skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm not a VC, but I don't see how most successful startups seemed like bad ideas. Google was entering a crowded field, but the field sucked (still does, actually) and Google was obviously superior early on. As for Paypal, do you remember mailing checks after winning Ebay auctions back in the 90s? As for Youtube, do you remember what it was like to share videos in 2004? Enough said. Dropbox was about unbreaking broken informal filesharing via email that everybody did at the time, an obvious improvement. Evernote was to Dropbox what notes were to files (I still have an ancient set of emails with every address, employers address, etc I've ever had, and it's extremely awkward). And did anyone else think it was odd to pay outrageous sums of money to make international phone calls when you could IM anywhere for the cost of an internet connection before Skype existed? Or that it was odd to have to buy a bundle of cable channels to watch shows at times chosen by someone other than yourself over the same internet connection your cable modem used (before Hulu and Netflix, that is)?

I wanted all of those services before they existed, which to me says that they never seemed to be bad ideas, unless you were unduly afraid of implementation/regulatory difficulties. It may not have been obvious which competitor was going to win, but it seemed likely without the benefit of hindsight that somebody would.

Facebook and Twitter seemed like fundamentally bad ideas to me at the time (in fact, they still do, but the world appears to disagree), and I just don't get instagram, but those are the exceptions that prove the rule.
Sorry I wasn't clear, I didn't mean to say this is used to cover young married couples, I meant to say that because these frontier states have histories of young marriages, that they have liberal laws in regards to age of consent.
Good to Great Copywriting in 24 Hours
interesting question

[although i think from the way you use "keep" you've misunderstood slightly what's happening here. "old" in this article means that it is a long way away and so is observed as it was a long time ago (light takes time to travel from the galaxy to our telescope) and so the galaxy we are seeing is actually [as it was when it was] new. in general, it is expected that galaxies start off as amorphous blobs and (some) become spiral-like as they get older (simplifying hugely). the problem here is that this galaxy [as we see it] is so new (which the article calls "old"!) that it hasn't had time to become such a nice-looking spiral. so it's not "keeping form" as much as "achieving form too early".]

anyway, back to the question. you can divide astronomy into two halves. there's the serendipitous "interesting object" work, like this paper, and then there's the "survey" work. the two are complementary - detailed studies turn up new ideas but can be very misleading (due to chance - this is a good example, where it seems that something looks "mature" simply because it has been disrupted in a way that, accidentally, makes it look like something it is not). in contrast, surveys give us reliable knowledge of how things work "on average", so are more reliable, but take more time and are very "broad brush" (and usually rely on the earlier detailed work for a "focus").

my guess is that a terra-forming (well, galaxy forming) civilization could mislead the former, but not the latter. this is because the universe is very big :o) - the aliens would need time travel and / or faster than light travel (arguably the same thing and generally considered unlikely) in order to affect large volumes of the observable universe. particularly if they took a reasonable time to evolve (you could argue that galaxies need to form and "settle down" before things are stable enough for live to evolve to such a level).
Stash this: "Remember to sign up to Memstash" :)
The important question is, can this be changed? Several processes involving randomness generates power law but with appropriate understanding and interference, these processes can yield either less drastic function or a bigger constant. The challenge is to understand exactly where, how and why our intuition fails and correct for that.
Hmm. Imagine Usain bolt to running with these glasses.
> You can't try to refute only some of my points and not others.

Of course I can. I chose only those points where your logical errors were most obvious.

> If your treatment is indeed correlated with a cold sufferer getting better, significantly enough, then yes, your treatment does in fact predicts it, even though it might not have been the cure. This is consistent with the definition of prediction being only related to correlation.

No, that is false. Shall I list the definitions for "predict" again, or will you read them again on your own?

> You also did not address my two examples of use of predict in laymen sentences showing the word "predict" did not have anything to do with causation.

You quoted some laymen who suited your purpose, while I listed the dictionary definitions for the word, the definitions that show that "predict" means to assert an effect based on a cause.

> Neither of those definitions have any semblance of implying causation.

Oh, really?

"to declare or indicate in advance; especially : foretell on the basis of observation, experience, or scientific reason"

A prediction is therefore the use of observations of A to predict B, to show a cause-effect relationship. I see the disappearance of the middle class (A), and on that basis I predict the fall of civilization (B). I see gathering clouds (A), and on that basis I predict rain (B) -- and puddles (C).

> Observation, experience, or scientific reason can all be instances of correlation.

Yes, but it's a false analogy with no bearing on this topic. A prediction forges a link between an observation (A) and an outcome (B). It assumes a cause-effect relationship, one that may not be real, but a word isn't responsible for how people misuse it.

> Indeed, one description of statistics is that it provides a means of transferring knowledge about a sample of a population to the whole population

Yes -- an observation of a small sample (A) is used as the basis for a prediction about the population as a whole (B). Also, remember that "prediction" commonly refers to an assertion about the future (B) based on present observations (A).

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/predict

"(Verb) to foretell the future; make a prediction."

> Yes it did, correlation means you can use the statistics to predict it, even if it wasn't the cause.

Nonsense. Marijuana use doesn't predict an IQ drop, the study doesn't support that prediction, as the authors were careful to point out, and as the journalists were at pains to ignore.

The marijuana use, and the IQ drop, are only correlated -- one does not predict the other.
It's a matter of policy. If the higher ups at a company regularly service customer requests, and there is a consistent problem affecting a number of users, they can effect a change of policy. It won't necessarily help this particular person this particular time, but it may help both them and everyone else with the problem if it changes policy.
On the one hand, I'm pretty sick of this nonsense. On the other hand, it might be in everyone's best interest if HTC succeeds here. If millions of fanboys are denied their shiny new iPhones and Apple, which is rather well connected in Washington, finally winds up losing money due to the patent system, maybe we'll finally seem some progress towards reform.
> And you're right. You can't change the color profile like http://kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=86353

I may be missing something but I don't see how it's different from what has been available since Lion (and since Tiger with a SIMBL plugin). I've been using Zenburn and Solarized since what seems like forever.
DropBox is awesome - and I use it myself :-)

Before I used it DropBox was just another file sharing/syncing software. One of a whole stack of 'em that all seemed to suck in one way or another.

I'm sure that they all promised that they would be bringing cloud file storage to the masses as part of the initial pitch.... and I tried them all because, like you, I wanted this service before any of 'em existed.

Why did DropBox win and all of those others failed (or, at least, didn't succeed so wildly)? Why was it obvious to investors that DropBox was going to win, and the others "fail"?
Isn't part of the patent system, that one could license the said technology for a given price? It's really sad, that that the first step is not negotiation and revenue, but lawyering and "ban it to hell!".... I don't care who started it.
>It's been two and a half years since that, and still HTML5 has major issues. Given Apple's engineering prowess, I doubt that HTML5 is a priority for them, or else they would've had a great implementation by now.

Well, noticed how Android's own web browser is even worse in HTML5 than Mobile Safari? And this is Google, the guys that really like mobile html5 apps.

Fact is, it's not that easy to make a good mobile browser --heck, it's not that easy to make a good desktop browser.

Still, desktop HTML5 leaves a lot to be desired. Forms support is lacking, the audio side is neglected, SVG still lacks features and is not properly accelerated (even the latest IE that just got it is better in this regard), the client side storage didn't pan out well, typography is still crappy, etc. And this is for the desktop, that doesn't have the battery, memory and performance concerns of the mobile.

And it holds true for Safari, Chrome AND Firefox.

So, in case you're thinking Apple is doing something especially malicious here, well, they are not.
How are you even measuring "smarts?" This seems like more of a personal problem in terms of your perception than a real problem that needs "solving."

As long as the two of you are roughly on the same "level" in that you can have a decent two-way discussion about things you are both interested in; I cannot see how this would ever be an issue.

Also, your self-esteem takes a knock every time you meet someone you deem "smarter?" If that's true then you will struggle to ever reach your potential as you will likely either run-away or get depressed whenever you near your limits.

So I guess what I am saying is: This is an entirely a personal problem. You have created this problem in your head and that is the only place it can be solved. If meeting smarter people, including dating them, really impacts you this badly then you seriously need to work on that (maybe grab a self-help book or go talk to a professional).

I think this problem is far bigger than this one instance or dating...
There's an eleventh one, which should probably be given number zero for being top priority: read this essay and live by it:

Lesson Zero: Don't Be A Sharecropper: http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePla...
For me, Dropbox beautifully solves four hard problems:

1. Keeping all my documents in sync between several computers, so that I can pick up work on any one of them at any time

2. Off-site incremental backup

3. Sharing and working on a set of project files with non-technically-minded collaborators

4. Sending and receiving large files

Moreover, it just sits there quietly solving problems 1 - 3 day-in, day-out, and I never have to think about it.
i suspect that you're being downvoted because people are so eager to "defend" science against religious crackpottery that they forget how big the problems are facing astrophysics. hn readers these days are a bit gung-ho in that respect, while not being that bright, frankly.

we really do have serious problems in cosmology and it really does look like some new surprising physics is needed to make sense of it all. we can't explain most of the mass of the universe. we can't even see most of it.

this is all standard, accepted wisdom in astronomy (i may not be phrasing it very well, but any/all/most astronomers admit that things are really messed up at the moment - and this is from direct knowledge, as i have a phd in astronomy, although i know longer work in it, and my partner is an astronomy prof doing active research). so much that i would be more inclined to downvote you because what you're saying is not new and interesting, but what everyone already thinks...!

having said that, the general idea of a "big bang" at a very broad level - something dynamic and changing, as opposed to the old "steady state" - seems reasonably secure. although it could easily become cyclical or chaotic or...
How to Optimize Content When You Don’t Know Jack about SEO (Kevin Cain)
In Defense of Parenthood: new study shows children bring happiness [pdf]
> can become unbounded

Unfortunately can does not mean always will. For example, lock-free algorithms do not have any contention, ergo we can have concurrency without running into unbounded non-determinism. Please try to actually understand what you're talking about before being so rude to people. Copying and pasting the first thing you find on Google is no substitute for learning and careful research.
Empowered is the opposite of oppressed.
Get started on your Provisional Utility Patent to save your ideas
I wonder if they cleared thir backlog of 100,000 complaints from 2002? [1] Seriously, PayPal has had the same atrocious customer service now for well over a decade now, one email from a new CEO means exactly nothing in the grand scheme of things.

1. http://pub.bna.com/eclr/021227.htm
> "Can you split windows?" - CMD+D splits vertically

Nitpick: it's different. Cmd+D splits the current buffer in two allowing to view two parts of the same output without scrolling, whereas in iTerm2 it splits into two distinct buffers, each with its own shell.

I arguably prefer the Terminal.app feature, when I have the other one with window management like with Window Magnet, which happens to handle any window, not just what's inside the terminal (in which case I'd simply use vim or tmux splits)
How to Change Administrator Password for Windows XP
I have no idea, but isn't that exactly what Facebook and Google did?
> It bothers me though when people try to invent different types of intellect as some sort of consolation prize. Accept that people are different, life's too short to be comparing penis sizes all your life.

Doesn't your first sentence contradict your second one? Or at least the spirit of the two seems contradictory.

The multiple intelligence theory is fairly popular and to be fair it is fairly decent too. As you yourself said people are different and they have different skills.

Intelligence or "smarts" are just vague terms without concrete meanings. It is only in recent times that we decided to measure them using either general knowledge ("gameshow trivia") or mathematical skill.

But for most of human history I bet the most celebrated person in the village would be measured using other yard sticks (e.g. hunting, fighting, running speed, maybe even engineering/inventing) none of which we value at all today.
Where does she claim anything about morality?

Now I think I'll start one for women who've been influenced by porn, and lesson one will be: Twisting a cock does not feel good for the cock owner.
Beats Audio success is also due to need. I have two laptops with Beats Audio, and presumably they got a few bucks from each. When buying them I wondered if there's something special about the speakers and probably made me more likely to buy them, but all laptops have speakers anyway.

Glasses are another animal, both price and the cool factor are hurdles. Not cool > http://www.freetechnologyadvise.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/...
What it was like shooting the movie Sneakers
Excellent response, and it's also why the standard class called "List" in many toolkits (Delphi and .Net for e.g.) are equivalent to a C++ vector - essentially a smart array with capacity management ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/y52x03h2.aspx ).
For some sorts of copyright, that is the case, like for music.

A company can legally deny another company a license to a patent or set an unreasonable price for it. Normally it is in a company's best interest to license the patent, but they are not legally required to do it.
For me, it's been fascinating to see what huge companies that are flush with more cash than ever before [1] will do with that cash during a prolonged recession.

The most common argument for continuing to lower taxes on businesses is that it will stimulate the economy because the businesses will spend the money on their employees. It looks like what actually happens is that they spend the money waging legal wars against each-other.

[1]: http://www.businessinsider.com/corporate-profits-just-hit-an...
Wouldn't that deter prosecutors from going after relatively minor crimes that are less likely to lead to a conviction?
So the patent system would more likely get reworked when a favored company loses money in the lawmakers' home so that they can put their hands on otherwise banned products? Interesting definition of 'HTC succeeding' here. I still hope you're right, though.
British funeral director puts QR codes on grave stones
I love the fact that Indonesians only seem to use Firefox or Chrome. The rest of the world is playing catch-up.
As always, we're hiring like mad at Livefyre (real-time social as a service). We've built a pretty badass system handling hundreds of millions of monthly pageviews, top-15 US traffic, sometimes 100k concurrent long-poll connections. Python/Django, Java/Netty, Redis, Mongo, Celery, Backbone, Google Closure, Elastic Search, Hadoop. All kinds of fun stuff.

Hiring in BD, QA, Eng, PM (work with me!), Delivery, Sales, Ops. If you're smart and know what it means to get work done, we probably want to hire you. Lots of opportunities to work with big publishers and brands.

We're 50+ people and growing. Office is right on BART at 3rd/Market in San Francisco. Join us!

http://www.livefyre.com/jobs/
Get your fix of new music, movies, & books every month
Hey y'all,
We've just launched our new venture, Moshbag beta (http://moshbag.in) for all ye musicados, filmatoes, & bookies.

What's it all about? Every month, Independent musicians, film-makers, & writers from around the world upload their their new & unreleased singles, movies, and books on Moshbag. & You! Lucky You! get to download it all at the end of each month for a small subscription fee.

Looking forward to receiving your comments & feedback!

P.S. If you also happen to know some awesome musicians/writers/filmmakers personally do share this with them & help us out!
Apple is a US company. I can't see a US court backing HTC. There will be a loophole. Watch this space.
She says she dates men in their 20s: http://blogs.reuters.com/the-human-impact/2012/04/02/rampant...
Absolutely. And the licensing had better be cheap for new entrants to the market.

The important implication of stories like this is not "Giant Company #1 may be hampered by Giant Company #2's intellectual property."

Rather, it's "somewhere, someone who could make the Next Big Thing has just read this and decided not to bother, since making any device with a screen and menus and network access would probably get you sued."

This is exactly the opposite of what intellectual property (at least in the U.S.) is for: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts".
Put them up for sale on sedo.com doesn't hurt for starters
I'd say my partner is smarter than I am (in many ways anyway). She's managed to put up with me for... gosh... nearly eighteen years now. So I'd count that as a win :-)

Personally I love being around people who are smarter than I am in one area or another. You never make progress in life if you don't challenge yourself. K challenges me all the time. It's a good thing.

Why would it be a problem?

(In fact have some general advice - not relationship advice. If you are "used to be the smartest guys around" - then change your location. You are statistically unlikely to be the smartest person on the planet. If you're not hanging around with people you find as smart or smarter on one dimension or another then that may have more to do with where you feel comfortable. You don't get better by staying somewhere where you're already on top.)
I think there is a way to improve your chance of winning big - don't invest in startups that serve niche markets. Look at this list of YC companies from last summer:
http://www.quora.com/Who-are-the-Summer-2011-Y-Combinator-co...

Don't you think you can you pick out some that had zero chance of becoming massive-scale homeruns, because they served sort of a niche market? There are none that were obviously (to me, or apparently to pg and co) going to be unprofitable, but if you want the next Facebook, you're not going to get it by investing in, say, Codecademy, which, as laudable as its goals are, only appeals to newbie coders, who are a tiny slice of the population.
Can they? Judges have to go by existing laws, not invent them.
You cannot be serious about the "Doc Love" dude on Ask Men? That guy just repeats generic platitudes and repeats nonsense from various dating books. I'm fairly sure he is who the "Barney" character on How I Met Your Mother is based.

Reading that site was fun when I was a young guy but as you grow older it becomes very apparent that it is just the blind leading the blind. The entire site is just a giant advertising board pretending to be a magazine.

Purely in terms of dating advice I actually find female commentators better simply because their readership expects more.
One should do so irrespective of ethical imperatives. Failure to recognise and correct for your inherent biases (and we all have them; distrust anyone claiming otherwise) means missing out on segments of the talent pool, and so more fool you.
>> A prediction is therefore the use of observations of A to predict B, to show a cause-effect relationship. I see the disappearance of the middle class (A), and on that basis I predict the fall of civilization (B). I see gathering clouds (A), and on that basis I predict rain (B) -- and puddles (C).

You are using the temporal sense of the word "predict", not the cross-sectional sense. Just because you can use the word predict when there is a cause-effect relationship doesn't mean you can't if there isn't. Here is an example illustrating this: I see lots of graffiti in the town (A) and on that basis, predict this town has a high crime rate (B). Notice this prediction was made independent of time.

>> A prediction forges a link between an observation (A) and an outcome (B). It assumes a cause-effect relationship, one that may not be real, but a word isn't responsible for how people misuse it.

A prediction forges a link between an observation (A) and an outcome (B) to explain a correlation relationship, which may or may not be because of a cause-effect relationship.

>> Yes -- an observation of a small sample (A) is used as the basis for a prediction about the population as a whole (B). Also, remember that "prediction" commonly refers to an assertion about the future (B) based on present observations (A).

Let's say I am a statistician and after surveying 10% of the population, found out lower income earners are correlated with a lower IQ. I use this observation as a basis for a prediction about the population as a whole - that lower income earners can predict a lower IQ. Notice again, time is irrelevant.

>> Also, remember that "prediction" commonly refers to an assertion about the future (B) based on present observations (A).

A word may have more than one sense. I am talking about the word prediction as used in statistics.

>> The marijuana use, and the IQ drop, are only correlated -- one does not predict the other.

If they are correlated then you can use the evidence in the sample to make general predictions in the population (independent of time), provided your experiment methodology was valid.
There is no Android vs iPhone here. At worst for Apple, they let HTC off the hook and continue against others, for as long as they can.