skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Most WP administrators are jackasses, idiots, and blowhards, both online and in real life. Their idiocy was one of the reasons I quit the project.

I think that most serious Wikipedia vandalism (not page-blanking, but the kind of shit that is difficult to spot and refute, such as transposing digits in population figures) is done to spite those assclowns.
I think the real underlying presumption by the article's author is that he wants someone to be responsible. Similar wikis where some editor is ultimately responsible for approving/disapproving content have many orders of magnitude less pages, less content, and less edits.
"I should hope it's fast with an index of 4MB."

But even in that case it's saying it is slower at search (0.003 < 0.01) than Xappy (that also had a 7.5x bigger index). Only claiming "as fast or faster" at indexing (and has no data to support that claim).

I agree with you about search being hard, but it does mention BM25F so it doesn't look like "just" a lookup engine...
IE really doesn't support this. For any real testing, you want a separate virtual machine for each version of IE. This was discussed; see wayne's comment, which links to Microsoft-provided VM images:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=353129
You can get electricity from oil without refining it to gas. The only real useful metric is $ / mile and electric cars win that one.
You can't prove that, and even if you could, you couldn't prove which ones weren't just lucky so the statement is useless.
Fennec Pre-Alpha? I think were just trying to sound cool now
I'd like to add a link to my collection of computer science lectures:

http://freescienceonline.blogspot.com/2008/02/computer-scien...
I don't think that's the whole of it.

Especially in the case of the resale of the bad debt packages real money changed hands for future revenue based on a misrepresentation of the facts about these packages on the part of the seller.

That money should be recoverable.
Dang. I thought it was working with gnome.
Well written python basically is a C wrapper.
It does not look like it is outpacing them at all.

( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=478654 )
I don't think its disagreement so much as you're confusing what happened. $2 trillion in wealth disappeared, not money. There's a big difference, it doesn't "come out of the system". It's simply people valuing things at less than they did before. It's not stolen, they way dollar bills would be if $2 trillion in money disappeared.
The first example is wrong. 60 - 40 = 20 which is greater than 100 - 100 = 0.
Thank you to everyone for your comments & suggestions on Portland Ten. Some very valid concerns & feedback were given, and I appreciate this very much, because it will help us to make Portland Ten better at being/becoming something that is useful and appropriate for the startup community.

Here are some of my thoughts and responses to specific items discussed:

http://bigpaperblog.com/2009/02/12/update-on-portland-ten

For those who are excited about the project, we appreciate the support. For those who have concerns, I appreciate your effort in letting us know, and hope that you'll continue to follow the project and help us stay on track, or make changes when necessary.
TweetDeck to Add Translations, Tweets by E-mail, StockTwits
Personally, I think that it may keep its niche, like HackerNews. But I doubt it can raise any more money like that.
Someone should extend the salvage law (as currently applied to boats) to also apply to failed satellites and space junk.
European banks were leveraged MORE then US banks.

Think of Iceland for Marx and Engles' sake!

Greece, Ireland, the UK, etc.

I am not sure what you mean by third way socialism, perhaps you mean the welfare states of western Europe?

Those do work in a particular way that many people prefer.
Many others prefer the more free market of the states.
I know many west European immigrants that have come to the US to escape the welfare state, and I ain't talking bankers.

More like engineers, scientists and doctors, and believe me Europeans know the social state costs us some of our best.

As an east European immigrant I can tell you, that the communists switched their story AFTER to soviet collapse.

Libertarians like Milton Freedman on the other hand, have been saying the US is farm from true free markets for a LOOOONG time.
I guess Andrew Blair from Scotland would disagree:

"Blair is determined to stay in Dubai at all costs.
He said:It’s the clubs, the bars, the beautiful women, its tax free, all-round good weather. I could give you an A to Z. He added:This is the place to be.

"http://www.7days.ae/storydetails.php?id=72910&title=A%20...
Great hacker food
This is a ridiculous conversation though. The default choice for what?

What are we even contemplating building here? HTTP is clearly not a sane choice for everything, and most likely not a sane choice for the majority of things people build.

This argument is like saying "If you're going to write any software, you should assume you'll write it in Java, unless you have a good reason not to". (Which some people were probably chanting in 1998).
Ask HN: Rate my Vim Script: snipMate.vim
I am not one who says "This wasn't really a free market, so it doesn't count as a failure of the free market." Rather, I'm one who acknowledges that all complex societies will have failures -- including systemic failures of this sort. It doesn't conflict with my worldview at all that a "truly free market" could have a catastrophy like the one we are experiencing.

The question is not: "was this a failure of the market?" Rather, the question is: "would intervention reduce, or increase the number of failures?" There has been no credible case made for the profound wisdom and benevolence of government bureaucrats and politicians.

The communists are right about one thing: the lessons of history are not self-evident. We need to use our brains to interpret events, and their causes. That said: unlike communism, which has a history of nothing but failure and poverty, free market societies have a long track record of creating wealth and prosperity for all.
I am contesting the basis that author is using to predict a "sticky recession" in particular and "sticky economies" in general.
Median is really not the right measure to look at in these times, it gives no indication whatsoever about the parameter values in the extreme ends.
It's nice to own 100% of your company and turn a profit, especially given the current economy, but you really need to have faith in the 'less is better' philosophy.

The pace of development feels excruciatingly slow when you have to multitask on everything. I sometimes wish I had someone's else millions to speed things up a bit.
Ask YC: Entrepreneurship versus Trading
I'm right now a student who, for a future career, is considering pursuing either a job in trading securities on Wall Street or starting a technology company. This would be in a few years, and if I were to pursue a career in trading, I would also get another degree probably in order to avoid the worst parts of the recession.

I have limited experience with both (as well as in the process of getting a degree in computer science), and either seems fine to me (I'm willing--in fact, excited--to do the work required).

My ultimate goal is to make some money that I can use for charitable causes (its from a sense of duty that my grandpa and father raised me to have--hopefully I will stay true to this). More immediately I want to go after a challenge. I had presented this question to a trader who argued that I should go into trading because I had better chances overall of making the money that I want and that everyday is a new challenge for him. But, I want to hear many different perspectives, what advice do you have?
Hmmm...

A numbered list!

Buzzword green!

Buzzword IT!

Actual article offer items of common sense, and items far from sense but close to a sales pitch.
>>Revenue and profits are becoming sexy again

My brain knows that there were times and places where this sentence makes sense and yet I still cringe hearing it. Businesses are rediscovering that they are in business to make money. Next thing you know banks will rediscover that their business model is loaning money to people who pay it back.
Do they really need money tho? What can they be burning?
John Resig - Selectors API Test Suite in IE 8
It's amazing how much that picture on the right looks like Weird Al in the "White and Nerdy" music video.
I hope this will be included in future Shoes versions. Shoes is already awesome for making (portable!) retro-games. This will add another great deal of retro-ness. ;)
To be fair, I've at least taken the approach of starting with HTTP for many projects (knowing I'll probably ditch it at some point) - the author does have a point about it being very easy to debug using things like wget and your web browser.
Yes but FTA: "The case was first reported in November, and the new report is the first official publication of the case in a medical journal."

This lends a lot more credibility to the news.
Joel and Jeff talk with Uncle Bob
March 9 2007?
Here's the book: http://books.google.com/books?id=6U7I4577l00C&pg=PA140&#...
> replaced with a single check written to every citizen once a year

Something along these lines has been suggested (convincingly) elsewhere. From an economic policy think tank: http://www.cfeps.org/pubs/sr/sr0402/sr0402.html

"To eliminate an 'output gap' and substantially reduce unemployment, the government can offer an $8 per hour job to anyone willing and able to work. To execute this program, the government can first inform its existing agencies that anyone hired at $8 per hour doesn't 'count' for it's annual budget expenditures. Additionally, these agencies can advertise their need for $8 per hour employees with the local government unemployment office, where anyone willing and able to work can be dispatched to the available job openings in government or non-profit organizations.

This job will include full benefits, including health care, vacation, etc. These positions will form a national labor 'buffer stock' in the sense that it will be expected that these employees will be prone to being hired by the private sector when the economy improves. As a buffer stock program, employment will be highly countercyclical—anti inflationary in a recovery, and anti deflationary in a slowdown. Furthermore, it allows the market to determine the government deficit, which automatically sets it at a near 'neutral' level.

In addition to the direct benefits of more output from more workers, the indirect benefits of full employment should be very high as well. These include reduced crime, reduced domestic violence, reduced incarcerations, etc. In particular, teen and minority employment should increase dramatically, hopefully breaking the current employment morass."

Essentially creating a 'default job' that anyone can get, simultaneously putting a floor under wages, providing full employment, and doing away with welfare. The $8 figure was pulled out of thin air (several years ago), but the key is to create a wage that is liveable but not lucrative, so as to support workers but still encourage them to find a better paying job in the private sector when they can.

If you think this would bust the budget, consider that $8/hr full time, for 10% of the working age population works out to roughly $250-300 billion a year. Add up the cost of welfare, unemployment insurance, the occasional bailout, and loss of tax revenue during slumps due to slackening demand (due to higher unemployment), and the cost isn't as bad as you think.
So is Ruby - that doesn't make it fast.
Many people (me!) don't trust Wikipedia, never have, and don't care who gets screwed by erroneous Wikipedia information.

For all others, Wikipedia is convenient and it will have to go horribly wrong before it's bad enough for most people to stop using it.

The real thread to Wikipedia is a better free online encyclopedia.
Posterous seems like a logical place to add support for webhooks, as an alternative to rss and email. They practically have the whole system already, but in email instead.

Any plans to add webhooks functionality?
Sure, but if we were working on something like skype, or a multiplayer gaming network, or an instant messaging system, HTTP wouldn't be an obvious choice.

Maybe I missed the part in the article where it said "In the world of websites/webapps... etc" :)
Hi Alex. I agree that browse functionality could be killer here. The girl stuck in the right corner on the groups page is irritating and unnecessary even on the front page.

If you have a more open browse view, do add subcategories and an opt-in for different categories (s/categories/tags/g ? Whatever the cool kids are using these days.)

In any case do not show pictures on the groups page. Trust me here.

Good luck!
Ethanol, Just Recently a Savior, Is Struggling
ccraigIW is a sockpuppet account for IDG.
And what method do you use to remember your keys? Chicken and eggs...
iPhone Push Notification Server tied to Snow Leopard Server
The scoring in Whoosh is used only for sorting the result set. It's not used in determining the records within that set which is the primary reason why I refer to it as a lookup engine.
A Steady-State Economy
Of course. You can find me on facebook or linkedin pretty easily, or you can email me at mailto:startuplessonslearned-eric(at)sneakemail(dot)com (usual disclaimers about spam filters...)

Thanks for your kind words,

Eric
Dividends for who? Startup investors? Even conservative/revenue-centric startups have a staggering failure rate. What kind of dividends would be necessary for surviving startups? i.e. I invest $100,000 each in 10 scrappy/revenue-centric startups. 6 die or fail to generate meaningful profit (a much better rate because they aren't "swing-for-the-fences" startups). What sort of dividends would the other 4 have to produce to seem appealing to an investor to compensate for the fact that $600k is lost forever and $400k more is sunk into the survivors. I'd love someone to lay down some math that would make investors say, "Wow-- dividends ARE sexy!"... Any takers?

If you mean traded stock dividends, then nevermind. ;-)
Perhaps, but president Bachelet and her government have as highest priority the reduction of poverty, wealth redistribution etc (thank god btw) through direct government intervention, or at least that's what they say every time they speak (I have TVN).

And thanks to them or instead of them (Concertacion governments) Chile has been reducing its poverty levels; pretty much they are the only country in South America with a middle class.

This has nothing to do with anything but I think in a way it's awesome that a country has a president who is:
1) woman
2) single mother
3) declared agnostic/atheist

can you imagine not a president but just any politician in the US like that?
In which Slate writer Chris Wilson spends 14 grafs illustrating that there is, in fact, such a thing as a meme.
Most likely, Apple doesn't want to get involved in the legality of contests. You may notice that most drawings/contests/sweepstakes say "void in Quebec."

http://contests.about.com/od/sweepstakes101/f/VoidinQuebec.h...
He wrote it for Hackety Hack, which will be built on Shoes for its next version. Whether or not it's included in Shoes itself or just HH will remain to be seen, but I'd love to see it in the former.
This is a great project in order to bring in new programmers. It's so simple, but so entertaining. If fun little "toys" such as these keep popping up, it's sure to create more interest for the rest of the population. :)
Its amazing how many of these occur just because of the defaults that we set up in our technology.

I mean, the default activity with Windows is to go to screensaver mode. If it just slept as default, it would save millions of dollars in power consumption.
+1 for providing a damn useful service. It is ridiculously hard to find even something as simple as a wiper blade or light bulb online, and a service that provides an amazon-quality shopping experience, especially across multiple sites, would be excellent. No reason everyone should be visiting the dealership for totally basic stuff that can be ordered online for super-cheap.
I would say the mechanisms are inefficient, but they are there.

We elected leadership that took pride in being ill-informed, and over the course of eight years that resulted in a near collapse (some might leave out the "near") of our nation. In the last election, the nation chose the candidate who seemed better informed and more curious about the issues.

So, the mechanism is the people see the fruits of ill-informed leadership and as a result choose a more informed one. This can take time to play out.
Communism failed in Russia because it took one approach, a very flawed one that prevented technological advancement. The main failure was that they wanted everyone to work, so when the combine harvester came along they didn't adapt it because it would cost jobs. This would have likely succeeded well, if they weren't trying to be a world superpower, because there's a long history back to ancient China, that the more food a culture can produce with the fewest workers then the more technologically advanced they'll become.

Example: Quite literally two people can farm a few thousand acres of corn with modern equipment. One drives the harvester and one drives the truck.

Ironically Stalin actually caused the evolution of Chinese communism which survived it. The reason the Chinese did so well is that Stalin slaughtered most of them, which resulted in them taking in capitalists. This resulted in them understanding how economies work, and not hoping an artificially constructed economy would work. Combined into this is the political unity and a use of very powerful propaganda techniques to strengthen nationality. It's been shown that strong nationality increases a persons support of the government. I mean look at the German Resistance, they had such difficulty getting support in Germany because it was impossible to go against Hitler without going against Germany. Largely the CPC has done the same, you can't oppose them without opposing China.

The real question in the success of communism will be, "Will communism survive when China's nationalism subsides?"

Edit: Can people please stop down-voting something you disagree with, this isn't reddit. I'm merely reiterating something that's been agreed on by modern-historians for a long time. There's multiple systems of communism and the Stalinist and Chinese forms are very different.
I wouldn't claim they're perfect by any means, just as humans are the pinnacle of evolution yet are still far from it. But they're the final result. They're the biggest and best (from a survival standpoint) of the ecosystem.
It's about self-reward. What will reward you more: the challenges of day trading, arbitrage, and technical investing or the challenges of building a business, building a team, and making a profit? And think about the larger picture (i.e. lifestyle, living location, financial security).

I don't know what's the answer, although I will tell you this: trading and entrepreneurship are not mutually exclusive. ThinkorSwim is a great example of a group of entrepreneurs who knew trading and built a great business in Chicago.
11% Of Internet Users Are On Twitter??
Cause they work hard and take the bullshit from everybody.
Funny how about less than 3 months New York Magazine came out with this article "Escape to Dubai": http://nymag.com/news/features/52180/
"They settled on auto parts not because they were car enthusiasts,"

And it shows. As a car enthusiast I can tell you that their site sucks. They don't get the hobby and it shows. They have no idea about the industry at all.
I'm looking at the source code right now, and it seems Whoosh does use Porter stemmer to include word forms for English. Not sure yet if it weighs exact matches heavier.

EDIT: actually it uses query expansion for word forms for English. Took me a while to understand what you mean, probably because English is not my first language and I don't see the relation between "fender" and "automobile" or "music".

The sort of expansions you mean would be trivially accounted for if the search engine used latent semantic indexing.
I noticed that too. The numbers in the picture do support his point though. 209/259 = 80.7% is listed higher than 118/143 = 82.5%
Dividends?!? gasp

I've always heard about VC funds liking exits and The Flip, but what if your plan was to get good cashflow going and issue dividends... does the idea become less investable?
the site didnt seem bad.. all that matters is variety and price (primarily) for the customer (as it isnt a hobby site).. isnt craigslist or ebay bad (not Ajxified etc) as well, aesthetically?
Why My "Startup CEO" Post Caught On Fire.
While Whoosh isn't there yet, I don't think all open source libraries have the same weaknesses.

The two dimensions you described are synonym expansion and stemming. Lucene (and Solr, a search server that uses Lucene) can handle these two dimensions by ordering the analysis of indexed text and query terms appropriately - perform synonym expansion first, then apply stemming. The default scoring algorithm works well in a lot of cases, and Lucene/Solr's architecture allows plugging in a custom scoring implementation to boost individual keywords. Misspellings and wildcard handling is also available out of the box, and you can override most of the functionality easily. Reddit, Netflix, CNET, Digg etc. have all deployed Solr/Lucene on their public sites (http://wiki.apache.org/solr/PublicServers).
"Lurid rumors spread quickly: the Palm Jumeira, an artificial island that is one of this city’s trademark developments, is said to be sinking, and when you turn the faucets in the hotels built atop it, only cockroaches come out."

Absolute garbage reporting, Robert Worth and the New York Times should be ashamed of themselves. I read the NYT for quality articles with solid investigative reporting backing them up, not FUD and gossip trash like the quote above (regardless of it's merit)
Divvies don't necessarily decrease the value of the company. If you're startup is at a point where it could issue dividends, you could probably sell it as well.
Does your cart fail gracefully if javascript is turned off, or is that not a concern for you?
I think using a Twitter account to generate what amounts to a flashmob of customers for your mobile restaurant could be considered a tech-savvy business maneuver. I've driven by @kogibbq when it was in full swing, and the crowds are big.
How does this compare to snippetsEmu.vim?
thats the thing, their variety is non-existent. Look for any real performance part, and you'll see that they have nothing but generic crap that noone wants to buy in the first place.

I'll give you an example. Lets say I own a 2004 STI(which is a pretty popular tuner car). And I want to buy myself some coilovers, well guess what...I can't! Because the only suspension product they have on that site for the car, is a set of cheap Eibach springs...which cost $20 bucks more than what you can pay on eBay.
can't get it to run on OS X. It complains about an initialization error with portaudio :(. Maybe the MacPorts version of PA does not work with it?
It also sounds like the author seems to still be in the "new" stage of ASP.NET. Viewstate? Thats been around for years. Looks like hes venting...
Yes but the GPs point still stands. You're an EE, after you've found the brilliant biochemist you have the knowlege framework to relate to her. A non-technical MBA may very well be unable to relate and without someone communicating properly to him, he'll be lost.
OS X includes Perl, Python, Ruby and AppleScript. More tools are available when Xcode (free) is installed.
I was talking more about VCs going after companies with business models than without. And based on what's happened over the past year, those seem like much needed reminders.
you are so right.