skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Newspapers still do the bulk of the workaday journalism, which is the raw material of almost all "news" in TV and the internet. CNN will still be able to cover national topics in the future, but local stuff will go uncovered. I predict increased municipal corruption throughout.
Shall we similarly have sympathy for the "major demographic" has an attachment to MSIE-6.x... and protect them from needing to upgrade? Or is that an unfair comparison?
Congrats on launching a service that should be very useful to lots of people.

Have you seen Amazon's TextBuyIt? https://payments.amazon.com/sdui/sdui/productsServices?sn=te...

What are your plans for the future of this service? Anything that would make me want to use it over Amazon's service?
You are totally my target audience - I had better make you a regular user :)

The synth voice is less than ideal, I'm looking at other options, but they get expensive quickly. One possibility is to use a better codec on the web server. Added to the 'todo' list.

The number - That is a strange bug, I thought I had fixed it a while back. I'll correct it soon.

I'll have to look into wishlists - exporting them is a neat idea, and probably won't be a lot of work if the API support it.

Thanks for your thoughts. As you continue to use it, please feel free to give me feedback: ajay@fonefu.com.
I think that StackOverflow works best for beginners and Junior developers. Simple questions like the one here get answered quickly.

The people answering questions are mostly beginners themselves, with a bunch of semi-experienced folks who want to show off their knowledge, and a few genuinely smart people thrown in for good measure.

But you're right, you still won't be able to find help with anything genuinely tough there. The kind of people who could answer your question tend to also be the types who recognize the value of their time.
Overview of DVCS workflows from Python proposal
Good points on the copy. 3 steps + a 'no reg' badge or something makes sense.

One point of fonefu beyond just the cost savings is the ability to keep a record of books you might be interested in buying later - things you lookup are stored on fonefu.com or your friendfeed.
In the book The Heart of Mathematics by Edward Burger and Michael Starbird, there is a quotation of a translated passage from Proclus, a 5th-century AD philosopher:

"It is well known that the man who first made public the theory of irrationals perished in a shipwreck in order that the inexpressible and unimaginable should ever remain veiled. And so the guilty man, who fortuitously touched on and revealed this aspect of living things, was taken to the place where he began and there is forever beaten by the waves."
Hmm, if my current idea doesn't work out, I could just fonefu.com as a site to complain about cell phone contracts :)
I didn't think there was much need to explain why this submission should be flagged. I have certain expectations of the reader's ability to come to obvious conclusions :-)
they are also publishing a book of the most popular FU's. I guess that is probably worth more.
It'd be pretty trivial to add once the RSS feed in general is fixed (as in, maybe 5 lines of code). In some ways this patch is an experiment: if it looks like in general Paul is interested in patches I'll probably implement a few things on my wishlist. If this patch in some form doesn't go in, it's honestly not worth my effort to implement / fix things since I don't have any intention of running an arc news site myself.
That brings up my only real beef with StackOverflow. Since the person who asks the question gets to pick the "correct" answer, you tend to see lots of questions with absolutely terrible advice highlighted in green with a little check mark next to it.

It's easy to see why this happens. After all, the one person in the world least qualified to identify the correct answer to a given question is the one who asked it.
You're probably right about the market being fairly small, particularly with the (very) limited performance of the plane. However, there are a lot of smaller airports that do not have rental cars available. Many small towns also don't have taxi service available. This literally is probably 3/4 of paved, public runways that have no rental cars or taxis. I can see it being useful for say, a small town doctor that serves a different town each day.

That said, if they sold a thousand, I'd say they were doing pretty well.
Cantor was very troubled by his discovery of the transfinite numbers because they conflicted with the infinite nature of God (hence the name transfinite).

Shouldn't be any surprise to anyone that when a theory conflicts with _beliefs_ there's trouble.
Thanks for the feedback. I was thinking of email first, then SMS. I agree that navigating to a website to retrieve your list might be less than optimal, so email would suffice in this case.
I think (mostly) seniors like to walk in malls because they're air conditioned/heated, relatively safe, and have restrooms. Few other locations have these amenities for free.
I second this, although it can be a bit disconcerting when it suddenly changes the colour temperature. Also, it doesn't affect the mouse cursor for me, which ends up appearing slightly bluey green in the evenings.
This is certainly an interesting approach, but does anybody have any firsthand experience with learning a technical discipline from primary historical sources? While I do enjoy reading the original papers for many mathematical ideas, it seems like if it were done in a course, it would be very slow-going and leave much of the material—especially in a huge subject like Discrete Math—uncovered.
I'll have to look at FF3 on Linux. Thanks for the pointers. The phone number parsing has a bug - I'll fix it soon.

Thanks for all of the feedback.
How to blog on company time and get busted/promoted
Run down of why your company needs a blog and how to make the case for being the chief blogging officer - from a panel at SXSW Interactive.
When spectating others in an FPS I'm always surprised when they fail to see someone on their screen. This is more visual acuity than just an overall improvement though.
This is not hacker news. I know, I know, flag it and move on, but the guy who submitted it has an account created yesterday. I've been trying to cut down on starting these threads, but without them, how will people know what to avoid?
Rolled our own - we started this before we knew of Twilio.
Interesting if not slightly fluffy article. Unfortunately, the author decided to use calories as a unit of energy in one of the examples to compare gasoline energy content and human energy consumption. While the numbers are correct, the use of the 'calorie' for a non-dietary energy unit actually equivalent to a kcal, is disappointing.

America may learn numerical literacy but it seems unlikely they'll be able to apply it to many problems without a system of units that doesn't require knowledge of arbitrary conversion ratios or ambiguous magnitudes.
Surveying Emacs Lisp
I am surprised too, the alexa ranking its impressive, althought it may be not very accurate, since I would think many people that read it do not visit the site but follow it on twitter and rss.

My guess its that its kind of funny and misery sells, but I think no one could have predicted such a big hit out of this dumb idea.
It's easy to see why this happens. After all, the one person in the world least qualified to identify the correct answer to a given question is the one who asked it.

That depends on the context though. If the person is asking a question because something isn't working, and an answer solves the problem, they are then the best person to qualify whether the answer was correct.

Though yes, if you are asking a question from a more academic perspective, then you wouldn't expect the person asking to be the best judge of the right answer.
Maybe. One reason I listen to classical music is that it is nice if you study with it and it drains out the background music. (e.g. I find it less distracting to work with classical music on than with Korn or Papa Roach).

A few people I know is like that - but they would for sure not have a classical music CD in their car.
Looking fwd to trying this out next time I'm in a bookstore. Very interesting!
What worked for me was changing from black on white setup to white on black -- in whatever editor you use, make the background you stare all day black. MUCH easier on the eyes.
What about the counter-wisdom to this, which is that too much money when you don't need it can kill your start-up by forcing you to increase your burnt rate and aim higher than your start-up can support?
Co-investors (When picking your syndicate, choose carefully)
I think that's an incorrect comparison, as IE6 does not directly or indirectly create content and the newspapers do.
I thought he had an interesting point about how you can increase your user's trust in your social network platform by specifying the rules more clearly, having a constitution of sorts for your users.

But then, yeah, last paragraph - totally off the deep end. It's not that I'm opposed to his views, they just don't need to be inserted as a non-sequitur into unrelated conversations.

Then again, maybe he thinks social network platforms should print their own money, in which case the experience of US govcorp is informative.
Nice - let me know how it goes for you.
If you're in one of the big languages on SO (C#, SQL, Python, Ruby), it's terrific.

If you're trying to get help with some other language, I've found it to be far worse than mailing lists, IRC, or even USENET. In less-popular languages, the only questions are of the form "How/Should I learn $(lang)?". There's no Jon Skeet of Haskell there.
Reminds me of one of my favorite films

"Donald Duck in Math-Magic Land" (Yes, I own the DVD)

Pythagoras and his secret crew have a cameo.
The real world has 6 billion users. It works really well.

Many people have noted that explicitly declaring who your friends are in Facebook is really quite awkward when applied beyond your, yah konw, friends. Coworkers, for example, make this really awkward.

So my point isn't that they should reflect the real world arbitrarily. My point is that they should do it because it is better.
>I know that Disney stops people from taking Walt's original concepts. But is that a bad thing? What concepts did Disney steal? None: he made his own. Other people can do that too.

This is completely wrong. Nearly every famous early work of Disney's was "stolen" from others. Among the more famous are Snow White (1937), Fantasia (1940), Pinocchio (1940), Dumbo (1941), Bambi (1942), /Song of the South (1946), Cinderella (1950), Alice in Wonderland (1951), /Robin Hood (1952), Peter Pan (1953), Lady and the Tramp (1955), Mulan (1998), Sleeping Beauty (1959), 101 Dalmatians (1961), The Sword in the Stone (1963), and The Jungle Book (1967).

The first iteration of Mickey Mouse, called "Steamboat Willie", was copied directly from Buster Keaton's "Steamboat Bill."

This is an excerpt from one of Lawrence Lessig's speeches about the topic:
"It was a parody, a take-off; it was built upon Steamboat Bill. Steamboat Bill was produced in 1928, no [waiting] 14 years--just take it, rip, mix, and burn, as he did [laughter] to produce the Disney empire. This was his character. Walt always parroted feature-length mainstream films to produce the Disney empire, and we see the product of this. This is the Disney Corporation: taking works in the public domain, and not even in the public domain, and turning them into vastly greater, new creativity. They took the works of this guy, these guys, the Brothers Grimm, who you think are probably great authors on their own. They produce these horrible stories, these fairy tales, which anybody should keep their children far from because they're utterly bloody and moralistic stories, and are not the sort of thing that children should see, but they were retold for us by the Disney Corporation. Now the Disney Corporation could do this because that culture lived in a commons, an intellectual commons, a cultural commons, where people could freely take and build. It was a lawyer-free zone."

To address your second point, "the idea of capitalism" does not necessarily require giving anyone permanent, state-enforced monopolies of anything, no matter how well written it is. Any justification for copyright has to stem from a benefit to society. Strong arguments can be made for giving creators temporary monopolies of a limited scope, but permanent monopolies are bad for both innovation and the public.
That is true. At least drum music was developed before colonisation took place. The style of music is probably influenced a lot by the instruments.

There is some evidence that these drums were used for communication.
this is probably one of the few scenarios where a blog post (preferably from a bilingual speaker) would have been more valuable than a direct link.
This is probably the best news of the year for startups. I see Google as a great partner for entrepreneurs who will not go for small seed money like what YC, TechStars and other incubator give. A lot of founders I know are people with career not out of college folks. Kudos Google!!
If you asked a mechanic to fix some broken pipe on your car and he used a bit of duct tape to do it.. even if it worked, would you say it was a "good answer"?
Yeah, I guess you have a point :) http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_brings_free_musi...
A map on termsheets and its negotiation
You'll often see the first answer that comes close being accepted, even though it's fundamentally flawed and doesn't actually work.

Other times, the best answer is something along the lines of "You're approaching the problem wrong.", such as in "I'm storing customer IDs as a comma separated list in a column. How do I join that to the Customer table?"

Too many people will offer up horribly complicated solutions that technically do what the questioner asked, but the real correct answer is "Normalize your schema."
I think the real problem in a lot of cases is that newspapers are trying to be something that they simply can't. They are trying to give you up to the minute news, but logistically you aren't going to receive it until the next day. They simply can't compete with the web for breaking news. Where I think they can win though is with relevant and in-depth reporting on stories which you won't see on the internet (and not just printing half of the AP feed either).
Kevin O'Leary Responds to Grade 12 Student's Letter
Basic summary and sentiment of the article: "Boo hoo, wah!"

If super-sized shopping malls are disappearing, it's for a reason and probably because they're too big. The local mall here is currently doing a $60 million expansion, but then this is basically a middle-class only town and the malls target this. It's also getting a supermarket in the expansion, and the next mall over already has one.

Walmart recently opened a supercenter, not far from the older mall, but it definitely doesn't appear to have affected the amount of people going there. Walmart certainly gets a large amount of visitors, but it doesn't necessarily have all what people here want. They have a great selection of electronics, however their stocking practice sucks monkey butt. They've lost numerous sales from me because despite the website claiming they have something in stock I end up going to one of the malls to get it. I don't like walking into the store one week and seeing something I'd like to get, and the next week it's gone.

All in all, personally I'll shop at a mall over Walmart, just because I like being treated like a customer and not a broken ATM with legs.
I realized I shouldn't complain without giving it another try. So I did. And.. perhaps it's just because I'm primarily a Rubyist and UNIX-dweller (the site seems a lot stronger for those living in the Microsoft world) but there's some rather crufty code in there coming from high karma users. Not only that, but the majority of questions are getting these "quick fix" answers well within an hour of the question going up rather than measured, educational responses that really help.

It's "question & answer" versus "learning." SO is the former. But answers alone do not equate to solid learning. Everyone can read Wikipedia articles on medicine all day, but it can't compete with the wisdom a professor or doctor can give you.

The scoring doesn't help. Usenet was pretty cool in the day because anyone could submit an answer and bad answers would be questioned by people with experience (many forums are still like this, and Hacker News is very much like this despite the points). On Stack Overflow, even if you have enough points to comment, it seems like hardly anyone bothers and there's little "calling out" of sloppy answers.

I haven't regretted trying it though. It's a well designed site and there are some great Q&As. I suspect in certain disciplines it's very useful. But, for me, I've realized working on my books and other documentation will be time better spent than having to play a game for points answering questions against the clock on a social network when I'd rather just help and teach folks instead. So, I tried..!
OK lets ask it this way. If you had enough money to buy Nintendo, with its innovation, massive profits, and cult following, or the xBox section from ms with its debt, which would you buy?

Who knows, maybe in 5 or 6 years xBox will have paid back what it cost them to develop. Or maybe a new console will come out and no one will remember what the xBox was before they get a chance.

The genius was that Nintendo decided to not compete with xbox and ps3, and instead create a new market which they completely dominate and profit heavily from.

Personally I don't buy the 'control of the living room' strategy. From anyone. Apple TV? no thanks.

Portable devices - Nintendo DS, iPhone/iPod are where it'll be IMHO
Read and remember a 300 page book in 2 hours
It's a sickening feeling that we ever have to consider this possibility.

I'm in Australia. I tried to look at wikileaks last night, it was "down" - the first thing that came to mind was being blocked. It was only after I asked some overseas friends on IM that I knew it was actually down down.

It's just like a free trip to China! I loved playing the "will this web site load" game there too - now I can play it at home!
I also bought an Aeron. But in my case I'm round (don't get run over by a car, or you'll end up round too). The gas cylinders in the "inexpensive" office-depot type stores wear out after about 6-8 months, so they end up costing more than an Aeron after about 4 years.

If you're the sort of person who puts things in their backpockets - DON'T! Even a thin wallet twists your butt enough that it ends up causing backstrain.
this is great - especially the history of truth PDF which is linked to within the article. thanks a lot.
He's got to do something with the 164 hours a week he's not working.
It is often difficult to find good (easy) questions to answer quickly because they get answered so fast.

One solution is to ask questions - you can get reputation for that as well. Once you have reputation, you can down vote stuff.

Another is to look for difficult questions that haven't been answered. You can even get a badge for answering a question that's been open for more than 60 days (or something along those lines).
I'd agree with that. Malls are rather nice places to be in, especially during the day where it's quieter and you're free to walk through.
Don't Suspect A Friend, Report Him
Ebay history and architecture
Not Mobile Browser Detection: Finding phones by looking for desktops
Mobile browser detection involves comparing the User-Agent header against a list of well known mobile browser strings. If the problem is reversed the number of false positives can be reduced.
Javascript coding vs Factor coding
>>> I picked the name Sasha Harris because Sasha sounds somewhat British and Sasha Harris is the prostitute that was involved with Sham-Wow Vince. Also, note how I used words like “mates” and “cheers”. This lulls the Brits into a false sense of security.

One commentator notes:
"Sasha sounds english? Maybe if Moscow was in Sussex…"

It's hard to tell if this guy is trying to be a twat. Either way he's amusing.

I used the word twat in there because it alerts British readers to twats.
Hunchentoot, CCL and Windows
Anaheim Orange County 
Hardin Honda has a great selection of vehicles, including Honda Civic, Honda Fit, Honda Accord, Honda Pilot, Honda Odyssey, waiting on the lot for you. Use the Hardin Honda website to build and price your new vehicle, view our new & used inventory, order parts, apply for financing and schedule service or maintenance. Hardin Honda serves the Anaheim, Orange County, Westminster, Irvine, Santa Ana areas.
For me, stopping Effexor after having taken it for a year was 2-3 weeks of misery. I have heard that for some people the withdrawal is so bad that they can't stay off the drug long enough for their body to finish returning to normal.
I don't think there is one. At least from what I can gather, this isn't quite a proof that the diagonal of a unit square has length √2. The tablet tells us that the Babylonians knew the length was √2, but it doesn't tell us how they knew, or how they could prove they were right.
Very cool.

A little recommendation would be for you to create a sample account using the "555-555-5555" number you default to in the login field. That way, curious people who are interested in the interface can click through and see what they're going to get.
Artist, Engineer, Craftsman, Inventor
Android (G1) Market Model: Low-volume, Low-cost?
That was unfairly modded down IMO.

TED is great in its way, but it caters to, some would say flatters, an elite crowd of people - the type who buy expensive artwork for their houses - some of the stuff proposed there might sound great to the chardonnay-class participants but has little relevance in the real world.

Can design save the newspaper? Of course not, and merely raising the question with a straight face impressively demonstrates the out-of-touch, ivory tower, art-gallery-opening-attending disconnect of the speaker.

Such a question is, in my opinion, at least as prima facie ridiculous as posing that interpretive dance might save NASA, so the parent's comment is an entirely valid reductio ad absurdum.
Here are a few nice articles:

http://lifehacker.com/5146058/eye-relax-reminds-you-to-stop-...

http://www.wikihow.com/Exercise-Your-Eyes

http://www.centre4activeliving.ca/workplace/trr/tools/yoga_a...
Imagine the web came before the newspaper, and you were an investor. Then someone came to you and pitched you : I'll take the best stuff on the web, print it daily on paper in factories, transport it all over the country in the night, then sell it for the price of a cup of coffee. I'll also hire a bunch of expensive writers to write quality content, and I'll also make that content available for free on the website so as to make people want to buy the paper.

Would you invest?
I still don't get why malls don't have supermarkets. Almost every shopping center in Sweden have them, and guess what? People shopping at the mall pick up food. People grocery shopping browse the mall.
Skype for iPhone now live in US
Google Forms $100 Million Venture Fund
You can't follow the directions of the medicine you're testing if you're out to villainize an entire class of life-saving medications to support the moral weakness theory.

I hate to say it, but this article is trollish. He isn't depressed. He doesn't have social anxiety disorder, he's just shy. He doesn't get therapy or join toast masters, he just pops the pill and then gets drunk all the time.

And it doesn't work wonders for him. Who woulda thought?
From the article :

The fund will focus primarily on companies seeking seed funding and early stage funding, and Google Ventures will have the ability to make investments ranging from tens of thousands to "several tens of millions" of dollars, Maris said.

The seed part in the "tens of thousands" sounds a lot like YC.