skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Maybe you can help me understand this analogy a little better. You say that it's similar to when Microsoft decided to bundle IE into Windows, but the comparison isn't totally obvious to me at first blush.

Microsoft went to great (and often illegal?) lengths to prevent customers from considering or being able to make use of alternatives. Consumers had a great deal of lock in -- a user of a Windows computer often had software that would only be compatible with a new computer that also ran Windows, for instance. And Microsoft was able to use that leverage to acquire and keep users of its browser software.

Google doesn't seem to be following that pattern, as far as I can see. Users can (and do) make use of Google services from non-Google platforms. Google makes its products available to people using browsers other than Chrome, phones other than Android, etc. Performing a Google search requires no account.

I use Google for a lot of services, and I certainly don't want a lesser quality site at the top of my search results. I haven't seen that, either. I _have_ seen Google augment its already stellar services with new features that enhance my experience, and I ignore those things that haven't. If I ever find myself unable to ignore or disable things, I'll probably switch to another search engine. Which I'm free to do, since my use of the internet isn't controlled by Google!

You make some assertions that I'm just not seeing the evidence for, but I'd like to hear more about them. It seems uncontroversial that users don't want lesser quality search results. Where is the evidence that they are seeing them? And if they are, why aren't they switching to a different search engine? Why should Google have to separate their "core" search business from their other ventures right at a time when the expanded product (things like Google Now) is proving just how revolutionary a next-generation, personalized, multi-source search agent can be?
An ordinary car battery (you know, with the exposed terminals on top) will short if you submerge it in salt water. It's not a problem specific to hybrid cars in any way, and it's kind of weird that the article tries to paint it as such.
> Doing it at the rate you can mine gold isn't really any more sensible than doing it at the rate the Fed decides to.

Ah, but you're making the false assumption that somebody needs to make this decision, from the top down. But the real alternative is a free market in money itself.

All it really requires is the repeal of legal tender laws and the ability to enforce the settlement of contracts in whatever currency the parties agree to. No need to abolish the Fed or end government-backed currency. Just force them to compete on even footing with anyone else who thinks they can do better.

Monopoly is bad for consumers, and it always leads to abuse. And you don't need monopoly to have interoperability -- especially given our digital technology.

While government currencies would likely continue to enjoy certain benefits (like being acceptable for taxes, and being used to settle civil damages), there's no reason that large swaths of the economy couldn't operate under entirely different currency terms, and trade back and forth across currency regimes through freely moving exchange markets.
This works well as a learning method, most probably because UNIX tools are well documented, and there are readily available binaries. Many introductory programming courses I took and taught back in the day were using UNIX tools as programming assignments.

I believe, any well documented coding problem accompanied with a sample binary implementation should have the effective educational value.

Sites like interviewstreet.com should take this as a guide, even though their audience is not beginners. If you look at sample problems there, they are usually poorly described, and sample outputs are trivial and don't contribute to the textual description.
The problem: "Nextag’s response? It doubled its spending on Google paid search advertising in the last five months."

Google knows this and they have an incentive to move "commercial" sites towards AdWords and move "informational" sites higher in the organic results. The benefit is engineers can claim they are providing a better end user search experience while AdWords can make even more money.

The bigger problem is that the top 10 on a search string can be very arbitrary. What should be the top ten for the search term "shoes"? Wikipedia? Zappos? Local shoe stores? A blog about shoes? Are the top 10 the top 10 because they should be there or simply because Google put them there?

Nextag is an example of a company built on a platform (Google organic search results) that is somewhat hostile to Nextag's business. It's similar to the whole Twitter client app situation. Nextag needs Google, but Google doesn't need Nextag. It's an unequal partnership of sorts and Google doesn't care of Nextag exists.

It's too bad, but that is the nature of Google's platform.
Hugepic - a web app for showing massive pictures
Seeing Things? Hearing Things? Many of Us Do
In India, they give you the sim for free (or a nominal price). And for around 10 USD a month, you can have unlimited text/voice plans. Data speeds suck, though.
How to build a business in the age of ‘indivisibility’
We want low prices (that's a great thing), but we also don't want to lose options and competition in the future (that's a bad thing).

I think the idea you're getting at is an efficient price. Not too low to devastate competition, not too high to be unaffordable.

The idea of efficient prices ties up a lot of concepts, especially anti-trust concepts. You're really spot on. Consider though that there's a whole body of language that specifically outs Amazon and Google's behavior as plain anti-trust violations. E.g., Amazon bundling its book marketplace with a tablet sold below cost; Google bundling its search and advertising business on an operating system sold at inefficient cost (by sharing ad revenues on partnered devices, Google is essentially paying manufacturers and carriers to use Android).

How does Apple compete against tablet undercutting? How does Microsoft compete against operating system undercutting? Maybe the parameters have changed, and we should embrace the "better way of doing it without extracting that much payment from end users." But beware the world where Microsoft can't sell operating systems and Apple can't sell hardware. We would prefer to have that competition and innovation than none at all.
Trends that are changing how we do big data
There are actually people who seem to follow me around (like the one who attacked me in this thread) for the sole purpose of harassing me... for the "crime" of thinking differently.

Nobody's following you around. The most likely explanation is that you and they are attracted to the same articles for the same reasons, so you keep bumping into each other. After a while you'll start to recognize each other, and by that point, they'll remember all your previous interactions and take them into account when you run into them again.
This is exactly what Slashdot commenters said about Microsoft software in 2007.
How do you know it didn't short outside the battery at a relay or junction point?
I don't think with the [1] graph that use a LINEAR LOG SCALE for the Y axis we can talk about a LINEAR growth of GDP per capita as you do.

It's more like an EXPONENTIAL increase!!

Also, if you look at the trend, the recent decline is totally unprecedented - except maybe just before the great depression (the small cut over 1914) and during the great depression.

Considering the decline happened even with a very strong stimulus - and was NOT fixed by the stimulus, I guess we have many reasons to be worried about this slowdown in the pace of growth (and technology).

A tax change may not usually be a good idea - just like a keyneysian stimulus looked weird and was even initially though to be damaging during the great depression.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. We are not there yet, but at least having a refreshing new proposal (regressive tax based on the duration investment spending is kept) is IMHO valuable, if only to have another tool we can use besides the traditional "progressive tax+redistribution to increase consumption".

BTW the Australian example you give is quite interesting. May I ask you for some links ?
Well, yes. So the comment is essentially "journalists lean Democratic if you ignore a huge concentration of Republicans". Which is not much of a statement at all.
I disagree that it's an engineering problem. How are you going to model the supply & demand, the wants and desires, and complex transactions occurring among hundreds of millions of people? It just seems like hubris to me, but I'm open to the possibilities.
I'm merely pointing out that this might not be the best situation. I'm not proposing any intervention or anything like that. I'm merely pointing out that we may find that we have fewer tablet vendors in 5 years than we have today - the opposite situation from what we would want to happen.

In terms of the Amazon tablets, they are selling them at cost (they've explicitly said this) and it will take time to see whether they make back the money they spend on shipping, warehousing, R&D, etc. via content. It may be a model that others adopt to provide competitor tablets. It could also lead to a duopoly of Apple and Amazon on tablets. That would be bad. It could lead to Amazon getting further leverage over publishers and consumer prices. Also bad.

The thing is that bad behavior isn't without precedent. Standard Oil sold at below cost in a market to make the competition exit. When the competition was gone, they would raise prices significantly. So, in the short term you could get cheaper gas, but in the long run, you removed the competition. And sometimes we do regulate bad behavior. We did it with Windows and in the absence of Android, we might be considering it against Apple.

I'm not saying that I'm a fan of intervention or that companies can't attempt a console-style business model for tablets. I'm just suggesting caution in a developing industry that many see as a future of computing: one where we'll want competition and innovation, not for most players to exit before it even takes off. Low prices are a good thing, but let's not get ahead of ourselves and happily applaud low prices into an oligopoly. We want cheap prices that can be sustained and innovated on. Maybe these tablets are going to hit that. But there are some signs that might not be the case given LG's exit, the fact that Moto and HTC don't have recent offerings, the general mediocre financials of Amazon, Moto, HTC, LG, and Asus, etc. Then again, maybe that will turn a corner in the near future and I'm worrying for nothing and we'll have an awesome, cheap, competition-filled future.
I agree wholeheartedly. Strong monetary policy is essential to maintaining a strong economy. In the case of deflation, the Federal Reserve expands the money supply to counteract disincentive to invest. Unfortunately, the Fed often overshoots and ends up causing inflation instead since it's very hard to predict exactly how much is necessary. The Fed's job is not to pick winners and losers; it's just to keep the monetary base stable so that individuals can make investments without having to anticipate changes in the value of the currency.
I've ceased to be surprised. People love to believe the claims that standards of livings have been falling since the 30's. At which point I like to remind people that many Americans still had dirt floors around that time.

I wonder if humans are predisposed towards pessimism.

Certainly seems that way, and there doesn't seem to be a damn thing we can do about it.

;)
The cars were total writeoffs as soon as they got covered in seawater, though, even if they hadn't burned.

I don't think I'll be buying any used cars from the Northeast for the next few years; same thing happened after Katrina, when sketchy people tried to sell a bunch of flooded cars.
I've recently come to the conclusion that anyone who masters the following two skills would already be one of the best leaders/CEOs around:

(1) Knowing what's possible or will be possible with cutting-edge technology

(2) Understanding the pulse of the market

Each skill is already rare, but having both is an incredible combination.
I know nothing, obviously, as it's still a "mystery". I do know, however, that putting a FET switch and a current sensor inside the seal is hardly rocket surgery...
This is the partition problem[1]. So to answer your question: the problem is NP-complete, but there are pseudo-polynomial time dynamic programming solutions (see the wikipedia entry for details).

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_problem
I'm not convinced that Google moves it's own results up as part of the organic search results. Bing puts Google Finance first before Yahoo Finance as well. Regardless of it's popularity, its position may simply because of other signals in the ranking algorithm.
Search makes google zero dollars. Adwords makes google lots and lots of money. Adwords is about getting their paying customers ads infront of users. Search, product review, gmail, and lots or other apps are ways for google to make money.

Adwords is Googles firehose of money. Their other products help push that or are trying to find new ways to make money.
A lead acid battery won't start a fire if you drop it in the ocean...
Electoral-Vote.com used a much simpler method (averaging polls) and got 48 out of 50 states right.

EV.com had Missouri as a tie (McCain ultimately won by 0.1%, 538 got the state right) and had Indiana wrong (as did 538).
Geo TV Live
I agree that patent protection has some deep flaws in the pharmaceutical and other industries. I would even be in favor of abolishing software patents. However, this is really a tangential discussion to the original point that competition is not always beneficial. I referenced copyright and patents as examples of this idea, but the specific pros and cons of these is really a separate issue.
Why does clicking on the Lower East Side green bubble (why is the bubble green, as that seems to correspond to a 0 percent outage in the text) take me to the Greenwich Village page?

I guess the bigger criticism is...the map view could use some work and given the non-officialness of neighborhood boundaries, maybe a map view isn't the most useful?
How do you fill the gap for me, the consumer, of not having chargebacks available? Chargebacks are a net plus for me.
Off the top of my head:

1. sum all the numbers
2. if the sum is odd, then return false
3. else determine if any set of numbers adds to half the sum

To determine if any set of numbers adds to half the sum:

1. choose a number and add it to the set
2. if the sum of the set is less than the number, add another number to the set
3. else remove a number from the set

which numbers to add and remove can be done via brute force, but there is probably a better way.
The game looks very polished! Did you create the art as well?
I think you might underestimate the realities of the developer-tools business. I know how little $169 is compared to how much a fully loaded developer costs (I make developer-tools-as-a-service: https://circleci.com), but its pretty hard to convince people to see things how you want to see them.

If anyone understands SaaS though, its developers, so I disagree with your last point.
Pure capitalism doesn't mean no rules, just no rulers.

Who enforces the rules when someone breaks them? The community? Sounds great! Do all of the people have to vote on every infraction every time? …or are we going to designate some people who understand the rules and regulations deeply (let's call them referees and/or regulators) and put them in charge of making decisions on our behalf. That sounds like a great optimization to me! We just need to make them answerable to the people and not the players. You know, the players would love to have these guys on their side. They will probably even try to corrupt the refs by paying them off.

Why can't we have competing currencies in the market? And then we can see what kind systems & rules evolve and come into being. Fiat currency is like a single point of failure.

Firstly, we do have multiple currencies. Each nation has one and there's nothing from stopping you and all of your friends from doing business in a different one. Yes, you still have to pay your taxes in the one the US gov accepts.

Secondly, why is innovation in currencies important? I'd rather have companies building new types of ship rather than trying to reinvent water. I think something like bitcoin or a gold-backed dollar is interesting to think about, but I haven't seen anything compelling to say it's worth the switch. Maybe some smaller nation/economy somewhere should try it out. I think they will find that it's not all roses as they think it is.

In europe they said: cell phone infrastructure is extremely expensive to build so let's pick one standard, and force all companies to compete and build it out on the same standard. Kind of like how the US originally approached the incompatible railway gauge problem.

With cell phones, the US didn't do that so now we have multiple incompatible standards that all have kind of half-assed coverage. More competition and innovation! Except it's worse for the consumer. If you want to buy a cell phone, it might only work at your home but not well at your office. It might have to have 2 different kinds of radios. I wish the US had picked a different set of priorities to compete around.
Good catch.

My guess would be that on weekends lots of tech blogs tend to rest and not publish many articles.

But maybe the New York times is busy on the weekends publishing interesting human interest stories.
I think that would be pretty terrible. What happens to all the waste? Is this price inclusive of the original manufacturer or retailer taking my old electronics back and trying to recycle it?
Pure capitalism represents voluntary interactions. How exactly does coercion produce value? Pyramids?
"when a bunch of crap moved to the verge" - fixed
Links to what?
1. Part of this article reminded me of Jacque Fresco talks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacque_Fresco). Well at least the part about efficiency and the effect on jobs. I am probably just being an annoying futurist but honestly, I don't see employment problems going away. Manned toll plaza's -hah. Self checkout - more and more common. Vending-machine-like fast food chains - not yet but wouldn't be a surprise. Self stocking shelves....blah blah blah. This will take a while but what are we going to do when low to mid skill jobs are less and less needed?

2. I hate to be the consumerism party pooper but I think pointing out that it has been 60 months and we still are not at prerecession levels to be a good thing (ducking for cover). The reason we were at those levels is partly because we were operating unsustainably - spending more than we had (or at least more than we should if we want retirement savings) and giving out mortgages and loans to people that couldn't afford them (obviously there are many more reasons...).
Often, people will defer to an "expert", who they assume knows more about a subject than they do. However, in many cases, and especially in economics, the expert thinks he knows something to be true, but it turns out that what he knows completely wrong, but he has invested his entire life building knowledge on top of bad knowledge, so he is not willing change his mind. A person who knows something that is wrong is much more dangerous than a person who knows nothing.

Then what happens is that the expert will say something, and people will accept it as truth, because after all, he is an expert. And then it goes viral. All of a sudden, everything thinks something is true, even though it is completely false.

Then entire books are written. An entire field called economics is created. Universities teach economics using these books that are based on incorrect assumptions. An entire generation of people build their knowledge on top of these false assumptions. And the cycle repeats, perpetually.

I'm convinced that the entire foundation of economic thought is wrong, and that the entire field of economics contributes negatively towards humanity.

Regarding the great depression, you can make the argument that government intervention in fact created and prolonged the great depression. You'll never really know, because you can't go back in time and run the experiment again.

If you don't understand how something works, it's probably best to leave it alone, rather than try to fix it.
I don't think this doughnut road is something anyone advocates, nor does it translate to something like Q.E.

Inflation by itself does a great thing: it reduces the real value of old debt. Q.E. just distributes the cost of forgiving debt away from dead people to everyone in an economy. In other words, monetary policy lets us avoid the moral hazard of stealing from the past.
I don't really see a slowdown in technology - not even the empowering kind. The most obvious example for me would be drones - the military is notoriously slow to adopt new technology, and yet drones have gone from nonexistent to core infrastructure in what, six years? Personal computing had a slow move from desktops to laptops, then a fast move from laptops to smartphones, a faster move from phones to tablets, and now Google is showing off its Glass project - five years after the iPhone and three after the iPad. Saas has exploded in recent years, etc., etc.

The problem I see is that none of this needs to employ many people anymore. How many people does Microsoft or IBM or Oracle employ? Compare that to Google or eBay or Yahoo! - and that to Facebook or Dropbox. Even for physical products, what does it take to "make stuff" anymore? Does anyone think that if Telsa gets to selling as many cars as Ford, they'll employ anywhere near the same number of people? Or have a supply chain that extends to hundreds of thousands/millions of workers?

Technology is constantly replacing human work, but for a long time it was slow enough for people to adapt and find other work. These days I'm less and less sure that's the case.
Because the purpose of a society is to promote a stable, peaceful condition within which people can be safe and prosper. (See: Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan)

To the end that prosperity requires economic forces in order to create opportunities for people to rise disproportionately to their effort, we have a market. But the market serves our society, not vice versa -- the purpose is to control and tame the beast to make it serve us, not to expose ourselves to the wild fluctuations of uncontrolled (or poorly restrained) profit motives. The extent to which market control is reduced raises the bar of informed-ness for all market participants.

In theory we can all be served by an efficient market, if all participants are perfectly informed. In practice, perfect information is unavailable, and lacking that, we will all spend every available minute either seeking information or being duped.

Or: we can sacrifice the goal of theoretical market purity and accept that the rest of us have better things to do with our lives.
Show HN: Get a random technology article in every visit
I am with you on all points until your last - Newspapers take great pains to keep news and editorial departments separate.

I don't think it is common practice to disclose past editorials on the same topic as news articles, and if it were, the New York Times would have to disclose stances on both sides of many issues.
Taxes aimed at changing behaviour are generally considered to be bad taxes.

By whom?
This probably needs to be confirmed, but I don't think that's illegal in California.

After moving here 2 years ago, I had to study for the driver's license written test and I remember being shocked at reading "when turning at an intersection, if you are in the only turning lane, you may enter into any of the lanes during your turn".

So I'm imagining that if you both had green lights, since you were turning left, he had the right of way (not saying his actions weren't stupid by the way).