skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't agree with you, but I am happy someone provided reasons for what this is happening.

My main problem with the summaries (I have more than one but let me be brief ;) is this: Imagine if I replied to your comment with this:

Summary: Sometimes it's useful.

This is what you've said, but you provided one counter-argument to my comment, one personal explanation, one extrapolation on what I've said.

Then you expanded your first point, provided an example of recent problems on HN and how the summary might be a solution, then you've answered my question.

So, you see, you wrote something with an introduction, expanded on the premises, and a conclusion. You didn't just say "sometimes they're useful".

This is awesome, it's content. This is a quality conversation.

By reading one-liners, or depending on them to see if you're going to read the article, you're missing all the little stuff that separates the good from the bad.

For example, the summary that I replied on this thread "gets" that an advice on the interview is about how work there is done, but it completely misses the bigger point, made on the last paragraph. The article isn't really only about interview, but life in general. It's about reading between the lines, about empathy and communication.

By the way, I've flagged the article based on this. The main idea is solid (you've got to learn how to read people) but the execution was flawed. Besides, it's off-topic IMHO.

And this means we already have tools to deal with the quality of articles here. Votes and flags. One line summaries don't give enough context.

Besides, if you're inclined to believe in the summaries before reading the article, who can garantee that it reflects what the article is saying accurately?

Also, summaries add nothing to the discussion. Imagine loading this page and reading how I made coffe this morning. Comments waste very little screen space and time (by design) (ugh... cheap shot I know ;), but why would I want to read something that:

- Doesn't add content to the article;
- Doesn't start a discussion;

So why have a comment that isn't meant to foster conversation, to provide insights? Otherwise, after my coffe, I moved a candy out of the table because ants were all over it :p
I have only used one ebook reader, but have been very pleased with it so far. I purchased the eBookwise 1150 a few years ago for $99 (now $136). I am sure there are bigger, better, faster readers out there, but this may be appropriate for a casual reader like myself.

The eBookwise Librarian software package ($15) converts .DOC, .RTF, .HTML and RB files to the eBookwise Librarian format.

eBookwise Reader: http://www.ebookwise.com/
Librarian Software: http://www.ebookwise.com/servlet/mw?t=book&bi=28181&...
Karma is a bitch, I hope he realizes this.
hmmm... maybe along with the title field, there should be another summary field (limited to, say, ~300 characters?) that people other than the author are able to edit.
I wanted to encourage people to read a well-thought blog post on job interviews and the meaning of free advice given there.

And yes: I posted a comment because without comments I wouldn't read a link in the first place, and others may think likewise. So that's my motivation.
First: Obviously even a one-sentence capsule review contains far more relevant information than the words "first post". They are not at all the same thing.

Second: If 200 new movies came out every day, the one-sentence newspaper movie review would be a much more highly respected genre.

Third: What does motivation have to do with it? If a cult of Cthulhu worshipers arrives on the site and tells me that their god demands that they provide neat capsule summaries of content as a guide for those of us who are deciding what to read, why should I care what their motivation is? Unless it turns out that reading their prose brings me face to face with a hitherto nameless existential dread that will haunt me throughout my days, in which case I'll probably downmod them. [1]

Finally: If someone posts an inaccurate capsule summary, rebut it. Such an exchange could end up being more interesting than the article itself. The reason I come to HN is to watch HN community members react to things.

---

[1] It is also important that no goats be harmed in the making of Hacker News. Their blood donations must be strictly monitored by ASPCA veterinarians.
My guess is teleportation or colonization of space, within a hundred years.
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For the company I work for (hotmail|live|msn) addresses come third, making up about 1 in 5 users. That’s actually more than I would have expected, and I suspect is largely due to the audience not being very technically savvy.

GMail just pips Yahoo to the top, both making up about 1 in 3 users each.

Hotmail seems to just magically disappear e-mails at random; they never end up arriving with our customers. Yahoo frequently “defer” delivery until later which can be very annoying when sending out verification e-mails. We’ve never had any problems with GMail delivery at all.

Following the advice on the pages below has helped resolve some of these issues, but if I were a user of these services I’d rather receive the odd spam e-mail or it end up in the junk folder instead of having to wonder if e-mails were occasionally going missing.

http://postmaster.msn.com/

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/postmaster/basics/post...
Elements: Twitter for images
A similar point of view is expressed by czech novelist Milan Kundera in his "Immortality" (http://www.librarything.com/work/2601/41486088), analysing the way people build their outwards identity by means of adding - or subtracting - attributes such as the ones you point out.
How much more productive would the world be if it didn't have to worry about hackers breaking into our sites?
Maybe this (or a worse) attacker would have killed him or knocked him out or something so he could better pose as them once he had the badge. Hard to say.
Have you read Tom Wolfe's "The 'Me' Decade and the Third Great Awakening"? He seems to think the 70's were particularly religious, although perhaps not in the traditional way. These things definitely seem to go in cycles, though.

http://nymag.com/news/features/45938/
is it me, or is the cows example more confusing than what really happened?
I think that he isn't so much arguing against having core beliefs as he is arguing against maintaining a minimum number of social identities. Overall, I think he is taking a rationalist approach.

pg cites being a scientist as a good example of a minimalist objective. He seems to be getting at a social version of occam's razor.
I subscribe, and if I can I would add:
- Multicultural experiences, when I was younger I participated in a Camp with people from various backgrounds (races, income classes, countries) it was really a big experience.
- Sharing, I guess in the near future we will be teaching to our children to be humble by giving, those new syndromes they're discovering of spoiled children who just had everything in their lifes and the parents lose control of them. I guess playing with another children also helps, and having strong bonds with relatives of the same age.

I am from a big family and I just see the differences when comparing myself to single sons, but I find the differences interesting, I even admire them.

I also wonder what are the influences of growing up in a family dominated by women. Anyone wants to elaborate?

Great discussion!
"Frankly I do not see any other significant business innovation coming."

You have a severe lack of imagination. Consider that while there will be N business innovations in all, there will only be one that will be the last. So I'd say it's more likely there will be many more than no more.
To get the most useful info for the fewest number of pages/words, I recommend 'The Little Schemer' by Friedman and Felleisen.

Although it's not recommended if you don't have a flexible sense of humor.
I know, I have only had two emails ever sent incorrectly to spam by gmail.
"The second difference between business luck and everyday luck is that luck in business can be created, whereas everyday luck cannot. You can't will yourself to find $20 on the sidewalk. But you can create a company that gets lucky more often than the average company. Indeed, there is a pseudo-scientific formula for creating business luck. The key element is this: Lucky things happen to entrepreneurs who start fundamentally innovative, morally compelling, and philosophically positive companies.

Why? Because lots of smart people will gather around companies with these qualities. As it turns out, precious few such companies exist. And the vast majority of human beings, and certainly most of the smart ones, are constitutionally caring creatures who would, if given the chance, prefer to spend their valuable time in a positive setting contributing to the betterment of society rather than in a negative setting contributing to its detriment. Shocking, I know, but true."

In other words, karma exists and it's social!
Why must a push for Linux always be touted as political and/or economical? Why couldn't it just be an openness issue? I see no compelling reason, at all, why government should use proprietary software.

...a government of the people, by the people, for the people, run by software of the people, by the people, for the people...
TechStars Model Seed Funding Documents
The other thing is that believing in natural selection is quite different from saying "man evolved from monkeys".

Also, it's possible to believe that God created the heavens and the earth, and that he created it 10,000 years ago but 14 billion years old. Similar to believing he created Adam and Eve after 6 days, but 20-or-so years old.
Beware of Bogus Stimulus Emails | TechJaws
Massive electronic bank run in September 2008 could have collapsed the world economy
The best way never to have to ship anything is to rewrite everything.

The best way to have a really good product is to write all the critical stuff from scratch.

The point of wisdom is to be able to determine what is actually critical and what isn't.
Marijuana Cuts Lung Cancer Tumor Growth In Half, Study Shows
TED probably has better access control, but I've gotten a press badge to a conference simply by filling out a web form and saying I was a "photographer from the Economist." Another conference, similar to "Foo Camp", I just went to the event site and walked in. Nobody ever asked why I didn't have a badge, etc.
What's worth noting is that if the bank did nothing with its cows, its net worth would have still moved from 200 down to 4. To some degree, we are all to blame because our society is what allowed cows to become so expensive. Everyone who bought a cow wanted to believe (and profit from) the myth.

[edit] In real life terms: anyone who promoted the idea that renting is a waste of money is an accomplice to this bubble.
Prog21: Puzzle Languages
How would you define ideology? As a person's current set of beliefs? Or as a set of vehemently held beliefs?

Argument is the process of applying logic to a set of ideas. It is based on the premise that logic alone can yield insights and both participants try to use logic to point out fallacies in their opponent's arugment.

If you believe that ideology is someone's current set of beliefs, then ideology is not threatening, as you have a good shot of changing someone's ideology through logic and argumentation.

However, if you believe that ideology is a dogma that someone viciously clings to, then there is no reason to bother arguing, as it could never result in the person conceding a point or changing an opinion.

I the former definition applies to most intelligent people.

In my case, all of my beliefs are provisional. I don't know anything for certain, but I may still engage in argument. I won't necessarily preface the argument with an in-depth acknowledgement of all of the holes I see in the beliefs at hand. Instead, I will see how well they stand up to my opponent's assaults. After all, I've already admitted to myself that they have holes, so now before I abandon them I should give them one last stand to see how they do.

A successful argument is one in which a) I discover more holes, or b) I realize that something I thought was a hole isn't.

Logical argument is quite unlike javascript where there are obvious ways of empirically testing a result. In the more abstract areas of programming there are massive arguments (see LKML, etc.) because it is hard to simply empirically test the result... the concepts are abstract and interwoven, etc.

To read the arguments on LKML, one sees that they are more socratic, more focused on the abstractions and hence are more subject to "ideology" being used rather than simple assertions.

So if you dismimss "ideology" as necessarily uninformed, you are asserting your own "ideology" onto the discussion.

What is a non-ideological argument? Is it something like this?

Person 1: I can't be sure, but I think there is a chance that A

Person 2: I see. I agree that there is a chance that A, but I think there is a greater chance that B.

Person 1: We both make good points.

Person 2: Indeed.

While the above may be an abundantly mature way to address A and B, I find a spirited argument far more informative. For the same reason, I find that it's easier to learn about the nuances of a political issue by reading op-eds written from various perspectives than from reading one supposedly objective "news" article.
Not everyone is cheering as Wi-Fi takes to the air
In the case of religion and politics, it seems more difficult to maintain a lack of strongly-held opinion, as attempting to do so puts you at odds with most people who have one. Inevitably, someone will try to argue that your faithlessness or lack of political conviction is itself a faith or conviction, and it may very well become one if you get pulled into that.

Meanwhile, the even the most free-thinking of the faithful in anything come equipped with dogma, which requires little mental energy to invoke. This partially explains why arguments tend to be the same over and over again--they've been reduced to dogma vs. dogma.
All I know is that he didn’t want money. He wanted access.

Which is why I would tend to sympathize with this crime if it weren't for the dangerous and unpredictable nature of such stunts. The physical nature of the attack makes it repulsive, but I would've cheered it on if it were a "let me into TED or I out <X about you> to your family" type "crime", or infinitely better yet, some sort of subversive and victimless hacking. Access to an event like TED or Davos is worth playing an occasional red card, and a person with such an opportunity is right to take it.

This is definitely a sign of a new era. Although the crude physical nature of the attack is repulsive and damnable, I'm glad to see that a new and flatter shape of society shall soon emerge, because the will is there.
Collaborative Books Project
Already posted: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=471894
My sense is that the karma police have about a ten-year backlog at this point. They're going to have to burn through the thus-far uncaught real criminals before bothering with the harmless guy who lies his way into an elite conference.
Some startups adding muscle in tough economy
Games and Cook's Illustrated are both recommended, for those for whom geek doesn't automatically mean "computers".
>"I wonder why he chose to write about it instead of alerting Kaspersky"
Because if a security software company cannot secure it's own data, they must be ashamed of themselves.
By making their shame public, the guy is trying to make them work harder.
Or RossM is right and he's doing it for "fame".
Different Strokes for Different Folks
In the article the "business innovation" was the Internet (computer networking). Innovation in such a magnitude wont happen again anytime soon.

That is the same magnitude of change that was brought by Printing and Manufacturing. Every other innovation was/is a byproduct of those advances.

But if you may can you please give an idea of the next significant business innovation?
I agree completely. I've discussed this with several other people and everyone seems to want exactly the same. I'm starting to wonder what it would cost to have it built to order. I believe there are a lot of asian electronics manufacturers with over-capacities right now. I know that's probably very naive :)

But isn't it possible to detach the screen from a laptop, connect it with an extra long cable and flip pages with the remote? The screen might be too heavy though, I don't know.
I was going to write a one-line summary, but then I got high.

Question: what if you smoked marijuana all day long. Would the antagonist properties of THC counterbalance the detrimental effects of the carcinogenic smoke-related metabolites?
Snarky remarks aside, I sincerely hope it's true. Intel needs some serious competitors and AMD is failing to be an adequate one.
The UK government. There's so much information held in their records that would be great to get at through an API.

Can I include all the bodies funded by the government, like the Royal Mail (for their postcode db), Ordnance Survey (for their map data) to name a couple. They're funded by our taxes, so why not allow free access to it?
On the topic of blue-sky research, I couldn't agree with you more. Both your assessment of the the how and the why is spot on. I think it's a shame, though, that the public was very gung-ho about doing away with the "tax" on telephones and computers, etc., but never considered the ramifications of reducing the ability of AT&T, IBM, etc., to do that basic research.

I also think it's worth noting that the longer the time-scale over which the research will become profitable, the greater the number unforeseen applications. A good example of this was Shannon's work at Bell Labs. Not only did it justify the eventual move toward digital transmission, but it also made possible a wide swath of genetics research. Now who could have foreseen that? and how much did those geneticists actually pay for the research?

As for the ability of researchers to game the system, and your assertion that the University entrepreneurship push is all for show, I'm less sure than you that "everything will be okay". I recently, as a graduate student, approached the office of sponsored research (OSR) for assistance in applying for NIH funding. The people in OSR didn't have a director and didn't know who was overseeing my department. When I finally did locate the correct person there, he was rather helpful, but I posed the question to him: There are many opportunities for both students and professors, but I had to find this one on my own. Why doesn't OSR promote more federal funding?

His response was that the school is actively pursuing funding through patent licensing and commercial partnerships, so the OSR has received less attention and has fewer resources at its disposal.

In other words, I don't doubt the ability of researchers to sell their basic science programs to federal funding agencies and the public as having practical applications, but I do worry about them loosing institutional support as institutions look more and more toward industry partnerships. After all, a congressperson might be fooled into believing that E. coli genetics research can help cure heart disease (a spin that I personally put on an application for AHA funding ;-), but Merck or Pfizer will be much less enthusiastic about the same spin if they don't have a lead molecule in 3-4 years time.
Except it does degenerate when you talk about Javascript/C#/VB/Java/Closure
Is openness not a political issue?
If true, very interesting, but the link doesn't point anywhere useful.
Wow, sounds like a scary horror movie.

"Is your family protected? Maybe someone close to you is an entrepreneur ready to burst. Concerned parents should avoid letting kids play in the vicinity of start-ups and other gang related entrepreneurial areas, such as Santa Clara"
I don't see how you've concluded that belief is a precondition to discussion. Do you only ever discuss subjects that you have a deeply-held opinion on?
I prefer not to have google reading my emails.
This is one of my favorite topics! - as they say "small is different" - This was known for quantum systems for about ~100 years but the laws of thermodynamics also defy macroscopic intuition when applied to nanoscale objects.

This article gives a great example.

For another example, the second law of thermodynamics which states the the entropy of an isolated system must increase is only true on average. It is possible for systems of very small size to display temporary fluctuations where the entropy of a system and it's heat bath both decrease.

This is like your car inhaling CO2 from the exhaust, running backwards, and combining the CO2 to give oxygen and gasoline which is pumped into the fuel tank.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluctuation_theorem

This process has real implications for how the cell works. Biological organisms are full of microscopic motors that do all kinds of mechanical work - like transporting molecules against concentration gradients, viruses packing RNA into their protein capsids etc.. These motors are all very strange in that they only work forward on average.

Another phenomena which is very different at the nanoscale is melting and phase transitions. Everyone is familiar with the fact that sodium metal melts at a sharply defined temperature. But it turns out that this "melting" temperature is only sharp for macroscopic sized samples of sodium metal. For sodium clusters (sodium crystals with only a few hundred atoms) the melting temperature is blurred over a large range of temperatures.

See for instance..

http://www.lassp.cornell.edu/sethna/CrystalShapes/CopperClus...
No, that wasn't what I was saying. There is a difference between having strong opinions and considering something part of your identity. You can discard an opinion if you get sufficient evidence to the contrary. It's harder to discard your identity.

Moreover, identifying as something doesn't necessarily take the form of having any specific opinions. E.g. identifying as southern (in the US) may cause you to have certain opinions, but it doesn't consist of having them. Someone who wasn't southern but happened to have the same opinions wouldn't thereby identify as southern.
you mean like two bouts with cancer, radiation fibrosis, a bone marrow transplant, and a double lung transplant?

http://checkonjim.com/
Isn't renting still a waste of money? I thought only a small minority of people are literally under water on their mortgages.

Housing certainly seems like a bad investment, but so is a car, and leasing is still a ripoff.
To futher contort the analogy: You're not reinventing the wheel; you know its supposed to be round an roll. Instead, you're changing all the internals to be a better fit for what you need. Wagon wheels are different from bicycle wheels, which are different from airplane wheels. All have a special set of characteristics, but everyone that made one didn't invent the "wheel" from scratch.
I'd say strong emotion makes you stupid. Emotional responses in general I think are more non-rational than necessarily irrational.
Husbands and wives are a special case. They know they can't afford to let a disagreement get out of control. You may be able to talk about controversial topics in a situation like that, where some kind of external force keeps the participants civil.
A life of fear is not worth being lived. I don't think all this overhead of "preparing" for those unlikely scenarios is worth it, especially since being in the situation it's likely you'll forget all your "preparation" and you'll screw up anyway.
Man to have been a fly on the wall at that VC partner meeting.
You mind when the robot spiders them? Idk, doesn't bother me.
It's a waste of money in the same way that the interest portion of a loan payment is wasted. When home prices are not rising astronomically, that "wasted" interest will be a larger drag on the overall investment.