have increased so much more.
I'm guessing the relationship Meebo has built with its customer base is more important than the technology.
For one, a text-based programming language must be learned using separate documentation or instruction, as the possible commands are not obvious. In a visual programming environment, the available commands are discoverable within the development environment.
Google acquires Meebo
Not using that technique, since it requires that you measure the phase of the incoming light. But there are some super-resolution techniques that might double a noisy digital sensor's performance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super-resolution Try the ClearCam iPhone app.
> "Shoot first, ask questions later?"

Because that's exactly what I mean. Completely. Totally. Absolutely. Or not.
I don't think a graph that shows what an income statement of a high growth company always looks like should be considered "stunning".

[Apple will be an exception here, but they are a very rare case, almost every other growth company looks like Amazon].
OK, sure. If your response is not "it's not the conference organizers problem" but "we should also try to look out for each other in social situations," I will agree wholeheartedly with that.

Yes, there are things that we should do while we are there in person. And there are things that should be handled at the conference organizer level, if there is someone who has demonstrated unacceptable behavior at the conference. And, of course, there is also the police level, for things that go so far beyond the bounds as to be able to make it to that level.

I was just concerned that a lot of people were saying things like "well, she doesn't have proof, so we should do nothing" or "well, this should be a police matter, so we should do nothing," and I thought that your comment might be along those lines, "the other people in the bar should have done something, so we shouldn't do anything." Sorry for having misinterpreted you, and yes, I agree that we should fight this kind of behavior at all levels.
Standard language. Mergers usually can't be completed until after certain regulatory reviews are complete. In the US, one of the most common (for larger deals) is HSR:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hart-Scott-Rodino_Antitrust_Imp...
Synopsis of "Cryptography Engineering" blog posts
Zed A. Shaw - The Web Will Die When OOP Dies [video]
I use a combination of Google's priority inbox and the 'mark as unread' feature. Anything marked as unread is a TODO.
Woeful, I know - and it really doesn't work, but it's stuck..!
It seems like you assume everyone to be honest.
Google Acquires Meebo
I have a tangential question: What's the state of technology that would allow one to see through the eyes of another? This would be useful for piano tutorials, etc. I think it could be done with a separate eye-tracking device and a camera located between the eyes.
Well, that's how Krugman would like to justify it. But, on the other hand, when it comes to politics, Krugman is a complete ass. (and I think I can say that in a completely objective manner)

There is no reasonable definition of austerity that can be satisfied in these conditions. The US (and various European govt's that Krugman has been blathering about) were already spending a lot of money. For the most part (a few very limited examples exist), their spending has kept pace with, and generally even exceeded, inflation.

When the government is taking at least as much of the country's pie as it always had, and generally even a growing share, it is simply absurd to call that austerity.
Yeah... still rocking my old white form factor. jet engines make movies suspenseful!

I generally love netflix but they broke the UI trying to jam kinect down my throat. I can't tell you how many times I accidentally press 'B' to make the menu go away and OOPS... full exit to the menu!
Matthew Green from Johns Hopkins has a great crypto blog. This summarizes some of his posts.
GitHub has released Windows GUI now too. It is really easy to use if you want to give git another try :)
That's not how jury selection actually works in this country. Personal experience in a relevant field is generally not a justification for removing a juror for cause. A product preference is not a justification for removing a juror for cause.

You can of course use one of your peremptory challenges (i.e, no justification required) on such jurors, but you only get a handful of those (1-6, depending on the jurisdiction).
I loved Meebo back in 2005 but they became annoying as hell with their toolbar. I always felt that product was more of a "solution in search of a problem".

Anyways, I'm happy for Meebo team. I'm following them for a while and they seem to be really good guys. Especially, their founding team.
Look where they were the first time that claim was made -- the Xbox didn't exist, and people were doubting they could possibly compete with Sony and Nintendo. Look where they are now.
Confusing picture of a house
This really amazed me. I have never seen anything like this before. Look at this confusing picture and think about whether everything is alright here.
As Google Tinkers with Search, Upstarts Gain Ground
I just wish Amazon and Rackspace would lower the price of RAM on their cloud servers
I just upgraded. Is anyone else seeing the icons squished and less sharp than the previous version?
>What did they contribute?

Sweat equity, most likely, for which they were rewarded with an ownership stake.

>I think the courts would agree.

Courts would side with Arel and Anton, should they decided to retain their shares.
Samuel Goldwyn obviously never worked in a sweatshop.

More seriously. Lots of people work very 'hard' for (what we would consider) very little compensation. Its more important to work smarter than 'harder' or with more 'effort'. (eg. Sometimes you also need to acknowledge when your efforts are leading nowhere and drop something - this might not be considered 'working hard' - though perhaps it should be)
The Microsoft Update mechanism has been used to spread malware
Using JavaScript as object code is particularly efficient though.
Meebo definitely went through its nine lives. I wonder what Google was trying to acquire through this purchase.
Tangentially related, Joseph Heller -

Destiny is a good thing to accept when it's going your way. When it isn't, don't call it destiny; call it injustice, treachery, or simple bad luck.

...

He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody.

...

Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three. Even among men lacking all distinction he inevitably stood out as a man lacking more distinction than all the rest, and people who met him were always impressed by how unimpressive he was.
1) My comment wasn't meant as a serious critique of the situation

2) Econ isn't my forte anyway

C) You have my permission to stop being pedantic and laugh

D) I switched from numbers to letters, lest anyone develop the impression I am at all serious

:) When you make bullet lists like this, you can throw in a smiley emoticon and it will confuse at least a handful of people

6) Hope this made your Monday a little brighter :)
Free booze and StarCraft 2, all I need to be happy.