skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Not if your standard of value is your life, lived as well and for as long as possible.

Replace "standard of value" with axiom and re-read what he just said to you, he suggested you examine your "standard of value" and see that others are possible and just as self consistent as yours.

Your reply thus makes no sense in response to his statement; you simply restate your axiom and tried to justify it again.
Bill Joy founded both Sun and Vi.

Both making a lot of money and doing a "seriously successful" open source project are pretty rare, so even if the two are independent, you shouldn't expect many people to succeed at both of them.
Look at their default rate on the mortgages they wrote compared to the rest of the industry. (Hint: it's a lot lower)
Private property is the foundation of peace. Without it who gets what can only be decided by force and coercion. Allowing people to keep the fruit of their labor is a necessary condition for those people to bother producing anything that they don't need immediately (consumable goods).
You could have at least used a free template...

http://www.oswd.org/
Yet...

I'm probably overly paranoid and certainly under-educated (possibly even to the point of the level of believing in "magic"), but accelerating the mutation rate of something like this just scares me. As I said though, that's an emotionally based feeling and not logical. I'd be VERY happy to have someone scientifically show me I'm full of #$!#.
Even a simple sentence at the top explaining who the site is for and what it does would be a HUGE improvement.

"Crosstips helps you finish that crossword you're stuck on."

"Need help with your crossword?"

"Can't solve a tough crossword? We're here to help..."

These aren't very good, but at least I know what the site is for now...having a description will also help with SEO.
Ayn Rand was opposed to the labor theory of value, which is a central tenant of Marxism.
Philandering around the workplace is usually a big no-no but it is definitely not corruption by any stretch of the imagination. I did this to show you that journalists will easily turn on their own kind.

As for the case of the government covertly starting a newspaper, I have not heard about it (but read about it in history books). They did this with the express purpose to change public opinion - since the current English newspapers were too critical of the government (with good reason). That really is before my time (20+ years or more).

I do not recall a single instance in my country where journalists were found guilty of corruption. Yet for politicians the list of the non-corrupt would probably be shorter.
> It's actually fairly commonplace for "the press" to be involved in public corruption. They'll even defend the corruption.

Could we please have some examples? I can recall many cases where the press has made mistakes, but none where they were actively corrupt.
Why would I use this? Isn't the fun of a crossword struggling through stuff like this without help?
Google App Engine represent one more step towards lowering the barrier to entry to web applications and services.

Any small team of developers can deploy a successful web application with no system administrators and no VP of operations. GAE takes away all the complexity of databases, replication, redundancy, monitoring.

For my last project (http://www.btexty.com , an open mobile messaging platform), we switched to Python and GAE, moving away from a Ruby On Rails setup on dedicated hosting, that we used from a previous project (http://www.moqpon.com mobile coupons).

I'm very happy with that decision. For a duo of developers, forgetting about the hosting platform allows to focus on product development and dramatically increases productivity.
You could say that those guys went straight to step 2: Work on something they find interesting, ignoring money. It probably is a one or the other situation, but the results end up being the same -- living life as one sees fit.
Sharing CSS between Rails and PHP
Ever need to add a Rails app to a well established site that was already running some other system? We did, so we split the shared CSS/images into a separate module…
Yes. I realized that was the case. Maybe vox.com didn't have subdomains at the time you banned it, but it does now.
Deploying Sinatra with Vlad
Short article explaining how to deploy a Sinatra web application with Vlad the Deployer.
The format doesn't matter. The fact that there is no backup mechanism matters. App Engine does have some built-in redundancy, but as we've seen in some high-profile incidents, backups are a necessity. App Engine provides no facility to create backups.
Because it's rare for undergrads to have research experience, it makes a big difference in grad school admissions. The admissions committee guesses how good a researcher a student will be based on grades, test scores and professor recommendations. If the student has actual research experience, there's less guessing to do.

A lot of professors have smaller projects that are part of their overall research that they can give to undergrads to do.

But, this isn't really helpful to you now. Your question is really "What are my chances?" and I can't tell you. For the people at the top and bottom, grad school admissions is easy to determine. But for those in the middle (I was one of them), it's almost random. Like many things in life, now that I've been through it, I know what I should have done.

If you want to go to grad school, then apply. Not applying is a 100% chance of not getting in. But try looking for schools that do research in what you're interested in, and look at schools outside of the top rankings.
I can think of a few corruption cases that the press uncovered (or shed significant light on) - it is country specific though (South Africa):

- The arms deal (in which half of the ANC had a share).

- Corruption by the National Police Commisioner and head of Interpol (Jackie Selebi) and his links to organised crime.

- The Fidentia financial fraud scheme by Athur Brown

- A tax evasion scheme by RMB (a private bank for rich individuals)

- Tokyo Sexwale's (a businessman with links to the ANC) involvement in Iraq oil-for-food fraud.

- Fraud by state owned oil company PetroSA who passed on R15 million before an election to an ANC financier.

- Links between the ANC investment vehicle Chancellor House and government contracts (i.e. conflict of interest)

I am pretty sure you can make the same list for your own country.
A theme in Atlas Shrugged is that wealth properly belongs to the people who make it. This includes the right to give it away or pass it to one's family. The fact that inherited wealth may ruin an heir who is not worthy of it does not entitle others to take the wealth by force, contrary to the will of the true owner. Rand's argument does not justify the inheritance tax; it's a warning to the wealthy.
Their results are startling.

...

They have even created a list of global powerbrokers, the companies that are influential in the most stock markets around the world. Here is the top 10

...

What it suggests is that the stability of the complex networks that make up our economy is hugely dependent on the ongoing survival of just a handful of companies.

I may be missing something, but it sounds like they are alerting us to the dangerously small number of companies you'll find in a top-ten list.
In this particular case, the answer could be performance.

Google's ExplorerCanvas (emulation by VML) is much slower than native canvas implementations (particularly compared to new JS engines like in FF3.1 Beta 2 or Webkit nightly).

For standard 2D graphics it's good enough, but if you push browser to the limits, like with a software 3D renderer, ExplorerCanvas would probably be unbearably slow.

This demo looks like a Demoscene release [1], so they probably wouldn't like to be caught with a slow code :).

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24200402/
A tree widget with DD? http://extjs.com/deploy/dev/examples/tree/reorder.html

I bet there are lots of others too. This doesn't sound like something you'd ever want to write yourself (unless the widget IS your project).
Well, Google does not explain what their search is for; why should you have to? Considering it is a niche market for folks that want to solve crossword puzzles, and you had enough people talk about it with each other, you could keep the front page non-descriptive. It is a destination site that people will visit when they know about what it does.

I wouldn't want to see a slogan every time I visited the site, anyways.

Change the tip word daily to mix it up a bit.
So why haven't they implemented it already? If its something so genius, what are they waiting for?
on your suggestions, feedback, tips at the bottom, you might want to add some captcha or your gonna get spammed :P
"he is saying that Google has a monopoly on search, and that they are using that monopoly to dominate the advertising market"

That's also what I thought he meant. The problem is that search isn't a market. They dominate the search based advertising market because they dominate search (which is not a market in and of itself, it's free content that gets eyeballs like a TV show).

And in my opinion at least they are great at their ad distribution business (where the ads go on other people's sites) because of their high value brand, not from some sinister tactic they are able to inflict because of their dominant search engine.
Twitter can monetize anytime. They have a huge number of options, because the size of the userbase makes it possible. Even silly things will work.

For example, let's say it costs $1 to write a twit that snoop dogg will actually see. A percentage of his fans will do so. Spread that across the thousands of people who have a huge number of fans, and you already have a revenue stream. Combine with a number of other things, and it here will all become quite profitable.
You know, not all "kids these days" rants are wrong or just old people not understanding. These new communications mediums we have available to us will have both positive and negative consequences.

Many such rants are trying to point out some of the apparent negative consequences; it's naive to assume that we understand the potential side effects all this technology will have on future generations and it's ignorant to refuse to discuss them because previous generations also bitched about "kids these days".

I didn't say the next generation was going down the tubes, I said they were broken and seemed to have less ability to focus deeply than people my age seemed to have at that age. I'm sure in other ways they're more advanced than we were, such as computer skills and social skills.

Rather than just blowing off my statement as another rant, try replying to it with an actual argument because bullshit it is not.

As a father, I have every right to be worried about the next generation and much first hand experience witnessing it. Try to unplug a kid these days, make them go outside and play, entertain themselves without computers, tv, and cellphones and constant connection to their virtual friends on myspace. It's fucking scary, they can't do it, they don't know to entertain themselves or be alone.
For such widespread adoption, that people have to continue to use it, no matter what the option is. Pay sites grow slower than free sites. Twitter has money in the bank, so it can afford to stay free for a while, thus growing. So when it's big already, it starts monetizing. If it starts monetizing too early, growth will slow.
"Not if your standard of value is your life, lived as well and for as long as possible."

Please define 'lived as well as possible' with out reference to objectivist concepts or philosophies.
Also please demonstrate objectively which is better, a life well lived or a one lived as long as possible, and in the the situation which maximizing both are impossible, the ratio which maximizes the value of life.

Alternatively please refrain from stating opinions as unqualified fact.
I'm not sure I'd build anything more than a startup prototype on AppEngine. The biggest reason is that I don't like being dependent on one company for "cost of scale". With no hosting competitor for AppEngine apps, if google decides to raise prices you're screwed.
I believe they've just changed the law...

http://photondetector.com/blog/2009/02/16/photographing-poli...
> It's actually fairly commonplace for "the press" to be involved in public corruption. They'll even defend the corruption.

Can you give some examples?

> And how many press organizations will do that?

Not all papers - but some do. In my country there are 2 good English newspapers and one magazine that does excellent investigative reporting.

> More important, that's irrelevant because corruption investigations rarely involve lawsuits.

Corruption cases are full of lawsuits! My favourite investigative magazine (http://www.noseweek.co.za/) was closed for almost a year because the person running it was sued for libel. He won that lawsuit - but he had to stop publishing that year while defending himself in court.

In 2007 he was sued by a bank to prevent him from naming a list of clients that the bank helped with tax evasion - he won again and published the list of names.
No you don't. It's quite obvious.
Yikes, I had absolutely no idea what this was for. I thought it was some type of word generator. After finding the very tiny link at the bottom, I saw the magic word: crosswords.

Most people don't do crosswords. Add that word to your page, or a lot of people will be completely lost.
Project Logos
I want to fix news. Please give me feedback.
(Note: a lot of details have been omitted in the public entry to protect the execution of my idea - if you need more information, feel free to ask and I might reveal more)
New Internet Advertising Model - Pay-Per-Chat
Pay-Per-Click sucks!
Or because you're older?

At the age of 14, I used to carry a Commodore 64 to my friend's house, and once the police stopped me thinking I was a burglar, and I showed them this thing with circuit boards hanging off, and said 'Would I steal THIS?'. It was pretty funny. I also ranted on about being a 'law-abiding citizen', which helped.
It might not seem like something incredible, BUT little innovation can have large acclaim. I have met the team from ecoincorpated, they have an incredible mindset and their business will do very well... Keep them on your radar.
I agree with that, and it's why I still like her. However, even then she gets very preachy. Her scene where the people in the train all die because they believe in these ideals is pretty edgy, and not in a good way.

That said: The Fountainhead is a great read, and so is Atlas Shrugged, even if it's not the absolute masterpiece she intended.
Our knowledge of physics is uncertain, but it is not inaccurate. Perhaps absolute truth is unattainable, but we can achieve enough truth that it becomes practically equivalent to absolute truth. I haven't read any of Rand's arguments, so it is difficult for me to understand the context, but dismissing an argument on the basis of absolute truth not existing seems a little too convenient.
I can't tell if Hollywood is just freaking us out as a culture or if this is another KILLER BEES scare... I Am Legend vs. Y2K fear.
Information Arbitrage: Will Ex-Wall Streeters Fuel an Entrepreneurial Boom? Well...
Truth is unknowable because it is so vast. To comprehend even a single human in their entirety would take more than an entire life of somebody externally.

The closest we can come is an approximation - and Objectivism hits a lot of the right chords, and as such it's a great starting point for people. However, assuming it's perfect only works if you ignore the flaws.
I don't think shanghai folk would be happy anywhere but shanghai ;).

I do not feel that Atlanta has all the requirements of a Silicon Valley. Atlanta does lack diversity on that level. But as for racism and for the ability for someone to be an entrepreneur? I think its ok if your the type to go out and find the people that you fit in with. I started my first company in Atlanta during college and did well. I'm not moving back to Atlanta because its too big for me; as are Shanghai and Silicon Valley. I've decided I like small towns: fresh air, less than 5 minute commute to anywhere in town, etc...

If you are a small internet company, self funded, and don't expect to ever be able to get VC, small towns may have the stability and peace required to go the distance. But thats all off topic ;). fyi, I'm in Tepoztlan, Mexico at the moment, arrived 3 days ago. I needed a few months out of Shanghai after all those years. So I'm sitting in a quite garden next the mountain and getting more quality work done than I have in quite some time...peace ;)
Seems to be becoming a pattern for them:

http://norvig.com/fact-check.html
That's a ridiculous notion, though. If not paying for the service still allows you to do everything twitter provides save for a small subset of features, it doesn't prevent folks from joining and seeing the value of it.

Being afraid to generate revenue before hitting critical mass sets this silly precedent that you can't flip the switch until you reach a mythical number of users.

I'm not saying Twitter couldn't make a bunch of money, but for every YouTube and Twitter waiting to hit it big, there are 1000's of companies thinking this is a viable solution to their problems and failing because of it.
I can only quote from my own limited experience... But I was in Tokyo recently and I noticed the iPhone was quite popular. Anecdotal naturally. But I was surprised when I read the wired article.
The 1 thing I learned from studying RMS' story..
..is this: if something you value gets destroyed, don't rage. Instead, rebuild in a better way.
The string could be prefixed with the length of the string.
You have to remember that these games were made a long time ago, before the popular professional gaming events even existed. 30-40 does seem a bit low, but I doubt they had any conception of the actual upper threshold (300+).

Also, AOE is much different than Starcraft/Warcraft. There is much less microing involved.
Well, if I were them I would want to get my uptime a little more solid before I took on too many contractual obligations.
Steve Jobs creates beautiful products with gorgeous logic, and as a result is subjected to a lot of controversy regarding his designs. He's almost the archetypal Rand hero.

Bill Gates, however, has managed to spread technology to the world. His version of it is flawed - it's nowhere near as good as Jobs's creation - but at the same time, he managed to innovate and create system that could be used to help millions of people in corporations and at home, and he made it affordable in a way Jobs never could. But Microsoft has slowed progress in fields for a decade by being tyrannical, and more than that, wrong.

The question is, which is the Randian model? They both changed the world, while at the same time doing it using logic that negates the other person's mindset. The answer is that neither one is necessarily a better person, or is following a necessarily better model, than the other one. They've each done marvelous things and made the world a better place. But there is no "truer" accomplishment.
And this duck with a hundred or so polygons takes up an entire Core 2 2Ghz core to render.

I feel like I've traveled back in time to the early 90s.
I signed quite a few NDAs when Taligent, OpenDoc and Copland were being brewed.

God I feel old.
Seems like you didn't read the article. It's full of very specific facts and quotations. Sure it could all be fabricated, but that seems very unlikely given the lengths it goes to pick apart the original article.
Both the Radio and the TV series had Simon Jones as Mr Dent.
I would get ready for anything. Reality surpases fiction :)
Yea, I am normally extremely pro science, but this just seems like a REALLY bad idea. Setting aside the idea that it would become more deadly, IMO the odds of destroying enough HIV DNA to make a difference without altering human cells seems unlikely.

PS: There are 10's of million's of people with HIV, so randomly mutating trillions strands of viral HIV inside people as they are reproducing and not creating a worse strain seems unlikely.
...I don't understand the personality type...

...from what I see they're all broken...

...Has there ever been a more insecure generation?...

...Kids these days have virtually no focus...

...I want to smash her phone into the ground and strap her head to the back of chair...

...It's fucking scary...

First, your statements are hyperbolic to the point of being pointless. You're extending your extremely narrow and biased experience to millions of people and writing off a generation wholesale. Nothing productive comes of this.

Second, I clearly said that there are things about the newest generation that are negative, so it's not that I'm assuming we understand all the side effects. But you didn't present any of your arguments from that perspective, so much as "Kids today are fucked up. Why, back in my day..." This rewrites history to ignore all the negative things about your generation and all the positive things about the current generation. I don't really believe that one generation is overall better or worse than another. They're just different and they live in such different environments that comparison is somewhat pointless.
Ask HN: Hacker news on friendfeed - do you like it?
Well,
I was just reading Paul Buchheit's blog, and I thought of integrating YC:HN with friendfeed through it's API.

Do you think it's good or bad idea? :D
Other people have responded in other ways, so I won't respond regarding her philosophy. I'll respond in a purer way that nobody else has: she writes bad prose. Her sentences are ugly, overlong, and lack concise flow. So by the definition of literature as the beauties of language, her work is imperfect and, in the case of Atlas Shrugged, actively bad.

I daresay I've read Atlas Shrugged more times than you have. Furthermore, though I could be wrong, I would argue that I've memorized more of the central concepts and analyzed them more thoroughly than you have. Judging from how you've written on this thread, you're still operating from a very shallow interpretation of her works, which is antithetical to her own ideas.

The central flaw of Atlas Shrugged is that it denies external possibility. Given her own hypothetical world, it follows impressive logic. However, it ignores the fact that people are not so easily judged. A former girlfriend of mine was an Objectivist and simultaneously an irrationalist. She believed in man as an end unto himself, but also that everything was subjective, there was no absolute truth - and she was a believing Christian on the side. The problem with Ayn Rand's writing is that the two are not necessarily incompatible. You can believe in what she writes and still think that things are subjective, and that truth is difficult to find, and while she would argue that that is a corruption of her ideas, and it is, Atlas Shrugged does not define itself well enough.

Part of the problem is the nature of language, which is subjective. If I tell you that I'm nice, it could mean that I am "kind" or that I am "accurate". If I call my friend a "motherfucker" it means something different to him than it does to Oedipus. Similar, "objectivity" does not have an objective interpretation. Neither does "selfishness". People will never agree over these definitions. Objectivists don't agree over them in their entirety. By that nature, yes, everything is subjective.

But that's beside the point. To give a quick summary of other flaws, I'd say that her writing is preachy, her characters are one-sided, there's no observation of physical stimuli (which is to say, the nature of bad things happening to good people on grounds other than human interference, which leads to questions of philosophy that she neatly ignores), and her book is about three hundred pages too long, drags in the opening, in the latter half of the second part, and John Galt's speech is wholly unnecessary as part of the work. Feel free to respond.