skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
???

Didn't DHH invent it? Zed Shaw always seemed like an unfunny Maddox. How could he be more popular? Why are they tracking popularity? Did Struts have an ongoing popularity contest?
The consumerist thread got the news from this NYTimes op-ed (by the same author as the previous NewYorker article):

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/30/opinion/30gawande.html?ex=...

Seems like the "Office for Human Research Protections" should remember: "First, do no harm."
You have company!
I recently called to make a change to my account. I was shocked by how nicely I was treated. To top it off, the person on the line gave me some helpful relevant tips too.
Yeah, I only looked at the linked page with the rankings, no idea about the context.
Expert predicts sex with robots for those under 35
What is the difference between a DSL and an API, btw? I was wondering about that lately. Except that you can make the DSL look a bit prettier in theory, aren't they basically the same thing?
Customer service is the differentiator, especially in commoditized products/services except when hotel babysitting: http://redeye.firstround.com/2008/01/some-thoughts-o.html
An API is a list of functions you can call. An embedded language (aka DSL) is a programming language adapted for a particular domain, and a programming language is more than a list of functions. It might include special types of iteration, or special syntax. It might even change the whole model of how a program is expressed, e.g. if you wrote purely declarative data-flow language for network simulations.
Being ranked second, and only behind the creator of the framwork cannot be all that bad.
The state of innovation in India
Interview with Yossi Vardi, pioneer of Israel's tech industry with opera interlude by Marc Canter
I was a T-Mobile customer for 2 years, and was never treated that nicely. It seemed like every time I called, I was being pressured into signing another contract. Their systems were also always very slow, so while the rep was waiting for their service interface to load, they'd engage me in a lot of awkward small talk. I haven't been a customer for about a year, so maybe they've changed since then.
Don't positive thoughts help survival?

Perhaps we have evolved to an optimum mix of the two (nightmare & positive dreams).
yep thats the lines I was thinking, now how much will they pay. I think I will do some market research to gage from the market what price they would be comfortable with.
Here's the actual letter from the HHS OHRP:

http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/detrm_letrs/YR07/nov07b.pdf

It seems that as long as the IRB (Institutional Review Board) waives the consent requirement, the program may be able to continue.
VC Fundraising Manual: Why VCs Don't Always Cut You Loose
One reader wrote:

It'd be nice if they'd just say no and cut that company loose instead of giving them false hope they might get funded if the investor can be convinced. I see a lot of wasted time by companies spent in this murky area - time they might be better off running and improving their companies.

Some VCs are genuinely bad at responding to entrepreneurs. However, even highly responsive VCs sometimes have companies that fall into the no-man's land between being given a 'yes' or a 'no'.

VCs understand...
Or maybe a positive dream is a successful resolution of a nightmare scenario. When we wake up we remember only emotionally intense episodes and forget others. If you did solve a problem in your dream, the solution "dominates" over the original problem in terms of its emotional charge.
Are there plans to make it easy to label AppJet code as under certain license terms? (Creative Commons, GPL, LGPL, BSD, Microsoft's 'Shared Source' silliness...)
MC Hammer To Launch Dance Site
eppi niu ia! (arc english)
That's funny because there is that BBC documentary The Power of Nightmares about how politicians gain power by attaching their message to whatever the populace is currently having nightmares about, and by creating new nightmares as well.
I really liked that book. Did he really make a breakthrough, though? I know his system is available now, but how does it fare, compared to other technologies?
AInews.org - all the latest artificial intelligence news - a glimpse into our future
JPMorgan Predicts 2008 Will Be "Nothing But Net"
Homebrew: Recreating Star Wars in Your Garage
That's a problem of information asymmetry where the only indicator of quality is the price.
looks cool but i solved level 1 and it's not getting any harder... or giving me a new level...
Which browser are you using?

How many cookies do you have from numbrosia.com? What is the path in each one?

You might try deleting cookies from numbrosia.com and try again.
2007 Review of Projects
Are they just taking that domain so MS is forced to buy it from them?

I don't understand how this is related to Microsoft officially.
OK, what am I missing here? What is the advantage of doing this in a poorly-featured browser page rather than a word processor or text editor?
The dictionary feature seems to be 'write your own dictionary' - so I'm still going to need an actual dictionary for, you know, looking up what words mean.
I can't do much formatting, so for anything substantial I'll have to copy/paste into openoffice (or emacs for latex, html, etc). Maybe it'd be useful for translating short, online documents from somebody else's computer - but not much more useful than a couple of textboxes side by side.

Good luck to them - at least they're trying something new. But I can't see where they're hoping to go with it.
User registration pages suck
Pitching on a Prayer & a PowerPoint
What cool gadgets did you get for Christmas or buy yourself for Boxing Day?
Santa brought me a Samsung 22" Widescreen LCD Monitor (226BW). I guess I was good last year.
hey this is a great story!
"It has cost GBP5.6m less than the GBP65m estimate to build" and "in computing terms that is the same as 12,000 standard desktop computers"

59.4 M / 12000 = GBP4,950 each. A good desktop computer is less than GBP1,000. It doesn't sound like a great buy.
you format at the office through the api. this lowers the barrier to acquiring translators in faraway places. smart.
Mark Cuban: The Best Equity is Sweat Equity
I bought myself a 60" plasma TV and a Eee.

First impressions on the Eee:
http://blog.karas.net/Das_Blog/bid/3324/Nokia-N810-Not-yet-A...
The trend with his "intermediate successes" seems to be that he started strong but never committed long enough to finish.

I empathize, though, since if I had his money and free time I'd be just as bad.
Japanese Robot Eats Snow, Poops Out Bricks of Ice
First Tablet Mac Notebook, the ModBook, Finally Released by Axiotron
Cool pen tablet based MacBook mod is finally released by the company that showed it off a year ago at Macworld.
The analysis here seems pretty shallow. As in every other deal, one needs to consider what they're offering, and your own position.

In our case, we are equity rich and cash poor. We don't care nearly so much about our share, so long as a great product gets off the ground. We also don't particularly think it's a wise course of action to bargain with a law firm. Especially when one has better things to do.

We're talking about 1% here. Shouldn't you be spending time worrying about your product? Or more cynically, getting a better VC deal?

Lastly, there's the equity equation. If these particular lawyers would improve your prospects for 1.01% over the alternative (other lawyers, or more specifically, over the bargaining process for other lawyers when you should probably just be coding), it should be worth it: more if you're risk averse.
I kind of figured you could look outside for that. Temperature is a little harder to gauge.
Why big brands are getting Facebook wrong
Ask YC: Capistrano help w/ sudo
Hello All,
I'm at my wits end here...
I'm using capistrano 2.1.
I'm overwriting the finalize_update task in my deploy script to run sudo so that I can perform some misc linux calls. Here's a sample call:

task :finalize_update, :except => { :no_release => true } do
# chown the new directory to apache:apache
run "sudo -p 'sudo password:' chown -R apache:apache #{latest_release}"
end

I do see the 'sudo password:' prompt, however anything I type appears on the terminal and hitting enter doesn't send my password over. Prior to the sudo call, when I'm prompted for a password, I don't see my character inputs on the screen, typical of entering passwords in linux terminal,...so it appears that the sudo password prompt is broken. Is there a setting that I have not configured properly?

I've been searching google, and part of the new features for capistraion 2.1 is that it recognizes the '-p' option on sudo. As quoted:

Use sudo -p switch to set sudo password prompt to something predictable.

I don't understand this statement. What password prompt is "something predictable"?

Thanks for any help!
Designing Problems are for the Lazy
Thanks for the comment Dani.

When it comes to applying the equity equation, consider the opportunity cost:

http://venturehacks.com/articles/equity-equation#opportunity

For example, 1% spent on lawyers is 1% you can't spend on developers.
A ribcap!

http://www.ribcap.com
Damien Katz: New Gig
Freemusiczilla: Best Music Downloader I've Tested
Plaxo's For Sale
fyi, bug -- when comments are deeply nested and the line that says "username -- x hours ago with y points" has to wrap, the second line appears in the middle of the comment.
<sike> seems logical </sike>
The breakthrough is in the idea that what our brain does is basically it generalizes input and performs detailization on output. It seems so obvious even speculatively that both generalization and detailization are the core of natural intelligence, yet the AI science so far failed to include them as research subjects at least.

And it seems like Jeff Hawkins found both mechanisms in the neocortex.

Surprisingly, at the moment we don't have any theory for generalization, not even a single try to formalize it and create algorithms -- not to be confused with the theory of inference. Evidently, this is terra incognita and a very promising one.

His claim, though, that what he's found is the intelligence looks like an exaggeration. Intelligence is not only generalization, although there is no intelligence without it.
28 Things Didn't Happen In 2007
I think have 37 signals in the title is wrong.

imho,.rb
yeah that site is the to the shame of the creators. Def a popularity contest.
.rb
I first read the Mark Cuban blog a few days / weeks back when he did a repost of his own success story. I was impressed and wanted to read more. The last couple of posts have not been so insightful as the first and leave large "what if"s unanswered. I will keep checking back for sure to see if another gem appears though. Maybe I am too wrapped up in looking for the bridge that takes me from intent and effort to success.
Pingie! Free RSS to SMS
Jottit: Moderate success. The site was finished and launched and got incredibly positive reviews

Is that true? It was just a text box that echoed on a webpage. Pretty mild effort, and if he actually got "incredibly positive reviews" then he's got far too many ass-kissers hanging around him.
15 Great Examples of Web Typography
the best way to do it would be to change you sudoers config so your task can do that without a password

run visudo and add the following line:

[user] ALL=(root) NOPASSWD:/bin/chown /path/to/apache

/path/to/apache should be the directory above your latest_release dir so you can avoid a wildcard
i am 8 years old i need a job to by a wii
can you get me a job
You have to click on "submit score" before you get to see the "next level" link. It should be visible all the time, not everybody wants to submit their score.
Just FYI, it's "psych".
While the article makes some good points, I can't say I agree with it 100%. When considering the first sentence, "As our knowledge and expertise increase, our creativity and ability to innovate tend to taper off.", I think this is very inaccurate when it comes to "new-growth" areas like the internet of today. In fact, to me the opposite is true, the more I learn, the more creative I feel because it's still very possible to do something on the 'Net that hasn't been done before. adf471587879rzq
http://www.hixenbaugh.net/gallery/detail.cfm?itemnum=1672
Give them bones--they especially like to crush bones to get at the tasty marrow inside.

Oh wait, that's hyenas.

How much value do the lawyers bring to your business, and are the services they're offering specialized, or of the commoditized, cookie-cutter, boilerplate variety?
Co-founder of Truveo talking tomorrow at Justin.tv about Post Exit Startup Wisdom
OLPC CTO quits to start her own company that will use her inventions done at OLPC
Bang Ventures: the American Idol of tech
I'd say that programmers have been exposed to more foul language in their occupation than porn stars.
Wow. How did my post end up on ycombinator.com?
Getting Code Ready for Ruby 1.9
Thanks guys!
I figured it out. Instead of using 'run sudo...', I can use the helper function 'sudo' directly. Now the password prompts work correctly.
Hey brk, thanks for the review on the Eee. I have been wondering myself if Eee is worth the money, and your post helped. But the reason I am replying to your comment on Hacker News is because you said you use a Mac as your primary machine. Is that the Mac Book in the picture? If yes, how does this work for us developers? I am in the market for a Mac and am wondering if the extra $1000 is worth it on the Pros? Any words of wisdom here...
I've found Jottit to be a cute alternative to http://pastebin.com but given that I already have a FreeBSD server, I can't see any reason to use it for any long term stuff.

Unfortunately his "OpenLibrary" is closed to me - clicking on any of the book covers from the main page just takes me to a big blank screen. Enabling JavaScript doesn't seem to make a difference.
You may find some of the discussions over at http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/search/node/DSL interesting.

http://homepages.cwi.nl/~arie/papers/dslbib offers the following definition:

A domain-specific language (DSL) is a programming language or executable specification language that offers, through appropriate notations and abstractions, expressive power focused on, and usually restricted to, a particular problem domain.

which is pretty much what pg said.
Everything is for sale at the right price.
I like the idea, although I must admit that like Sudoku, it does not really motivate me. Ultimately, it just seems to be solvable by running a standard search algorithm. Why that is not easy to do for human brains, somehow I don't see why I should try.

On the other hand I like Minesweeper, so maybe the algorithmic solvability is not the main criterion. Not sure :-/
Here is a recent research result suggesting a possible mechanism of action for DHA (a component of fish oil) lowering the risk of onset for Alzheimers. It's not clear that it would be useful in a case of extreme dementia but DHA increases the level of a brain protein, LR11 (also known as SorLA), that helps clear the brain of amyloid precursor protein(APP), essential for production of the brain-gumming beta-amyloid plaque that clogs the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease.

http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/abstract/27/52/14299

http://www.webmd.com/alzheimers/news/20071226/fish-oil-preve...

http://www.scientificblogging.com/news_releases/lr11_and_why...
My mother in law did the "give one get one" thing. Now she has cheap and durable wireless connectivty she can take when she travels abroad and (hopefully) a child somewhere will get a better education.

I wonder if an XO business where travellers could rent them cheaply and return them when they are done (like DVDs from Netflix) could work.
Complete List of 2007 Web/Technology Acquisitions
I agree with you to some extent -- for me, chess is pretty pointless.

But all this doesn't matter. As long as I get traffic, that's what counts.
I wonder if CouchDB would work more reliably if they replaced the JavaScript/SpiderMonkey engine with a lightweight lisp interpreter.
well the only gadget type things I got was an electric tooth brush from my Mum and a cool mico helechopter from the wife(had great fun dive bombing the cat with it).
Reading this article reminded me of "Thomas est amoureux" - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0262826

Given that this guy is a chess expert, it's too bad the interviewer didn't follow the chess angle more
and ask questions like "Who would you rather play with, a computer program or a person?"
The PopSci Build-a-BUG challenge is on
Raju: Hey! I've been developing on my 17" MacBook Pro for exactly a year now and I've got no complaints other than that sometimes I get eye fatigue if I work for extended periods of time on the 17" monitor, but then I just hook it up to my external monitor. Productivity wise I adore the Mac and the OS X Leopard. Previously I had been working on PC's using Windows XP and didn't really have all that much faith in Apple and their products, but once I tried the MB Pro and OS X I was immedeately hooked! And when I could run Windows on Parallels inside OS X for those apps that required this all my problems were solved and I can honestly say that my work experience has improved a lot. Hope this helps - and btw. I'm not a Apple "fanatic" :) Chris
Sometimes I like to check other cities...
A simpler business plan for startups
Start simple and elaborate as your business evolves
Who was this man?
I hate sites that don't allow my browser to go back.
Curious how all the browser logos are round. It's as if people have unconsciously assimilated the idea that a globe represents the web.
Resources for the Entrepreneur
It's hard to take a tech commentator who still writes "MicroSoft" seriously.
Hey, sometimes old habbits die hard. It hardly makes the article less credible.
Pastebin has syntax highlighting, which catapults it pretty far above Jottit for pasting in code snippets.
I still think that Arial and Times are the pinnacle of typographic design.
Funny idea though.
Huh, interesting idea. Customer provide their own USB thumbdrive for storage, and otherwise use Google apps.
You Can't Sell Dead Products
Should you become a scientist?
Physics: Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?
Come on, you could have at least said Helvetica.

They're showcasing these sites for much more than the typefaces used though. There's a lot of great macro typography and grid design here, along with just pushing the typesetting details beyond what HTML/CSS makes easy.
True, but another consideration is that sometimes those optimal deals take long enough to make, they should be factored into said opportunity cost.

Whatever time you're spending hunting and bargaining with lawyers could be, alternately, spent hunting for developers, or hunting for users, or one of any other things. Indeed, the value of the better firms may be far more than worth any 1% investment.

Perhaps a better idiom is that the lawyers are investing in the company. They're large enough to qualify for riskier investments open only to institutional investors, so they miss much higher levels of interest than the public. This means that a deferred payment is a significant hit to their bottom line, and should be counter balanced.

Additionally, certain law firms waive their fees unless an initial financing to completes. These firms, in addition to helping you out legally, also can help appreciably in raising the next round, and getting the best deal (for themselves and the founders).
Anyone want to join me in trying to pick some common themes in there?

A couple I've got in the first few pages:

- Reductionism seems to be failing a quite a lot and things we thought we could separate we are now starting to intertwine again.

- The weakness of expertise and hypothesis testing. Kinda goes nicely with Nassim Nicholas Talebs books which I just finished.
The Five Coolest Hacks of 2007
I've recently had good experiences with ATT, T-Mobile and Netflix. I'm not exactly sure what the world is coming too, but it's very welcome!!

Actually, it's probably quite fun being a Netflix tech support, since you get to see all the movies, DVD and Instant Watch, that the customer has seen. Interestingly, the tech guy could also see the name of my Parallels instance that I use to watch the Netflix Instant Watch service, so they have a lot of information.
Location-Based Services: Hype or Hope?
Yeah, it seems pretty stupid that such an amazingly effective change it treatment would warrant this kind of negative reaction from the government. If a hospital changes the way doctors write up their charts to make previous treatment more visible, is that considered a "drug trial" like this?

Regardless, unlike testing drugs on people without their consent, using a checklist or other types of charting has practically zero chance of causing death.

The OHRP's response is asinine.
innernode: Thanks for the response. I too was thinking of the 17" Pro, though I have to admit, plunking down $3000 for a laptop hurts a bit. Not to say I would not do it, but it just so happened that a friend of mine picked up the 13" Mac Book a few weeks ago, and although he does not spend a lot of time at home moonlighting, he says he loves it, and it would work for development purposes. Needless to say I was a little apprehensive, and figured this would be a good time to post the question.

I fully intend to use an external monitor anytime I am at my desk, so it was not the screen size that worried me a lot, rather it was performance, and the nagging feeling that the Mac Book was not designed keeping developers in mind.

Though again, thanks for the review. Every day I get closer to owning a Mac, and moving full time (atleast while working at home) on it. Hopefully "closer" is not too far away...
What Have You Changed Your Mind About? (interesting summary)
Automatic tagging with ruby
Using text classifiers to tag news.
Textbooks in Mathematics (online)
C-ship: Explaining Relativity with Relativistic Ray Traced Images
'In Defense of Food' Author Offers Advice for Health
And interesting errata and corrections here: http://programming.reddit.com/info/64dlz/comments/
I got one during the G1G1 deal, and it's really nice...but everytime I fire it up, I have a few wishes:

1. More RAM
2. Faster (I don't think the hardware is to blame...I think the Python-focused UI is just not efficient enough for a 400MHz 256MB system)
3. More storage

I've fixed the 3rd, and the 1st partially, by adding a class 6 SD card, and assigning 1GB to swap and 7GB to storage. So, I can do real work on it now...including running Firefox 3.0b2. I'm a few minutes away from having it converted to running xmonad for the window manager, and expect it to be much more usable (for my needs) at that point.

The limitations of the default "Sugar" software are striking, for someone that has a pretty ingrained sense of how to use a UNIX system (I've been nearly exclusively a Linux/UNIX user for over 10 years...when I use a Mac or Windows box, I'm constantly hitting middle mouse button expecting something good to happen...like pasting the last thing I highlighted). In Sugar, Copy/Paste works in a very clunky and slow manner, even worse than Mac OS X or Windows, and doesn't work at all in the terminal application.

So, what the heck am I rambling for? I guess to say that I would be among the first to buy an upgraded OLPC that is slightly faster, runs a more standard Linux installation, and has more storage and memory. Even if it cost a little more than the G1G1 $400 price point. A bigger screen would be sweet, too.
How I got my Startup into SXSW Interactive, how to DIY
I enlisted my blog readers to vote up my panel submission. Not only did they do vote it up, they're offering to contribute to the discussion. Here's how to do it...
"A significant amount of skill with a soldering iron and some custom firmware has revealed.... Kindle"
25 Most Powerful People in Business
Given all the new articles/submarine ads for drugs that let you stay awake straight for a week - probably not a good idea to use them now...