skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"This article reads like one long speculation presented as fact."

Though this might be true about the article itself as posted, this is not a bit of bad journalism. The author Sydney Finkelstein, is a Professor of Management and spent 6 years studying 50 companies and conducting some 200 interviews, here's a link to the journal article : http://www.jacksonleadership.com/pdfs/7Habits_IveyBusinessJo...

So to answer your "If you really wanted to check the effect of a certain character trait, you'd need to try to (carefully) compare how CEOs with the trait performed compared to CEOs without the trait, and make damn sure your sample sizes and methods are sound before making any confident assertions." It seams like 6 years, 200 interviews, and research in 50 companies would seem to be a fairely extensive study IMHO.
Hello everyone, I'm the admin of pythonforbeginners.com . What a day! Being on the first page of Hacker News was really unexpected and I was pleasantly surprised. Thank you for all the comments I have received. I have a lot of work to do, which is super exciting and I'll do my best to fix the formatting issues and to get the website more structured so that new users easier can find out where to start.

If you have any more suggestions or feedback to give, I'd be grateful to hear them.
While this is what the Wikipedia article states, it does not make very much sense.

Furthermore, it is not upheld by the actual text of the Geneva Conventions (which is the source of the article section I previously linked to). See Articles 21 and 22:

http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/WebART/365-570026?OpenDocument

http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/WebART/365-570027?OpenDocument
I don't understand your confusion. The only legit way around the pay wall (the pay) is to subscribe to the Times. Since the pay wall more people are subscribing to the online and dead tree versions of the paper. These extra subscribers pay money, which is more revenue for the Times.

Paywall limits access to people who pay (subscribers) => more people pay => Times gets more revenue. What's not to understand?
Question for people in the Indian startup scene -

It looks to me like the "acquire users first, figure out how to make money later" mindset does not fly in India in general. Would I be right in saying that such companies are a relative minority? How do Indian VCs respond to this mindset which is acceptable in silicon valley?
I think Kickstarter will go mainstream and you'll see a rise of niche-focused Kickstarters (similar to what happened with the growth of dailydeals).
This is one thing that differs between countries.

In Sweden... You have a sink split in two sections, one that you filled with dishes+water, one for rinsing. My parents yhsed a dishwasher, and I later had a dishwasher as well.

In the UK, my sister uses a wash bucket. This is the only place I've seen this.

In Greece, dishwasher again. The sink is also split like in Sweden.

In Japan, washing dishes in a single large sink under running water.

Edits:

* The UK also has those braindead hot and cold in separate faucets on each side of the sink. So when you wash your hands, either you're wasting a ton of water, you're using cold water, or you're scalding your hands. Will never understand that. And this is in a NEW apartment!

* Also, many brits I've known don't rinse their dishes... they let them dry with the soap on them. Also inexplicable.
That's 3 good workouts per week.
I would check out design for hackers by @kadavy http://www.amazon.com/Design-Hackers-Reverse-Engineering-Bea... He talks a lot about white space
AFAIK 10gen vehemently refrains from releasing benchmarks.
As far as I can tell, the problem is that we really don't know about the long reaching effects of global warming, and you're not accounting for the extreme possibilities. There have been periods of time where the earth was extremely inhospitable to life. I'm not saying that will happen but to simply believe that there will be enough food without actually modeling possible outcomes is foolish.
Maybe this list should be "Seven habits of CEOs that change things".

If they are good, they use there personality traits to make things better. If they are bad, they use these traits to make things worse.
I think people are doing it a disservice by calling it a paywall. There is no wall. Bypassing it is trivial. What it is is an effective donation drive the likes of Wikipedia: You go to the site, you get the content for free, and you get a notice that says "hey, somebody has got to pay for this stuff you're reading, how 'bout you pay your share?"

An actual paywall would be a lot less likely to work, because when people get to a paywall, they can't see what they're supposed to be buying, so they just go away and never come back. By contrast, this "works" because it gives people what they want unconditionally and then having accepted it without paying, guilts them into making a donation. Nonprofits have been running on this model forever.

But the real question is whether it's actually "working" -- the conversion rate to paid subscribers is evidently around 2%. That's pretty bad. And then they call it a success because it makes up 50% of their revenue instead of 20% as was traditionally true, but is that because subscriptions are up or because print advertising has been falling for so long? They only quote the most recent rate of change rather than the long-term numbers, and there may be one of these going on: [http://xkcd.com/605/]. When you first open a new revenue model, you can pretty well expect the first couple of years to have a higher growth rate than the ensuing years. Once everyone is subscribed who wants to subscribe, you have a hard time achieving any more subscription growth. And if subscriptions stop growing faster than advertising is falling, they're right back into the death spiral of cutting costs to save money which reduces readership which loses revenue which induces cost cutting.
Presumably files would be saved only to disk and not synced to dropbox, unless they already existed in dropbox. Files that were in dropbox would appear alongside files that were not.

You would need some sort of utility to tell the union-ed filesystem that you want to kick a file or directory tree that is local onto dropbox, and perhaps vice versa.
Counteroffers usually fail. The employee is usually in a different company in 12 months, either by getting fired (as soon as a CO is made, the boss is working on a replacement plan) or taking another offer elsewhere. Only if the counteroffer involves a move to another team or up the chain of command does it work.

Money has a surprisingly small effect on employee happiness. Most people who leave do so because they outgrow their role. Giving them more money to do the same stuff isn't going to have a long-term effect.
Wouldn't that be prior art to Apple's scrolling patent?
There are a lot of middleweight boxers that would probably disagree with that assessment.
I have tried to treat information I gather from news sources as preliminary. When I relay information I've learned from these sources, I try to say "I read in the new york times" instead of repeating the information as fact. There's a lot of information that I know I'll never get around to researching thoroughly, but it still is good to be able to use as a working base of knowledge until what seems to be better info can replace it.
Growth may not over but I've been thinking a lot of thoughts related to Krugman's final point. I think employment may generally decline and perhaps a skills gap will only continue to widen. Wealth disparity will widen also, perhaps.
I like the idea of a better mail client, a lot.

I like the discovery/enrollment process.

Not a big fan of the UI itself, or performance after sign up, at least as it is right now. The only element which seems visually distinct to me is the far left menubar; everything else kind of blends together in a too-widely-spaced collection of random boxes, not even lists. I like native OS widgets. This isn't a video game, don't make me figure out some new convention just to scroll a list.

Search is nice (which is the only reason I still use anything on gmail). Inspires me to try to get lucerne working on my own mail again.

Also not really a fan of giving my login credentials to a cloud service for no particular reason. There's no reason I shouldn't be able to keep them within a client only, and just go through the setup each time.

Realistically I'm unlikely to move off mutt (for intensive email use) or gmail (for infrequent use from other machines), but I'll try it again someday.
How is a post-mortem provided 4 days after the event less actionable in any significant way than a post-mortem delivered sooner?
Why would I switch to Inky from my current email client? I love the idea but I don't see the value. Good luck though!
Not sure there is any real correlation. You'd have to look at wealth disparity, etc.
Because the rest of the money is going towards the $200 Chromebooks ;)
A LED Light Powered By Gravity
Great job! really like the concept.

Could you give us a bit more details on the ML algorithm ? How is supposed to work and measure ?
Y Combinator: Bookmarklet  Buy Cheap Air Jordan Shoes In Stock
I use google docs to track everything, I have 3 years of daily weight measurements, keep a track of my lifts, keep notes on everything..

http://www.arcturus.com.au/sean/weekly_weight_2010.png

http://www.arcturus.com.au/sean/weekly_weight_2011.png

http://www.arcturus.com.au/sean/chart_latest.png

Large gain of 5+ kilos this year - trying to get squat past 140kg, hah. Playing rugby next year.

The biggest key is keeping a record. Doesn't really matter what you do, as long as you log it.

Good luck!
If you have cpu issues with a blog post you are doing it wrong.

If your CDN is useless because of cpu burning on your side, you are not using your CDN.
Yeah, bang for your buck (and by buck, I mean time)... go with lower reps, higher reps... to failure.
Mercurial for Git users
My different interpretation of that metaphor is that the wasteland is by definition an infinite sink. No amount of resources can make all of it anything other than wasteland. On the other hand, finite resources can make part of the wasteland into a vault, which may be larger or smaller, more or less attractive to different people, more or less interoperable with other vaults etc. But a vault nonetheless.
uncertain. it is widely recognized that they are getting killed in all their main business segments and revenues are declining precipitously. the major silver lining was that their cash position would their cash and income streams to aggressively buy back stock to keep the share price higher even as they downsized their business.

guess what, their cash hoard is more than halved today alone. that brings shareholder equity to 3.4 (taking a straightforward look at the balance sheet) and cuts cash on hand by over 50%. And it could get worse if the judge increases the fine. that means less for buybacks.

working our way down their balance sheet, we see that 2 bil of the equity is in goodwill. this is usually overpayment for acquisitions and other pretty illiquid assets that don't fetch much value (high level generalization) so lets take that out just to be safe.

you have a company with shareholder equity of 1.4 billion in a shrinking market with earnings of...lets assume 200-300 million figuring that they somewhat arrest their astonishing decline.

this is trading at 3.6 billion right now. its not the worst bet but it is more than somewhat dicey. the semiconductor industry is winner take all and extremely competitive. this means value investing isn't the best strategy. value investing requires that you can reliably predict future income streams.

i've been looking at MRVL as well. i'm just saying its not straightforward
I think that humanity will eventually go to a basic income, first on a national and then on a world scale. I think national BI will follow the next real economic catastrophe (not 2008, but 1930s) and the global one will be possibly 50 years later. I'm optimistic on the long-term future, but I think we have at least one more Great Depression and, unfortunately, at least one big-ass war ahead of us.

BI will probably happen too late, but if we don't want to die, we will implement it. It used to be that it took a 22-year one-time investment to get people ready for the work force, but now it requires continual education, and without BI, people who lack independent income are going to be in trouble.
Which is why Objective-C++ is so much fun to have available in your Mac/iOS programming toolbelt: it's the best and worst of two completely different C-derived object-oriented language lineages in one schizophrenic package.
Just because a sample consists of 50 companies and 200 interviews hardly makes that a sound sample, given no information about how those companies were selected, and given no attempt to compare those companies to successful companies. For example, 5/7 of these traits easily describe Steve Jobs.

Furthermore, just because someone is an academic authority hardly makes them less liable to fall for the cognitive biases that davidkatz mentions (that we color character traits into stories that fit the result). It goes without saying that we all have a strong bias to attribute other people's actions to their personality rather than conditions in their environment over which they have no control (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error). We generally don't apply this error to ourselves.

The classic example is that if someone trips over a rock, you'll tend to have the impression that they're clumsy. If you trip over a rock, you won't think you're clumsy, you'll just say to yourself that the rock was sticking out.
No, actually the half that's tired of being lied to by reporters with a liberal bias. Your "reality" isn't objective reality. Tell me, have you guys found Lucy Ramirez yet? In your, you know, reality?
"Counteroffers usually fail." Which is why I advocate thinking about the situation and only making counter offers when they actually make sense.

I mean, startups usually fail. Does that mean one should never start a startup?
My mistake, didn't notice the minus sign...
A Public Apology to Codecademy
Silicon valley's exclusive shuttles
Ask HN: No AAAA record for Facebook.com
If I run "host facebook.com" the dns resolver does not return Facebook's ipv6 address. Does it mean Facebook has stopped ipv6 support?
Agreed. I have found a total of 10 reps (divided by 2 or 3 sets) or less for each lift is enough to see gains. The point is to keep setting a slightly higher max and go to failure.
Have the mods been editing titles to include the year of the article recently? I've noticed a lot more of the front page articles include the year in parentheses now.
For most people, that doesn't really account for the travel time, fueling time, cooling off, and general gym fooling around, which there inevitably will be.

I still agree with his point that it's one of the best ways to spend that extra time, but I think it's important to acknowledge it and plan for it. The commitment of a one hour workout is quite different than one that's twice as long because you have to deal with after-work traffic. There's also the matter of which 5 hours, as not all hours are equal in value.
Or seven habits that increase risk. These habits boil down to having an extreme trust in their own infallibility, and eliminating and ignoring input that disagree with them, which may work fantastically well for a long time if you are a true visionary, but puts you at extreme risk of being blindsided if you aren't, or eventually even if you are.
Last comments! What I really regret not doing, was taking a daily photo.. I do have a couple of photos (by luck, not by planning), Also, get a tape measure!

starting point, began cycling to work about 2 weeks after this photo was taken (~118 kg, ouch)

http://www.arcturus.com.au/sean/2009-09-15.jpg

6 months later with riding every day and body weight exercises (~97kg)

http://www.arcturus.com.au/sean/2010-03-22.jpg

I would highly recommend taking some photos, because you don't notice changes yourself, everyone else does. :)
Growth is not over, but the pace has slowed, due to decreased R&D investment. The reason for the 5-6% global growth of the 1950s-60s (which we haven't seen since then) is all of the research that was being funded during the Cold War. When research funding dried up, smart people (even in unrelated sectors) could no longer demand autonomy to the same degree, and the economy slowed as the empty suits took over (and redistributed all the wealth to themselves).

The overarching story is still faster-than-exponential. A lackluster (in comparison to what was before it) 50 years does not mean that growth is "over".
The WSJ seems to be more targeted with their paywall than other papers. Some articles are still behind the wall even with the "Google trick":

http://searchengineland.com/wsj-pulls-back-on-what-google-se...
if you put something on the internet, assume that everyone
will see it and know it's you. It's as simple as that.

So if I submit my credit card information to Amazon, which is part of the Internet, I should assume that everyone will see my credit card information? It's as simple as that? That's good to know. Thanks for your help.
You have to take into account the enormous amount of money the NYT is spending to advertise their paid online service. I've seen countless ads on television and other types of media. Anyone can build a subscriber base with that kind of ad blitz.

The question is, how long will these subscriptions take to pay for themselves, and will paid users stick around that long?
It was the best I could come up with at the time. Most certainly not an ideal example.
If I want all of it it's worth $15 per month.

I don't want all of it. I want a couple of articles a week. Those articles are worth $0.50 at most to me; but probably much less. (I have no idea how much they'd get for ads for my view for any articles I want to read).

I mention those other journals because there is so much good journalism that buying all of it for a whole year is not practical for most people. People will pick and chose. At the moment they chose to include one paper for a year and exclude other papers for that year. But it'd be better if they could just pick and chose and pay for any individual article they wanted to read.
The issue with flat / minimal design is the lack of contrast. I have had problems when gmail redesigned the interface early this year.
No. This is incorrect, assuming the newspaper quoted that part right.

When you file for a patent, you are required to file all sorts of info, and applicants have a duty to disclose prior art or background information that may be relevant to the patentability of the applicant's invention that they know about. Search for "invention disclosure statements" if you want to know more
So, withholding information would be something like "knowingly failing to alert the PTO that you had a previous publication or patent app on the same technology that was abandoned and is now prior art", etc.

Again, i'm assuming the newspaper used the right terminology, which is of course, dangerous.
Sadly, the federal circuit has set a pretty ridiculously high standard for what constitutes misconduct that would cause you to lose a patent.

You are, IMHO, much more likely to get disbarred by the PTO than you are to lose a patent.
Because Google is afraid of pissing off the mobile operators I think.
IncomeInfuser
I know I'm rude and cynical. My point was that he believes his company truly cares in a very big way about these things, when it doesn't. If this particular item gets resolved, it would only be because of the publicity.

If he truly believes his company genuinely values customer service, it would be more interesting for him to stick around and explain why the problem doesn't get solved as the complainer tries to work his way through it with no outside assistance.

Getting someone to solve a problem from the inside is useful only to the single person with a problem.
Try `host www.facebook.com` instead. It will give you both A and AAAA records.

It's kind of funny though.
Live your dreams.
I would always suggest at least doing one set to failure. It's not hard to find someone to spot for 10 seconds.
That all depends on where you are in your information-gathering phase. And for many, many, many inexperienced lifters, as well as materials and recommendations promoting fitness and strength training will still recommend machines over freeweights.

Both have their place, though I put a heavy emphasis on freeweights.
I like namecheap. My biggest concern with them is they don't offer any sort of two factor authentication. It has made me look around for my more valuable domains.
Better Self. Better World.
Thanks for the suggestion. I have ideas I just don't know if I should start with those, or work on open-source projects beforehand. I think I'm going to go with the ladder.
While I generally think progression is more straightforward with weights, this claim isn't true. With bodyweight exercises, one typically progresses by making it more difficult via leverage.

See this diagram for example: http://www.operatorchan.org/pt/src/135399773193.jpg

The book recommended by xweb explains in more detail how to fill the holes between these exercises.
Fascinating that this snippet is from comp.sys.newton. I've forgotten all my NewtonScript, but do remember the richness of the Newton programming model.
> or it can realise it's much better off always keeping its customers happy (on both side of the fence).

100% agree. I would suggest that the cost of doing this compared to the small downside of not "making things right" makes it a pretty simple decision. The vast majority of their customers will never, ever read an in-depth article of a problem, or a forum discussion. There is very little economic incentive for them to change anything.
Yes. Such startups are a minority in India. Barring a few exceptions, VC money in India is available only for companies whose money making model is absolutely clear. That's why the startups that don't focus on making money early on, die out pretty soon.
Most viewed articles on Wikipedia 2012
Of course. If you can come up with an intelligent counteroffer with a decent chance of success, then go ahead. It is, however, a failure of management to have had to make one. This may be why employees who take CO's often get fired; their existence is a continuing embarrassment to the manager who failed to promote/raise them until an ultimatum was made.
I suppose I should have been more verbose above. Basically, I don't want to say that davidkatz's and yours notes about the possible errors and biases of the study are unfounded. IMO, every study or report should be approached with these precautions in mind, if simply because all data has to be interpretted at some point which makes it subjective. But the main point I was trying to get across is that a study of this size conducted by someone of academic authority should not be simply waved off as a piece of bull b/c of possible errors, which was the impression that davidkatz's post made on me.
Hrm, you might be right. My usual reporterese-to-actual-reality heuristic gave me "They said there was some prior art that wasn't noted at the time of the filing," and that is a commonplace situation — but your interpretation makes sense as well. My bad for autopiloting it.
If you have running shoes and a weight bench that's really enough. In the city you can live close to the gym and that keeps the time down, for example I can leave my apartment, return, shower, and dress in under 1:15.
‘Crowdfunding’ Rules Are Unlikely to Meet Deadline