skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That's silly. They could certainly spend them in China. Many people there would happily accept US dollars. That's why they have so many of them in the first place, business selling products to Americans. And there are always ways to exchange.

All investing them does is get them even more US dollars. If the problem is that they can't spend US dollars in China, how does using those US dollars to collect more US dollars help at all?
ouch, you guys are harsh. I was following it on twitter, it seemed to be non-US people, nothing was loading for a good hour or 2.
Belittling other people's achievements is obnoxious enough. But the way Atwood chose to belittle them -- "I’d be too embarrassed to blog about it, frankly" -- is a piece of genuine douchebaggery. Of all the people to fling claims about software blog embarrassment, you'd think the king of mediocrity in the field would pick something else. Except he wouldn't, because mediocrity is smug.
Why not? I still don't get the purpose of Valentine's day. If you want to make a girl feel special take her out randomly, be unexpected. Theirs nothing more boring/generic then flowers/box of chocolate on Valentine's day.
The simple idea that less is more (in terms of so-called brainpower) is as old as the world itself. The cows are holy animals in India because people belive that they are wise.
Buddha told that you should cease all your mental activities to gain ability to see the things as they are. It is why Buddhas eyes is half-shut.
And every one know that 100% idle is better (allows faster responce) than 100% load. =)
Just think that computer is a weak and primitive model of our neourology.
What a stupid and pointless blog post. His argument is completely unfounded. For example; in the comments, someone asks where Jimbo Wales would be considered an entrepreneur and the author of the blog says that Jimbo Wales is not an entrepreneur, because WikiPedia is not a for profit business.

This a rather arbitrary definition of an entrepreneur. I checked both Dictionary.com and Merriam-Webster.com, and both of their definitions for entrepreneur do include room for entrepreneur who found non-profits. See for yourself:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/entrepreneur
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/entrepreneur

Clearly the authors argument and conclusion is unfounded crap. Creating a long lasting and profitable commercial business is certainly a valid motivation for entrepreneurship, but so is changing the world, or even something as modest as looking to establish a second income stream, or looking for a different time/income tradeoff (4HWW, etc).
Some examples of entrepreneurs who are truly amazing and long-lasting:

- patent trolls

- domain squatters

- spammers
"You're not going to be damaged," he said. "You're going to be enhanced."

Is that about whiskey, isn't it? =)
I am, http://github.com/jcapote/theman/tree/master
By shutting down certain mental functions -- the capacity to think conceptually, categorically, contextually -- did this impairment allow other mental functions to flourish? Could brain damage, in short, actually make you brilliant?

isn't cannabis works the same way?! =)
We celebrated last night with a simple dinner out; we figured better to do so a day before, and beat the rush. Otherwise, I share the same sentiment(and so does my SO), that Valentine's Day has no purpose, other than a commercial purpose.

Today's schedule: Woke, coffee- extra bold, studied advanced maths, probabilities and some math light reading(Drunkard's Walk), chilled with the wife and watched some fun stuff, and now for some late night coding.
Inventor of Kidney and Heart Machines Dies at 97
> Apple seems to be getting eviler by the day.

I contend that sloppy reporting is a factor.

In this case, the headline is grossly misleading, as it implies Apple has moved for a change, and done something "evil". The truth is that they have only objected to arguments by the EFF that jailbreaking ought to be granted an exception to the DMCA. The fact is that jailbreaking (which involves bypassing protections of a copyrighted work) is already subject to fines and jail time under the DMCA.

Now, one could argue that Apple's opposition to the change implies that they want fines and jail time for jailbreaking, but that doesn't reflect the content of Apple's objection (http://www.copyright.gov/1201/2008/responses/apple-inc-31.pd...).
Daily iPhone App Sales Figures: iLightning
"Proving identity is likely to remain remarkably difficult in a world where it is trivial to take over someone’s computer from half a world away and operate it as your own. As long as that remains true, building a completely trustable system will remain virtually impossible."

Conversely, complete identification on the Net won't necessarily slow the spread of worms; if you're absolutely certain that you're getting owned by John Smith's computer... you're still getting owned. Even if Microsoft implements extensive forensic logging, at best you could track a worm back to "patient zero" in a dorm room in Whereverstan.
I got a virus once by clicking a link from the home page of Reddit. It's the last time I've visited despite the addicting links.
IWidgets is hiring - San Francisco, CA
Hi folks. I wont waste your time.

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http://www.iwidgets.com
Just closed A round of $4.1M
Office is one block from South Park, San Francisco CA

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You should be a social app junkie in terms of keeping track of the latest API changes and knows the tricks to getting around limitations.
You should know JavaScript inside-out.
Should also know as back-end technologies such as Java, Spring, and Hibernate.
Should have good coding practices.

Bonus Points:
You have experience maintaining and/or scaling apache/tomcat clusters.
You have experience in the social space with your own application.
You have experience using amazon web services - EC2, S3, etc..

Bottom Line:
Work at iWidgets not only involves keeping up-to-date with all the latest social APIs, but also creating a framework that generalizes it, so it is fun, challenging and highly rewarding.

If you are interested send me an email with your resume:
charles [at] iwidgets.com
I'm probably the closest thing to a fan Microsoft has, and even I can't really see the point of the store. Microsoft only has one genuinely cool product, the Xbox, so having one of those on a big LCD with Rock Band 2 for customers to play might be pretty awesome. But that doesn't make for much of a store. Seems like they'll need to fill it with third party products (that run their software of course) to have a shot.
How Harvard Gets its Best and Brightest
Link at the bottom of the main Hacker News page

http://ycombinator.com/lib.html

that includes most of what pg is mentioning in reply to the submitted question.
Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston

http://www.foundersatwork.com/
I do not think Stallman is saying that it is better to have no progress; he is saying that using proprietary software is un-progress, a kind of regression. I did not paraphrase his statements in the absurd fashion that you claim I did, and I would like you to retract that claim.
I know I wouldn't enjoy working on something like IMVU because it seems so childish. I also probably wouldn't waste my time making a deployment system or unit testing it.

I might joke about it in person over a beer, which is perhaps the analog equivalent of a casual tweet.

The funny thing is that this is coming from Jeff Atwood, who blogs with pride on his use of MS and .NET technology. In the circles I mix with that is not something to be proud about or admit publically!
Sometimes. Sometimes not.

The Credit Rating wikipedia page does not show him to be wrong. Also, the fallacy linked to is not applicable. Would you care to elaborate?
They charge by the partial hour. E.g. when you shut down a small instance after 61 minutes you'll pay for two hours.

Frankly I fail to see how this matters today or what kind of app he envisions where it could matter in the future.

1000 large instances set you back a measly $800 per hour. If your app needs elasticity to a degree anywhere near that then the spindown overhead will probably be the least of your worries. After all I cannot imagine a traffic pattern that would "flicker" at a second or even subsecond rate.We're rather talking about huge surges (slashdot effect) or the classic bell curve pretty much everywhere.

When you compare that $800/hr to the operating costs of running your own 25 fully stuffed racks then you'll still come out ahead by a large margin - with every opportunity for a spindown only adding to your advantage.
Thanks Jason! I will!
28 now, but it's saturday night, and valentines day. people are doing other things at the moment :)
Microsoft offers 250,000 for online bounty hunters
Tracking the digital traces of social networks
Glaxo to cut prices to poor countries
My career path might have taken some much more interesting twists when I was at Berkeley... I never discovered a hackathon happening then with punch-cards.
"Have you thought about investing in startups, but didn't know how? [...] How do you pick winners?"

Why not raise a side fund and do full fledged seed investing if you can pick winners?
We'll see who gets the last laugh when I finish implementing love.
coding with the boyfriend, couldn't stand the movies we were watching. :)
For most countries, that is plausible, but not for Cuba.

We're talking about Cuba here. Buying Microsoft software is simply not an option anytime in the next few years; it's illegal under US law for Microsoft to sell to them. Or are you talking about the $1 needed to burn a CD with an unlicensed copy of the Microsoft software on it?

In the case of proprietary software from other countries, from companies that are willing to risk US trade sanctions, Cuba still has to pay for the licenses from its very limited foreign exchange reserves, acquired from its very limited exports of about US$220 per capita per year.

Cuba has about 11 million people, 20% under 14, which means 160 000 of them graduate from high school every year. If its leadership thought software was a priority, they could train the top 3% of each graduating class in software development, roughly the same fraction as programmers in the US work force, about 5000 people. If they were at all successful in this, then starting in 2013 or so, Cuba would have at least a few hundred good hackers every year.

Let's say that one average software developer can replace US$150 000 per year of software consulting services or licensing costs from abroad. (Outside of Cuba, they're paid US$50 000 and billed out to clients at twice that, but aren't as efficient as somebody local who already has both the hacking skills and the domain knowledge.) Under those assumptions, each graduating class provides software that would have cost US$750 million per year to purchase from abroad, if purchasing it from abroad is even possible.

Cuba's total imports are about US$7 billion per year. So in 2022, the value produced by these programmers each year would exceed Cuba's entire current imports. And that's with only 50 000 programmers out of 11 million people. A more aggressive program would convert 3% of the entire population to software development, or 300 000 people.

So it's quite likely that, for Cuba, developing software internally would be far cheaper than trying to buy it abroad.

Of course, the value produced by programming is very hard to predict, as is the success of an educational initiative, as are international politics.
Here is an idea: make a whatdoyouwant.com

Every business/government/person should have such a mechanism(e.g. WebSite,Voting, Congress...) to understand what people want.
Coding is the Valentine I give to myself today - and how I make sure I have something great to give to my Valentine tomorrow!
this is a good idea. make categories and people can submit whatever they want. you then have a voting system in place and try to police for obvious dupes.
Instead, Microsoft should invest on improving microsoft.com.
Blank Slate design pattern
Edison certainly had passion and interest, but he also had a giant ego. He cut down Tesla, knowing full well that AC was a better option. Maybe he wasn't just thinking about the money (he did stand to lose his patent royalties), but certainly his legacy came before "changing the world."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Currents
http://media.www.thetriangle.org/media/storage/paper689/news...
I wish they had based this article on Shawn Marion...
The Stimulus: As Good As It Gets
There is hope for the nerd after all
US Military Will Offer Path To Citizenship
I'd gladly do everything I currently do without anonymity... if it gave me access to the viewing and up/downloading I need to do... and made sure that the info/sites with which I need to work stayed available.

But when will enough people come to value such access that all the sites/servers I want to talk to get on that same theme and guarantee that they (or their networks) don't get DoS'd, etc.?

Is it maybe time to change laws that currently make it illegal (even for gov. & gov-sanctioned contractors) to intervene in infected/botted machines? We currently require treatment for carriers of resistant TB to roam freely without treatment. Are not the bot-zombies the technological equivalent?
I couldn't agree less with this. P&G market under lots of different consumer brands with the global P&G umbrella handling manufacturing and corporate affairs.

Microsoft on the other hand is one of the biggest consumer brands in the world, and doesn't really have sub-brands. Even Xbox is clearly linked to Microsoft.

If Microsoft focuses on the same goal as Apple or Sony, demonstrating their flagship consumer products in person, their stores will do well. I believe Microsoft has enough of a range of "wow" products to do well in that space.

For example, even though this crowd might pick OS X over Vista, to the casual non-techy consumer Vista looks equally polished as OS X. This is especially true in the demo-tastic retail store environment.
I'm pasting a copy of this above my development screen. ...with the line "forget investors for the while and get building!" in bold.
Interesting article. I think that hockey is going to be the next fertile field for this kind of analysis.
The Condition of Industrial Programers
The Credit Rating wikipedia page does not show him to be wrong.

Was linking to the Credit Rating wikipedia page intended to show someone to be wrong? The Credit Rating wikipedia page indicates that credit rating can be defined in more than one way.

Would you care to elaborate?

Do you know what equivocation is?
Yes, but then the question is what it does with them once they're there--especially the entrepreneurs!
Yep, spent the entire day coding. Big demo on Wednesday, no time for feeble human emotions.
entrepreneur: n one who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/entrepreneur

"Enterprise" makes it pretty broad, from Broadway musicals to journeys of discovery. There's nothing about "lasting companies" that make "lots" of money.

The article is really suggesting that entrepreneur should be defined as it has defined it. Unfortunately, it presents no arguments for this, but merely proclaims an opinion.
But how would I find this article if I didn't read HN? :-)
LOL. Can I quote you as a testimonial on our iPhone page? http://reddit.com/iphone
Interesting idea. One of the things I found interesting about Moneyball is that the Oakland A's were willing to pay premiums to role players, and older (presumably on their way down) veterans.
Entrepreneurship is about changing one little small part of my world.
I just noticed that I've started assuming that "google.com" articles aren't from google, but one of the services it hosts (not just docs, there's also google groups).

Given the likely trajectory of growth of google docs etc, this is probably not a bad shift, to start seeing "google" as a hoster (like aol or tripod), rather than an entity itself. They are diluting their brand.
This is a great move by Glaxo. I interned a drug company a couple years ago, and you could tell there was real effort to make sure those could not afford the drugs, but needed them, could still avail their benefits. There were programs to provide drugs at free or reduced costs, and real patients were frequently brought to the company's headquarters to talk to scientists & executives about the diseases they faced, and how they faced them. Moves like this on Glaxo's part can do a lot to ease the burden of disease.

There are two problems here:

1) Affordability of drugs. The onus here is on the drug companies to be good citizens, follow Glaxo's lead, and go even further. It makes good sense for drug companies to give back in this way, like Google's support of many open-source initiatives.

2) Lack of treatment for third-world diseases. This is a much bigger problem that will require outside forces, like private foundations or government. Big drug companies are making drugs for lucrative diseases like cancer, but people in poor countries are dying of AIDS, diarrhea, or malaria, before they even have a chance of getting cancer. There's not any monetary incentive for research to go into solving these problems in poor countries.
China has been keeping the value of its own currency down in order to support its exports to the US, and in the process it has been accumulating dollars (which then are invested in US debt). There is a big question if they will continue to do that.

The US debt accumulation process runs like this.

A Chinese exporter of electric goods (for example) has its revenues in US dollars but his costs are mostly in Yuan. As he receives money from his American customers, he sells dollars to buy local currency to pay his workers, to pay taxes etc. Without Chinese central bank intervention the collective activity of exporters would drive Yuan rate up vs dollar very quickly and that would make their exports less competitive.

Chinese central bank wants to keep exports competitive, so it buys US dollars from the exporters at artificially high rates. Its 'foreign currency reserves' keep growing as long as there are exporters bringing in piles of export revenues in dollars. All these dollars needs to be bought up in order to keep Chinese exports competitive. And then all these bought dollars need to be invested, the US Treasuries being the natural place for it.

This all works as long as US consumer is buying. But the US consumers have stopped buying like they used to for many years and some say forever. No major revenues are expected from exports to the US. No need to buy dollars for the Central Bank.

In fact, the opposite is likely to happen. Chinese domestic consumption is growing fast. Very soon domestic Chinese market will become the biggest target for the world's exporters, just as US post-war consumer was. Chinese central bank may want to stimulate local consumption and capital inflows by switching to 'strong Yuan' policy, just like US did with its dollar. There will be no point of spporting the USD and holding dollar-denominated securities (US treasuries) for them.

To summarize, Chinese investment in US treasuries is not a result of desire to find a 'safe heaven' for extra money. It is because they need to park all that greenbacks the accumulated during years of keeping the Yuan down. Today they do not need to support USD anymore. They have no reason to buy US debt either. Prepare for a nasty surprise.
Why? Do you think it should have different functionality or a different design? Or something else? I'm curious; it seems fine to me.
No offense to you, but I'm a little tired of people belittling higher education. Colleges -- especially Harvard, Yale, MIT, etc. -- offer a wonderful education and opportunity to their students. The professors are the best in their field and you can learn a lot; and can grow both intellectually and as a human being.

What you take out of college is what you put into it. College isn't for everyone, so don't attend if you’re not willing to put in the time and effort, but you can learn so much if you do the work, pay attention, and get involved. This meme that education is a waste of time needs to be put to rest.
aneesh here, had to create a second account, because my main one is locked out on noprocrast!

Didn't mean to screw up the layout above. And now I can't login to edit it. Someone with magical admin powers, help me out here -- fix my comment, or let me override noprocrast so I can fix it myself.

PS there should be a character limit on the code formatting.
Does the Harvard business school emphasize entrepeneurship at all? I'm curious if there're any business students on HN who'd know this.
only seeing 1 guy at hndir.com from harvard. 24 here at illinois ;)
I often have instantaneous insights that take minutes (or months) to understand conceptually. Maybe it's a temporary connection to the raw data?
Apparently not :\
http://www.whynot.net/
Draft is next?
I am, but it's Sunday.

(Did yesterday too, but we've got our wedding anniversary soon, so that's our valentines day :) )
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I appreciate it when general claims are supported with specific evidence, because it gives me a handle to assess the claim, and perhaps disagree.

Here, I disagree with the Friends example: I recently happened to see the pilot (on youtube), and I was impressed with how funny the writing and delivery were, right from the beginning. The production values improved later on (and Joey's clothes changed a lot), but it really seemed the same to me. Note that I'm evaluating it as a series of jokes, which is the primary characteristic of a sit-com (though not the only one).