skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The US dollar gets some of its value from the awesome US military. Worse comes to worse, we can take stuff from others regardless of how poor we are. Its a self-destructive mode of operation and would be used as a means of last resort. (North Korea is an extreme example - the world pays them not to go crazy with their nukes)

A more positive source of the dollar's strength is the US economy and its resourcefulness and innovation (ie hackers:)
"They compete in today's society against humans in creative fields."

No, they don't. To compete, they must be in the same market. Chimps aren't in the same market as humans until you face a serious choice between Tom Hanks and a chimpanzee for your next dramatic role.

Frankly, "we have AIs that can build the next Casablanca" is on the other side of the singularity. There's so many possibilities at that point that we can't speculate. "Humans are reduced to twiddling their thumbs" is only one possibility of many, and I'd rate it pretty low for a number of reasons.
If their engineers and patent attorneys are really that well integrated, it's a sign that Palm, Inc will be one hell of an organization to beat.
Actually what he described is the basis for Fiat money systems everywhere. As long as the government demands that all entities doing business pay a tax in dollars, the dollars will be worth something to those entities. (It's worth freedom to do business.)

From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_currency

The unifying feature of all fiat money is its (typically exclusive) acceptability to the government for payment of taxes.

And yet again: http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Fiat_currency

Therefore the integrity of the financial system requires that there be a different ultimate form of backing, such as the acceptability of the fiat currency in payment of tax.
I wouldn't pay for angelsoft. If you think fundraising is done by submitting an online application to hundreds of angels and paying $250 to do so... all I can say is a fool and his money are easily parted.
I'm not sure that this is entirely the case. 2chan has been quite disruptive to the culture. Its enforced anonymity and subsequent freedom from personal societal retaliation is a very new phenomenon there.
Well. Storing anything securely depends on some 'secret' information. If you're assuming the 'secret' information can be made public, then of course, it's an unsolvable problem - you can never store anything securely.
Here's an interesting and related article about how some species of turtles also don't exhibit signs of aging:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/12/science/12turt.html
> if you leave your car unlocked and lose your laptop,

You're assuming that they didn't lose the key as well.

You remember the key; it's the sequence of digits and letters on the post-it just beside the track pad.
When was the government ever run with an eye on efficiency?
Okay, I'm going to rail into you. This is only because it will help you out in the long run

1) Your website looks like a slipshod piece of junk. It's a crap blog format with some images. Where's a video overview of the game? A column showing recent scores and users? A smoother interface? Come on, there's tons of things you screwed up on.

2) Where's the hook? I need a 6 word hook, a tagline, something to say "Maybe I should keep reading about this." Nothing.

3) I don't give a damn about taxis, so why should I give a damn about your game? At least with other games, I'm building a galactic empire or taking over the world. Those far more attract to imaginative personalities that play these games.

4) What's the reward?

5) Your logo's a piece of junk built with standard templates in photoshop. The lack of effort in your logo shows.

There's an entire lack of effort on the front-end and a lack of hooks to get me to EVER play this.

And what's the business model? Advertising is going to make you money? Not in this market. Freemium is dying.

This is jumping on an ancient business that's dying out rapidly. The Facebook application is the only positive I have.

Sorry if I was harsh. This is how I feel, and I hope it helps.
That makes sense. That's why I like disqus.com because it lets you track comments across all blogs using it.
Ohh, I see your point.

I think you're glomming together "the future" without being precise about the level of AI.

You don't need human level intelligence to replace drivers, factory workers, etc.

Human dexterity and vision are two aspects that are really hard to replicate that have nothing to do with strong AI. They will be solved first.

So when I talk about robots displacing jobs, I mean robots that are more capable than today's generation, but not necessarily a super AI. That's why the comparison with chimps was confusing: we were talking about different kinds of robots.

As for strong AI, I don't think it is going to be an "us" vs. "them". Humans will not only demand the best intelligence advancement medicine will offer, but will also try to merge with computer intelligence seamlessly.

It isn't going to be humans with guns vs. super smart robots with lasers. It is going to be strong AI with humans that are machine enhanced. The creative professionals in that future are all going to be part machine.

This isn't going to happen very soon. At least a few decades. The disruption from capable robots will start within 10 years.
What change? We have a trillion dollar pork bill getting bludgeoned through congress right now. Essentially the President said to congress "Just make it big, and make sure we have some token expenditures on energy subsidies. Otherwise, here's the checkbook. Yes, there's more than a thousand economists against this, but we're going to ignore them and listen to the ones who are Democrats."

So far, the new boss looks a lot like the old ones, except being black, young, and charismatic. plus ca change...

Also, sustainable energy is an engineering problem (unless by "sustainable energy" we mean proven technologies like nuclear, which leftists inevitably don't). No amount of Presidential hope-rays is going to make windmills or solar cells more efficient.

Rest assured, however, that we will give more money to corn farmers for ethanol, despite the fact that it is neither environmentally or economically sound as an energy source. Obama comes from a corn state.

Yes, I do hope he's marginally better than what came before. But this attitude that "I hope he's the one to make change stick", I just don't understand. There's only so much change you can make atop the world's largest bureaucracy.
Basecamp has a free version too. But unfuddle looks pretty good.
As another data point, here's what we pay for at TicketStumbler headquarters:

GitHub, Light House, Amazon Prime, ATT's Usb Connect (back up internet), Comcast, Softlayer, The Week (magazine), Wired, Quickbooks Online Edition, Vonage
This guy would have more credibility if the post wasn't filled with affiliate links. The truth is that the right combination services will be unique to every business.
I'll add that I went to Guy Kawasaki's presentation yesterday at Plug&Play (introduced by Ron Conway). As usual, great quotes from Guy, plus a free tutorial on twitter. If only this was taped for eternity to pass to fellow entrepreneurs everywhere...
"No, actually, I can't think of any way they're like Google whatsoever. Sorry."

You're right, they aren't like Google. Currently at least. From the quote he wants to become more like Google and foster a better community.

You're being a bit harsh.
Wait, 95%? ... as in, making $100 profit one quarter and then $5 a year later?

How is that possible? I can accept the economic slowdown being a contributor–but not to the tune of 95%.
> Also, here's my first law : "Anything that can be automatized WILL be automatized, whatever the costs."

The point of automation is greater efficiency and efficacy, not some fetish with robots. Your "law" probably does not hold.
They became down-right uncool when he didn't wear one to his inauguration.

A good jacket can make a person look good but modern necties...i dunno, they just look silly on an everyday basis. I'd much like to see the return of flowing Cravats. In the film Nixon you can see Anthony Hopkin's lead charachter wear one for Nixon's wedding.
I have never raised money before but I thought reaching so many investors for $250 is definitely worth it. It would cost me $250 to fly somewhere and meet ONE investor.

But like I said in my post, I don't know how effective it is. I will update my post in a couple of weeks with more information on its effectiveness.
The future of the web is small
I think you're glomming together "the future" without being precise about the level of AI.

Wouldn't it be absurd to be precise about static data when discussing trends over time?
Read the disclaimer on my article. Here it is again:

Disclaimer: I am sure you noticed that most of the links have a referral code. Don’t worry, that didn’t affect my recommendations or integrity (what is that?). I actually use all the services mentioned above. Plus we are bootstrapped and the economy is in the crapper so give me a break and use these links.
Ask HN: Ad Network that serves to Adobe AIR apps?
Anyone know of an ad network that serves to Adobe AIR? If air is even at 50 million installs that are actually running apps, this seems like a great place for a network to enable serving ads to AIR apps, I just can't find one is all.
Thanks. I really wish people would comment on the actual blog, so that others can benefit.
hey.quite a bit of this is online at sonshi.com, in the library section ( or used to be..haven't been there for some time now )
It sounds like Sugar will be an installation option for the foreseeable future; most of the Sugar crew is still participating in SugarLabs, and Sugar is on all the shipped laptops so far. OLPC is just no longer paying people to develop it.

Technically, there's nothing preventing someone from porting Sugar to another netbook (some ports are, in fact, underway), so it's a weak differentiating factor for OLPC.
Wow, your one-liners are really obtuse. I don't know what the hell you're talking about again.

You can at least admit technology evolves, right? It isn't static? So a prediction about changes over time involves phases of that evolution.

Robots taking factory jobs aren't smart enough to be creative.
> But smaller layoffs and career changes are just the cost of technical progress.

You assume that there are jobs to be had, that retraining is feasible, and that technological progress does not obsolete people as workers. Capitalism will not survive the intelligence singularity.
I've never really used any app that runs on Air. What are the killer apps for this platform? There must be something big if they've got 100 million installations.
Despite this being sort of a doomer rant, I really got a chuckle from the snarky bit at the end:

"I mean, we can't just give people food for free.

That would be ridiculous."
This is pretty ridiculous - it's counting just one website, using "number of submits" as the metric, and when they say "dying" they mean "at the same level as 2007".
Profit is down 95%, not net revenue. If they made $1,000,000,001 in revenue on $1,000,000,000 in expenses last year, and had identical expenses but made 95¢ less this year, then their profits would be down 95%. It's not uncommon, and does not necessarily mean that the economy's crashed--though it does always indicate corporate incompetence.
FM 3-24
MCWP 3-33.5

COUNTERINSURGENCY

DAVID H. PETRAEUS

http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-24.pdf
This situation works because you have something that substitutes for cash in your community... trust.

Cash is a way to create trust between two parties that don't know each other.

Without cash, if I walked into Best Buy for a TV, I'd offer to trade goods or services for it. Since Best Buy doesn't know me from Adam, they have no way to know whether I'll make good on my promise (they can't trust me), and so giving me the TV is a risk. However, Best Buy probably trusts the US Government to continue accepting dollars for tax payments, so dollars are valuable and trustworthy. If I give Best Buy some dollars, they are immediately useful in paying taxes.

Likewise if I work for Best Buy, and there was no money, Best Buy would 'pay' me by providing everything I ask for up to a certain standard of living. I'd have to trust Best Buy not to abuse this situation. It's far easier to be paid in dollars, because I can trust that businesses I buy from will value dollars... because they can trust that the government will value dollars (for tax payments).

The only way to survive without trust (either the real thing or via cash, which is really trust in a third party), is for everyone to be totally self-sufficient. Specialization is a huge economic boost, so giving it up means a lower standard of living for everyone. However, if everyone were truly self-sufficient, there would be no need to trade goods/services, and hence no need for trust or cash.
Actually, humor often involves pain - negativity is merely one form. The stooges combine negativity and pain.
Ok. Here comes another opinion.

Maybe Arrington should not work from his home to save money. He can't secure it. It's unsafe.

Maybe it's ok if Arrington has to hire security for his workplace. Every newspaper in the country does this because they publish things that would get people shot, maimed, kidnapped or worse. Arrington's stuff runs in the Washington Post and is very influential in a major industry sector. Why is he surprised that people would come after him? He's got money and can make or break people's careers.

Is the spitting lame? Sure. But welcome to the big leagues dude. If you want to call yourself a news organization and play hardball, there's a price that comes with it.

Perhaps this is more about bloggers coming up against the problems that face traditional news organizations rather than a new problem in the industry.
Even people who enjoy casual sex don't enjoy a history of casual sex in previous partners, and those who don't enjoy or do it disapprove even more. No one wants his or her kids to have a parent who slutted it up during college.

I'm all for "free love", so long as it's actually love and not lust or something worse.
Swiss police spy marijuana field with Google Earth
Financing, With Strings Attached
The PDF results are sort of cool, but it seems like just another meta-search engine to me.
I love disqus too :)

not the sense of community sadly. You want some form of aggregator that merges comments on here/digg/reddit with your blog.
> I hate to admit this, but I take pleasure in the thought of them spending their middle-aged years sobbing every time a school bus passes by.

Someone needs a double-helping of "It's not about you."

Your cocoon may work for you, but its not reality.

There's nothing wrong with being a judgemental prick, but it doesn't work well with "I'm just good-hearted and caring".
Am I missing something? Apple never actually said that Apple are looking sue Palm for any infringement. I remember it being a general statement about competitors blatantly ripping them off. It wasn't directed at Palm.

And I tell you one 'hell of an organization to beat' is the company that on their first attempt at a phone, came up with a device that everyone else are now following as the way forward. Apple have nothing to worry about.
Gloves with conductive fingers for iPhone use
Google and the Great Wikipedia Feedback Loop
Looks like someone forgot to add a 'break;'
Warehouses run by Gap, as well as Zappos and Staples now use autonomous robots to pluck products from their shelves and send them to you

I'm surprised Amazon isn't on that list... anyone care to hypothesize why?
Why not have a service that makes it easier to understand obscure sites in seconds?
Sometimes the creator of a service isn't very good at explaining it in terms that visitors can understand in seconds.

So why not provide a service that can be used as a backup? A user who doesn't immediately understand a site can enter its url into this service to receive multiple short explanations as to why he/she might want to use this site.

It's essentially crowdsourcing the site intro.
where are you based?

if you don't know any investors (if only by name) you're not networking hard enough.
The other day, I saw a photo of the President of France and his wife walking on a beach in their bathing suits. (!) It occurred to me that here in the U.S., we don't show the President with bare arms and legs.

Bill Clinton was big on outdoor jogging, and started out his presidency jogging in gym shorts and a tee-shirt or sweat jacket. But pretty soon, pressure from the press or a staff person made sure he always wore a spiffy jogging suit, i.e., no bare arms or legs.
I'm pretty big domain collector, and to be honest, I see no compelling reason to use this service. Something like Freshdrop.net, which allows sorting by numerous data types, searching, and the ability to get the jump on newly expired domains is much more useful.

Of the 10 most popular domains, only 1 (campdeal.com) is moderately attractive. I browsed through a bunch of the categories and most of them were terrible. There is also no ability to search a keyword and have relevant names appear.

I would be very interested in a service like this, but you will need much more functionality to compete. I think you may have opened up for review before the product was ready.
a super cool startup uses super cool services.
People do here.

Fred Wilson often says the same thing as if the Hacker News community should comment on his blog instead of on HN.

You could always provide a link to the Hacker News discussion :).
PROFIT != REVENUE.

It's not uncommon for profits to see significant fluctuation.

Especially in this market.
> True ladies don't want to have anything to do with them.

Keep telling yourself that.

> (Sorry, but it has to be said.)

You're not sorry at all. You have to say it so other people can see your superiority. Plus, you like saying it.

> the terms for those with strong alpha tendencies are "psychopath", "narcissist", and (for women) "nymphomaniac"

Wowsers.
thats not an answer :P

why should I use your service over theirs?
We're kind of forced to use Comcast :(, but they've actually been excellent. They were awful for me when I lived in DC.
Down for me too."Sorry, we're very popular..."
So why say it then? There is no other credible reason to mention her gender like that. It's a plea to victimhood, consciously or not I can't say. If you have a plausible alternative explanation to why someone would emphasise their minority status when complaining about being mistreated in some way, I'm all ears.

I'm not even sure what you mean by "trolling" so I can't say whether I agree or not. I suppose that if you define trolling as "saying bad things" then yeah, it's a bad thing. I suspect, though, that whether something is a troll or not is largely in the eye of the beholder. Many Christians probably consider the "There is probably no God" bus stickers to be a highly offensive troll, but I don't think they're "bad" at all.
I can't help but think that the suit isn't far behind.

http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
I didn't have so nearly a negative reaction. How it went for me:

* Visited the page

* Saw screenshot on right (thought: "cute enough")

* Read paragraph next to it

* Said "huh.. running a virtual taxi service? might be kind of fun to try out sometime especially if friends are involved. No time at the moment, though"

* Closed browser tab

As a potential user, I wasn't turned off immediately by much of anything else named above. I agree that I'd work on some of those things if you're trying to make a stellar product, though.

If it's more for a fun project, I wouldn't worry about the "bad mood" sort of review above. I've seen worse from games that I've enjoyed a whole lot.

If you made this into a decent iPhone game, I and my friends would definitely install it to try it out, just from the initial description.
> Interestingly, these robots aren't that smart.

Just wait until they uplink to US Robotics for their software update.
So how the heck can you recommend something that may be just throwing away $250 bucks?

Take it off the list until you know.
Add a guest mode, where I can try out the game without registering. Registering is the point where I stopped, even though it looked interesting.

Make sure you can covert a guest account into a real one by registering if someone is interested.
The download button appears to be broken for 32 bit Ubuntu 8.1 systems running Firefox 3.0 with Flash 9.
What Server Side JavaScript needs; Join in
Swiss police stumbled across a large marijuana plantation while using Google Earth
In order to break down tasks into next smallest steps Chandler might come in handy. http://chandlerproject.org/

No matter what your collections will just keep growing (if you do not delete items but rather mark them DONE) so that could be a little demotivating.
Ask HN: how much karma do I need before I can downmod stories?
How much karma do I need before I can downmod stories?
That's an interesting idea. What decides on the best answers to return, community votes? What incentive do people have to submit summaries? Could dmoz.org be leveraged or used instead for the same effect?
Workarounds are much easier than people expect. I was once pushed by a patent troll who wanted me to pay for some patent that I was violating. My lawyers told me that I had to pay and advised me to negotiate. (Lawyers seem to always look for the easy way out.)

But my brother, who developed our site, spent some time looking at the patent and figured out a way to do what we needed without violating the patent.

You can't give up because someone has a patent. Cleverness always wins.
For others that were wondering what the ?: operator is I found this after a bit of googling:

?: Operator Allows quick retrieval of a non-empty value from 2 values and/or expressions

$a = true ?: false; // true
$a = false ?: true; // true
$a = 0 ?: 2; // 2
$a = array() ?: array(1); // array(1);

After reflecting on this mutation of the ternary operator I am thinking that the use of something more like !? or ?! or even just ! would make more semantic sense. ?: implies "if this, then that" and what it is doing is "if NOT this then that".
Honestly, NYT is one of the few places where I was happy to sign up. They make a ton of content available online, and if they want me to jump through their one small hoop to read it, that's not a huge deal to me.

Plus, you only login when your cookies expire, it's pretty infrequent.
Done. I added a link to the HN comments in the post.
Thanks. Most of your points are very much valid, and this sort of frank opinion is very much appreciated. Naturally, we will be improving the site based on the feedback we get.
In the wonderful future I live in, we have non-iron shirts that look fine (thank you M&S) and dry cleaning services pick up.

30 seconds a day to do up a tie is a pretty good investment when you consider how many people there are out there who _do_ think it is important, especially when you consider how many people in that set have money they might be persuaded to give to you.
I'm still thinking about incentives.

As to why you might want to submit a short intro for someone else's site: perhaps it's because your own link(s) would become more highly ranked in a related links section.

As to why people would vote on the best intros... perhaps that could be done in a transparent way. If you are not satisfied with some intro(s), you could request more, thus implicitly downvoting what you have seen so far.
I highly recommend John Boyd. His presentations are a bit dense, but you might try reading the biography of him written by Robert Coram first.
Do you guys even read or do you just skim the list? Personally, I just skim the list but if you read it, I say:
"It has only been 3 days, so I don’t know how effective it is, but so far, I really like it."
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Tech & Misc Ramblings…