skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It depends on the science. There are plenty of amateur astronomers, geologists, anthropologists, and even some types of biologists and physicists.

It also depends on what you want as an outcome. If you want to discover things, then you can do science. However, if you want to publish in order to counter prevailing theories, your road is going to be much tougher without some establishment credentials.

If you think serious == published, there are ways to get back in the formal game without a degree but with technical expertise. For instance, across the science landscape, technical specialists are valued as research assistants and there are jobs or internships to be had. It just depends on finding a good match of your skills and interests with a lab that fits and has specific needs.

My advice is to follow your interests, find researchers working in that terrain, then contact those that are physically and intellectually closest to you. Think about what you can offer, even if it's as simple as helping to automate their processes. It might take a while to find a good match, but there's a place for you.
Yeah, as jraines said, I only know about here in the US. Have no knowledge of other countries.
He's confusing Java with the JVM.
A lot of medical researchers apparently also experimented on themselves.
It is a good story. I don't know if you can call the risk of a finger "ultimate," though; when Nikola Tesla bet his life on the skin effect of very high frequency alternating current as a PR counter Edison's animal electrocution demonstrations.
pg asked about valleywag.com. Some other user asked about banning techcrunch.

From a business standpoint, it would be silly for pg to ban a site that helps promote YC startups, not to mention TC is nowhere near as wonky/gossipy as valleywag.
A Tool to Verify Digital Records, Even as Technology Shifts
what % of the web use facebook?

my mother and father both use online services (eg ebay) and have never heard of facebook - they've both rang me up and asked me how to share photos they took online.

(I told them to use the me.com services, fwiw -- that'll be a huge competitor to "mom and pop" photo services)
Remember "This is your brain on drugs"?: Teaching teenagers about texting harassment
I don't like the principle behind the dog food. It means that you create a product good for dogs but not humans. Something not made for you. Then, when you start eating it, you improve it to a level being acceptable to you, a human.

I like to think that I create human food, a product that I need and care about if it's good or not at the start.
Why do you have so much animosity toward him? You say he represents everything you hate about Web 2.0 greed culture, but is that a valid reason to delight in someone receiving a nice cream pie in the face?

I think you need to stop and reconsider whether this is the appropriate attitude to take toward someone who really does nothing more than write articles and speak at conferences.

I'd also argue that a culture of tolerance, civility and diversity of views does far more to foster the open exchange of ideas than the silencing of those with whom we disagree.

I do agree somewhat with some of the criticisms that you and others have put forth about Techcrunch as a publication, in particular that it was prone to hype. But otherwise I think he performed a valuable service to our industry, and I think his willingness to speak his mind is both rare and laudable.

It saddens me that the animosity and intolerance that have shadowed Techcrunch have boiled over to something as despicable as this.
You're thinking about the demand side (to be able to do X, you must do the following job-creating activities), but I'm talking about the supply side (once you've done X, it enables people to do the following job-creating activities). So a company like Wufoo or Weebly can make it cheaper for other companies to grow, adding more jobs.

In fact, I'm certain Wufoo has helped create jobs, in the sense that I've filled out job applications built on Wufoo forms. The fact that Wufoo was chosen over other solutions means that, in at least some cases, the existence of Wufoo will lead to job applications being created that otherwise would not have been.

This is the point PG was making. He didn't talk about how Viaweb created lots of jobs because they bought a bunch of servers and had to pay their rent; he's talking about how they let other people cheaply start stores that otherwise wouldn't have started, connect to customers they otherwise wouldn't have found, sell products that otherwise would have sat on a shelf, and make wealth that otherwise would not have existed.
flickr etc = images + community... so go create images + technology.

that photo stuff we hear about from time to time, like face recognition or stitching together photos or turning them into videos or building 3d models of landmarks from tons of user photos... are any of those on photo sharing site yet?
Fennec (aka Firefox Mobile) To Debut Next Week
I think it's an uphill struggle for Moz now that the iPhone is so popular.

Apple only allows webkit browsers on their store.
I feel bad about the fact that I liked whatever happened....
It's assault, plain and simple. --How can you justify doing that to someone?
Regular sprint boosts metabolism
Like him or not, Techcrunch has helped tons of startups out.
Geoengineering could complement mitigation to cool the climate
I think the commentator is making a point about the difference in thinking he deserves a punch and actually punching (well spitting on) him.

A lot of people dislike the guy (I dont care for his attitude myslef but I respect his influence) and probably waould say "he deserves a punch" without meaning it literally :)
How about a service that allows you to upload raw formats like .DNG, and do basic non destructive editing on them, nothing fancy just crop, heal, contrast, color, that sort of thing.
to serve as both an online backup service, easy way to share images when you don't have time to really fiddle with them, or they're just not good enough to bother. as well as yes just sharing you're best.
google / yahoo probably make a good bit of their turnover from fraudulent clicks. I would suspect it to be a bit more than the percentage quoted as well...

If the actual number would be measurable somehow I would expect the bottom to drop out of keyword advertising overnight. Those advertisers savvy enough to do a/b testing on google adwords on google, the channel, both and none have already found out that just advertising on adwords on google is a very large portion of the conversion, it depends on the product whether or not it is worth to go after the little bit of extra sales that can be had in 'the channel'.

The lack of transparency at google is another very large part of the problem here, if they would make public their 'take' and the percentage of fraudulent clicks removed then that would do a lot of good for the market. Even if it would probably hurt Google's bottom line.
What kills me about this kind of advice is hearing people say, "Yeah, but I know developer X who doesn't read blogs, doesn't go to conferences, doesn't play with projects in his spare time, but he's a solid team player."

My response is always, "We don't have room for every good person here, it's a small team. He will go on to be successful elsewhere, and that doesn't reflect badly on us just because we didn't offer him a job."
"You think that spitting on someone should be illegal!?"

As noted it is illegal in most countries.

"I don't understand what you mean, anyway. [...] What would he have to do to make you finally relinquish your sympathy?"

Something a great deal worse than writing articles that do not much interest me. I find it incomprehensible that someone could find a matter of mere taste to be sufficient justification for a crime.

"And one more thing - the man who spat in his face may be contemptible, but it doesn't doesn't fit my model of how "cowards" behave either."

Your definition of bravery is not one I have any respect for then.
He doesn't say why it should feel that way, or does he? It is great if somebody is sharing advice, but that person sounds a bit like "yeah, I made it through grad school, but I highly doubt that you have what it takes to do the same".
What details should be on your biz card
FreeBSD Kernel Internals, Dr. Marshall Kirk McKusick
It's very misleading to compare pizza places to web businesses.

Every new pizza shop adds tangible value to the system. It has a physical presence and sells a physical good that fulfills a basic need.

A web shop, without marketing, adds basically zero value to the system. It's not like you can "walk by" and discover that it provides something. And I don't think any pizza shop bootstrapped its business by offering pizza for free until it got a critical mass of popularity.

The message makes sense, but the example does not.
Nvidia hires Stanford’s computer science department head as chief scientist
Disgusting as it clearly is, I feel the spitting incident is a bit of a red herring.

If this had happened 2 years ago during the rapid growth in Web 2.0 investment, I think Mike would have soldiered on.

Instead, he has a nasty experience while his business and kingdom are shrinking. Deep down, I suspect he wanted out already.

In his situation I would.
You can always nitpick, but compared to what 99.9% of engineers put at stake when selling a product, putting your finger in the blade is quite the vote of confidence.
I believe he just made that up to grab attention and a few more pageviews
I don't understand the downmods on this comment; theklub makes a perfectly valid point. I would agree that the market for the masses in this area is much too competitive (if you think you can trump Google in search, well, go for it), even with just two players (ignoring SmugMug and the tail).

I would agree that niche, if at all, is the way to go. Niche of the upper upper pros, who already pay for Flickr pro but find it limiting.
>> "Incremental evolution of systems is a known good strategy."
>
>Not always.

That's why he wrote "good" instead of "optimum".

Besides, keeping around several branches and discarding one, even the current "most prominent", is incremental. (The system in question consists of all branches.) FWIW, evolution is almost entirely incremental.

Note that advocates of the new often overstate the failings of the old, which frequently did handle many cases. Sometimes those cases are no longer important, other times they're less important than new cases, but even when both are true, a given new system may not be better.

Advocates of the new also tend to forget that the fact that there are possible new systems that are better than the status quo does not imply that the new system being pushed is better.

New can be more fun. That's both an advantage and a disadvantage.
Whenever I read one of his posts (which is rarely now) I think of this cartoon...

http://tinyurl.com/cp5eqz

Pretty much says it all.
I was just thinking that it would be fun to play Starcraft with some of the people on this site. Do any of you still play? I don't play a lot, but when I do, this is the account I use:

Server: ICCup
Nick: craton
Spitting in someone's face and then standing your ground to accept the consequences takes balls. Running away is, almost by definition, cowardice.
That's a pretty different case though since (a) you were kids, and (b) those were two things that had hit mass market success only about a decade before.
Why? And which kind of hardware? You don't want to be commoditized.
And if the spitter has, say, hepatitis?
The original article is here:

http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/cs/2009/01/the_interview_qu...

Already submitted, already with discussion:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=452966

Don't reply here - go there.
Google keeps it very clean, and they tune the algo every week. But again, it's necessary because relevancy to a human being is continent on THOUSANDS of factors, and they try to incorporate as much of that in as simple of an algorithm as possible.
Exactly. Java itself hasn't created what Larry wanted, but the evolution of languages based on the JVM has done it in some ways.
I'm not a part of the startup community, and have no hatred of Arrington. I haven't heard any of the rumors and don't know any of the drama that wasn't in the linked article. I've been a casual reader of Techcrunch for 1-2 years.

I have found Techcrunch articles to be of inconsistent quality at best. My impression from reading Hacker News for the past two years is that TC articles are often poorly written, poorly researched, and sensationalistic. 'Integrity' isn't the first thing that comes to mind when I think of Techcrunch. It is perhaps more candid than say, MSNBC, but that isn't saying much.

If I were Arrington, I'd try to stay focused on improving that image. Venting personal frustrations on the front page of the site doesn't strike me as helping all that much.
I can actually make out a Steve Gillmor article just by reading the summary on my RSS feed. Sometimes just by reading the headline. After that I NEVER click through to the rest of the article.
It might make sense--a pizza shop owner who couldn't afford to rent in a highly-trafficked area may have similar problems bringing customers to his storefront (stores don't usually pop up and have instant success).

Plus, a brick-and-mortar store owner has higher fixed costs.
It's not like you can "walk by" and discover that it provides something.

Sure you can, organic traffic.
Probably low, since there's already at least one low priced service (zooomr) that has no individual filesize limit. Prices of hard disks have been dropping precipitously, so I think there's an expectation out there that the same cost for online services should happen (gmail's steadily increasing quota also reinforces that). I realize those expectations are probably unrealistic.

In terms of bandwidth, a flickr-like display that shows a smaller size by default mitigates that. It's the convenience of uploading a full-size file and getting it resized to multiple sizes (and the full size is there for those who want to see it).
Monster's database hacked, job seekers' personal info stolen
> It means that you create a product good for dogs but not humans.

That's not the original meaning of dogfooding. Compare: "Lorne Greene would tout the benefits of the dog food, and then would say it's so good that he feeds it to his own dogs."
I'm Still Not a Libertarian so I guess that means I'm opposed to personal freedom
Something from the article worth quoting:
"It's saving that kind of intimacy for those that are close to you, your friends and family, who have earned the privilege. For the first time, I saw that the abbaya may have a role in protecting women, and not as something simply designed to control them."

Once upon a time, the same sort of idea existed in the West, in the lost art of modesty (buried alongside chivalry nowadays). The idea that not everyone need be exposed to everything. That some things are better saved and not sold.

How many times in the United States do men look at women not as persons but as objects? Seeing not the woman as she is, but merely as she appears -- not respecting her as a person but instead consuming her as a visual image.

Whether in Saudi Arabia or in the United States, the first principle to keep in mind involves respect for the human person as such -- man or woman.
While I agree with you about Reader, I doubt the security implications for Gmail are much more severe than for Docs, because so many businesses are using Docs through Google Apps, and you know they're storing sensitive info on there. One breach and it's over.
I had a very similar problem with Thunderbird. I couldn't find my mail half of the time. I gave up in the end and now just access the web interface.
I don't personally know why you got downmodded, but karma isn't that important in the grand scheme of things. Honestly, it doesn't add anything to the conversation to add meta conversation about people not liking your comment. It happens sometimes, and it isn't any fun, but things work a lot better for all of us when we all just move on.

From the HN guidelines:

"Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."
> But endowed news organizations would be in an ideal situation with no pressure from stockholders or advertisers at all.

Endowed organizations face pressures too. Maybe they're better pressures, but an account that fails to acknowledge that they exist doesn't strike me as one that is particularly trustworthy.

As to the "enormous cost of newsgathering", didn't a past thread have staffing numbers for the NYT? IIRC, out of some 10k employees, 350 were reporters. At $300k/person, we're talking $100M. Since that 350 includes sports, society, and other fluff.... (Of course, sports pays its way.)
This is what I meant. There isn't anything concrete that holds an older PhD back. I doubt there will be any age discrimination either on re-applying.

However, if you have a family, a mortgage, a car, and a life outside of school that is time-consuming, getting the PhD will not be a top priority. This makes it difficult to do all the logistical things of getting a PhD too--it's not all about research. You have core classes to complete, many tests and defenses to pass, and conferences to attend. Although it's entirely possible for someone to do this, I cannot imagine it would be easy or good for your studies/other obligations.
Section 508 Compliance is Easier than you Think
Taming Doubt
This guy is my personal hero, but -- alas -- this is also a story about worse is better:

http://www.taunton.com/finehomebuilding/how-to/articles/saws...

"Having heard all of the various reasons put forth by the manufacturers for not doing anything, I firmly believe it simply comes down to money," says Gass. "They cannot figure out how to make more money by adding SawStop. They are not paying for the injuries that occur now, so why should they spend money to change their product to eliminate a cost they aren't bearing?"

So, although this guy has offered his safety technology to all tool manufacturers, SawStop is only available on SawStop-branded saws, which cost a bit more money, which causes people to bitch and moan, because who wants to spend money on a feature that merely prevents injuries?

The appropriate software-platform analogy is left as an exercise for the reader. ;)
In this forum, people don't have the time to get into a big argument over something that should be common sense. They'll simply downmod you.
Ever tried nethack?
Ask HN : For what are you using Amazon mechanical turk?
I was reading submission here and saw that : " when we showed that video to a random sample of 100 people in Amazon Mechanical Turk, 80 were interested enough to give us their contact info" on http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=453303 .

That's an interesting use of Amazon mechanical turk.

What do you use it for?
Than any other single company.
Using lies and manipulation to attack some companies you dislike (or get paid to do so) is not the same as reporting on startups, once you threaten others' way of life, yours will be threatened back too.

Focus on startups as you say, and stop mudslinging with a hidden agenda.
No, it's called a web browser. (I don't think HN publishes an updated PDF every time someone posts a comment)
Michael Arrington is one of those people.
I'm not disagreeing with the commentator, just taking his point as a cue for a statement about how cowardly and nasty I think spitting is.
That's the first thing I thought of too when I saw this post. Have you watched the screencast of the dropbox-like functionality? Pretty slick.
No. I have lots of audio books on my iPhone. Currently listening to "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins. The ability to download audio books to the iPhone is one of the best things about it.
Virgin: the world's best passenger complaint letter?
Exactly, were aware of the relevance of keywords and the optimization of our deep level pages with more detailed keywords.

We have started a review this week of our internal link structure and the use of more specific travel terms, ie 'holidays in tunisia' or 'package holidays in tunisia' for our deeper destination pages. Hopefully the relevancy of these search terms coupled with a well performing site should yield better results than we could ever anticipate for 'travel' or 'holidays' etc!!

Cheers for the input
His readers, at least the ones that comment, are the only part that is worth reading. It's actually kind of amazing how they latch onto one word or one sentence and then wrap their own views around that sentence as a way of "understanding" what Steve meant.

In the comment section quoted here you'll see several people who claim the piece made perfect sense to them and was a well written even though any rational person can see the piece is too vague to definitivly say anything.
> If the ranking algo considers hundreds of influences, then it is an overcomplicated mess!

"overcomplicated mess" seems to imply "it's a bad solution".

While Google's ranking system may be "bad" (they believe that it isn't good enough), "bad" or even "overcomplicated" doesn't follow from "hundreds of influences".

Consider the "design" of a common house cat. Its design is the result of thousands of influences.

It may be difficult for people to think about systems with hundreds of influences, but that's a people problem and doesn't imply that such systems are inferior to more understandable systems.
Fair enough, I hadn't read those guidelines - thanks for the tip. Won't do it again.

I do wish those guidelines had something about why to mod up or down, though. Modding something down or up simply because you happen to agree, regardless of the quality or validity of the argument presented, will also lead to boring reading - the majority view, endlessly repeated, since it's the only "safe" thing to post.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modular_home

Or take a look at: http://bensonwood.com/index.cfm -- factory built but custom-designed.

Incidentally, even factory-built homes will never be as easy to appraise as cars, because much of their value depends on the land and the neighborhood. Nor do factory-built homes remain identical for long: Customizing your own home is the big advantage of owning your home.
Scientists Not So Sure 'Doomsday Machine' Won't Destroy World
I like American Inventor when it was on, and I try to catch Dragon's Den on BBC. I'd probably watch this if I can stand Billy Mays for more than the few minutes I have to hear his commercials and assuming he doesn't always use 'the voice' he uses in his infomercials.
If any of your team went to university in the uk, get the company featured on their news page - they all want to push their enterprise credentials - with a link, thats a free way of getting good google juice.
You're right. But this audiofile was rendered, not recorded. And rendering technology that gives such ability to reproduce truly 3D sounds is called Cetera by Starkey Labs. That's innovative.

Here is 192 kbps quality file: http://juneja.info/binaural/v-i-r-t-u-a-l-_-b-a.mp3 (in article it's not direct and 128 kbps).
What exactly is a 'Toolpusher'? The most common job at #7 Chesapeake Energy.
I don't like Michael Arrington because of the way he acts. His latest post backs up my dislike. He needs to grow a backbone and not cower behind security. If you are in California its much harder to have a gun to protect yourself. You could always move to Texas (Austin is nice). :)

Also, if this guy is a felon how does he have a gun and Arrington knows this is a fact? When you buy a gun they do a FBI check to make sure you don't have such a conviction.

Your startup will succeed regardless of its inclusion in TC. Worry about the product not some silly blog.
Stop judging yourself by other people's success