skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Announcing Our First Investment, $20,000 in Balbus
Rough Draft Ventures, a student-run venture capital firm powered by General Catalyst, has made their first investment in Jack McDermott's Balbus, Inc. Jack is a junior at Tufts University
Someone correct me if I'm wrong (IANAL) - but in the UK it is "loser pays" - ie Tesla will be liable for the BBC costs.
New Lower Pricing for Amazon EC2 Reserved Instances
Love this. Clicked for the title, but stayed for the content. Great point. Will definitely be writing the manual.
I think Hacker News is a more sophisticated venue than most; the mainstream media and the tech blogs haven't maintained that same focus on the real issues.
Interesting investor/entrepreneur insights, cool to read about the investor's perspective for a change.
Do you have a single rational standard of what's "productive" and "not productive"? Should you have moral right to enforce this standard upon everyone around you? If millions of tourists make millions of pictures of Eiffel Tower an buy millions of cameras and iPhones for that - is it productive? Should they be prevented from buying cameras and instead "invest" money in something more "productive"?

My answer to everyone who thinks there is an objective distinction between productive and non-productive and advocates use of violence to redistribute resources: you are an egoistical immoral evil person who has no humility or interest in people around you. Instead of figuring out why people do what they do, you suggest pointing guns at them to do what you think is better for mysterious "society".
not a single state government that's as well-run as the federal government

Huh? My family balances its budget. My Homeowners' Association balances its budget. My city balances its budget. My county? Well, it doesn't balance its budget well, but it's part of an urban area run by liberals... go figure. My state balances its budget. My Federal government does NOT balance its budget or even make an attempt to. What fantasy cherry picked stats would you use to show how the Federal government is run better than the states.

For most things, local control is better than centralized control. We've swung way too far in the centralized direction as a result of the Civil War. Rather than having 50 states that provide different solutions and environments, we mostly have to suffer under the failures of the Federal government.

Additionally, the point is that SOME STATES DO MANAGE AFFAIRS BETTER THAN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. If I agree with how those states manage, then I can move to them. Unless I want to relinquish my citizenship in the USA, I am trapped with one Federal government that sucks.
I thought the point of laundering was that yes, you can see where every individual bitcoin goes, but that when you put it through a "washing" service it then goes to people who are completely unrelated to whatever Pablo was doing. And Pablo gets money that was completely unrelated to what he was doing, probably at another account.
I just kept wielding the flower. I killed with love.
It doesn't have anything to do with copyright, nor is it illegal. Someone started a rumour and people keep repeating it ad nauseam.
Yep, I used to run OpenBSD firewalls exclusively. I really liked pf, the "programming language" is powerful, clear and concise. IIRC, they were doing stateful connection tracking years before whatever was on Linux at the time. I didn't get around to playing with the failover stuff, but I read about it eagerly when it first came out.

Sadly, due to the limited amount of time I have for IT these days, I have standardized on Linux for my new firewalls (because I need it for my fileservers and desktops too). After trying some other firewall setup systems, I'm currently using ShoreWall, which is... OK. I feel almost as safe, in part because of what I learned about TCP/IP networking while using pf.

So my reaction to not having good GUI support for OpenBSD is kind of "so what?". It is awesome for what it is right now.

I would suggest they throw their weight behind one of the smaller DE projects like LXDE or XFCE. In my mind's eye, the stereotypical OpenBSD enthusiast is not that impressed with whizzy GUIs with a dumbed-down interface that has significant compromises just so that it can also run on a tablet. I would guess that they just want a simple DE with terminal windows, a browser and PDF reader. Well, that's nearly all that I want, so that's probably why I run LXDE. Not that I'm a stereotypical OpenBSD enthusiast. All I really ask of my DE is that it supports auto-raise and doesn't steal my focus while I'm typing (grrrr, Windows 7, grrrrr).
A Better way to Name a Company
Third'd. Mine has been dead nuts reliable; no problems, no regret spending the most I have ever spent on a laptop.
I am a huge Tesla fan, but I think the way they handled the PR around the Top Gear case and the recent New York Times review was simply terrible.
The Joy of Tech - Google Glasses
In this case, it's a publishing artifact. I wrote the content in parts for the sake of Sulia, which has a 2,500 character limit on posts.

On the other hand, there is real value to using subheads; I'd rather lampshade transitions with subheads than write so-so transitional paragraphs.
> on every possible configuration

You either have the case sensitive fs, or you don't. Sounds like you're making up excuses for the developer laziness.
The BSD in general (I mostly know FreeBSD, but I doubt OpenBSD is much better) haven't been perfect for running desktop software, and especially the big desktop environments, for a long time. If they ever were adequate.

It can be done, but with quite a bit of tweaking, battling strange inconsistencies, and in the end, missing some functionality compared to the same thing on linux. Possible, but not by any stretch a core value proposition or a major component direction of the projects (whatever they officially say). Or at least, not the successful projects.

Sucks to see a lot of things becoming linux-specific, but in a ton of these cases, the impact on the BSDs will be minimal.
If you were one of a few surgeons capable of performing highly specialised surgery, wouldn't you leave cuts and bruises for the interns and the nurses?
Could Samsung Ever Take Down Apple?
So because you had a bad experience, no one else can share their bad experiences if those experiences somehow conflict with yours? You sound like a cry baby.

This woman shared her negative experiences related to abusing Adderall. Note that she was never even really diagnosed with ADHD (and she makes mention of this fact). This is clearly an essay about the dangers of addiction and substance abuse, not about the dangers of Adderall. Perhaps secondary themes might be the disturbing "performance at all costs" attitude found in many workplaces and the ease with which legal drugs can be obtained without proper diagnosis.

These are real problems for society. The fact that the illiterate take the wrong message from something doesn't mean that it shouldn't be published.
Normal size for all browsers that have to bundle the entire rendering engine. Chrome is 50Mish, Firefox 30Mish, last time I checked.

Only the built-in-browser-skins are smaller.
Cree's LED bulb looks like an incandescent and lights like one, for under $10
Yahoo has been adrift for well over a decade. Once upon a time, Yahoo stood for something: A hierarchy of the web. It hasn't had a real purpose since 2000 or so.

I hope Mayer finds a purpose for Yahoo, but we won't believe it until it starts actually working.
"There are people on many sides who want Bitcoin to fail, and who will do anything to stop it from growing. The banks hate it, because it will disintermediate and replace their business. The Statists dont like it because it will defund their socialist dreams. The gold bugs loathe it because it is not gold. Keynesian journalists bristle at the fact that the money supply in Bitcoin is limited, and dream of seeing it destroyed."

Very interesting read[1] nonetheless.

[1] http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2875465&cid=40120...
Hi, I'm one of the partners at Athletics. We originally developed the timeline custom for Forbes and have wanted to push this a bit further at some point, hence the repo. Really glad you liked it.

Where credit's due: The Forbes team developed the GoPro feature using our toolkit as a starting point. (We did the timeline in Lewis D'Vorkin's post that you referenced.)
The story of Jack stuttering during his pitch meeting to the RoughDraft partners and FIXING HIS STUTTERING WITH HIS APP RIGHT THERE IN THE MOMENT IN FRONT OF THEM is freaking unreal. Bilal tells it here: http://bznotes.wordpress.com/2013/03/05/roughdraft-vc-studen...

Inspiring story. I'm pulling for this guy.
This is absolutely true. Despite what people think of Jeremy Clarkson and co the truth is that Top Gear is the most popular car show in the world by a huge scale, and it wouldn't be the first time that it has been said that the kind of power that comes with their popularity means a lot when it comes to car sales.

Yes, if they slate Ferrari or Lamborghini it won't damage their sales too much, but for smaller companies that build cheaper cars a good review goes a long way towards sales. Tesla's cars aren't cheap, but they are affordable, and as a new company having the likes of Top Gear behind what they are doing would have gone a long way towards their marketing. Hell, if they had landed a great endorsement from Jeremy Clarkson or anyone else from Top Gear I'd be willing to bet that they'd be throwing that information around everywhere for years.
I would expect those exceptions to implement a Throwable interface, perhaps ServiceException.

If you don't care about the specifics of the error then you catch that and handle it. If you do care then you're going to need to handle the specific cases anyway.

Personally I like checked exceptions at layer boundaries.
Used iPhones have some liquidity and a market price. Should I be forced to not hold mine for a very long time? At what point the good becomes a "medium of exchange" in your view, so you allow yourself using force to extract it?
"For example, math has some very high-level/generic explanations, and curiously, I find them more understandable."

That's because math always "goes straight to the point". There's nothing but the raw substance in it.
I'd expand on one of his points and observe that one of the core problems is that they are called exceptions, which prejudices the discourse in advance. They aren't exceptions. They are a way of declaring a handler that is scoped to receive certain types of objects on a second control plane (beyond normal control flow), which when invoked, destructively unwinds the stack until a matching handler is found or the program terminates due to falling off the top.

That is what they are. One of the things this mechanism is used for is exceptions, but that is a separate concept. It is possible that exceptions are generally a good idea, but that is the wrong mechanism to use for them (see, for instance, Lisp conditions & restarts for a good argument to that effect [1]). It is also possible that exceptions in general are a bad idea and it is better to use inline error codes rather than the separate control plane but that there is some other valid use for this second control plane (see all the non-exception uses of "exceptions", and note this is not hypothetical; see Python's StopIteration exception [2]).

Conflating the feature with the most popular use just leads to lots of confusing debates with people talking past each other.

[1]: http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/beyond-exception-handling-co...

[2]: http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0234/ , use Find to search for "It has been questioned" for a direct response to this issue
What's a QC, for those not familiar with the British Legal System?
Except in Harry Potter the brooms don't have the limited range and reliability that it appears the Tesla cars do.
I have dealt Adderall addiction although in a way most likely different than most. In my college years I was on tons of medications ranging from mood stabilizers to anti-psychotics, all in all, I was on 8 different medications to treat psychological issues I was having. Now those 8 medicines combined to deliver a mighty powerful punch which made me sleepy all of the time and made it very hard for me to wake up. The psychiatrist's solution was Adderall.

In the beginning, it was great. I would set my alarm for 4 hours before I had to wake up and take an Adderall that I had next to my bed and I'd be awake. It was amazing being able to get to my classes on time. At the same time, if I got 4 hours of sleep I felt refreshed as if I had 8 to 12 hours.

Things started slipping once I was taken off my medications. All of a sudden I didn't need the Adderall but I was addicted to being able stay up late. I never used it recreationally or to be more productive, I was just hooked on not needing sleep and it was great. I took a few months of re-adjusting but I was finally able to get back to sleeping normally but it was still hard for awhile. Why sleep for 6 hours and be tired when I could sleep for 2 less and pop an Adderall and not be tired at all.
all well, but that 3rd one highly depends on context. If I have an application for collecting/analysing data that is going to be used to publish papers and whatnot, it is absolutely critical the algorythms I write are ok no matter what. If they are not, it's time to go berserk (as in the 1st one). Ignoring it would be the worst I can do at that point.
I think the problem is that there are a lot of people that are expecting a significant correction soon because of the earlier crash. I've been expecting drop since $20 threshold was broken. I'd say that when the correction comes, it will be 10-30%, but nothing like we saw in the past.
How much have those $billion+ companies donated to the OpenBSD project? Even a fraction of what they didn't have to pay vendors for support contracts?

OpenBSD WILL disappear if not supported, no matter how useful it is.
I don't see how you can get employees to work hard unless they want to do it.

I do see value in getting rid of dead weight (productive employees hate slackers more than just about anything) but this telecommuting ban is a terrible way to get rid of dead weight.
Technologies of Surveillance
MtGox already knows its customers for deposits and withdrawals. I'm Australian and had to hand over lots of important documentation to allow for a bank transfer.
Bought one a year ago (2.3.3, I think). It's a Wildfire S, very small and lightweight, has a web browser. Can make calls and probably can send short messages. I was using Windows Mobile 2003 before that and thought I was finally on the "bleeding edge" of mobile technology, only to find out a month later that Android 2.3 is considered "legacy" and they are talking about not supporting it? What, are we supposed to buy new phones every five years now?
As a journalist myself, this is extremely depressing (although unsurprising). It's also why I'm working hard to expand my portfolio of skills.
That sounds better than most of the pop music out there. Amusing demonstration of ... something!
So what's the advice here, try harder at getting better?
Sadly, I'm no more qualified than most journalists to comment on this. (A true statement than you can read in several ways)

But I've always been under the impression that the ideas of the writer, not his or her resume, are the most important thing to consider.
Yes, but it's very rare for the winner to be able to recover their full costs. The loser can dispute the costs, which then requires more legal /court time to put a "fair" value on the winner's costs, which in itself can cost a small fortune for a complex case. The whole libel system is an expensive nightmare for anyone caught up in it frankly.
>Many studies, collected most notably in Geoff Colvin's "Talent is Overrated", find that in a wide range of disciplines experience has absolutely no correlation with efficacy [1]. Lifelong stockbrokers perform at exactly the same level as those in their 20s; or, rephrasing this slightly, lifelong stockbrokers perform at exactly the same level as when THEY were in their 20s. Despite having overseen numerous trades, been to countless conferences and devoted thousands upon thousands of hours to the craft of stockbroking, they are not even slightly more skilled that they were 40 years before.

Yes, but why draw the bizzaro conclusion that experience is overrated in other trades too?

This is due to the fact that the stock market is an unpredictable, multi-variable system based on belief and millions of volatile individual perceptions, and the "experts" are more or less "farting around in the dark". But we already knew that about the stock market.

Not to mention that the above "example", also clashes with his advice later on:

>If [getting better] is what you want, you have to make a conscious effort and chart a deliberate course.

If his own "example" about the traders was universally applicable, then that wouldn't be possible at all. Or does he think that the traders just didn't spent "conscious effort"?
I try to apply this to my logger statements. For example:

unless signals.has_key? key.to_sym
logger.error("wrong signal received: #{key.inspect} not in #{signals.inspect}")
raise ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound

Classifying what's an `error`, `warning` and `info` can be confusing some times, but I have quite clear guidelines, and it helps to better deal with errors overall.

error/fatal - anything that I simply can't recover from. e.g. if a parameter is missing, there's no way to even guess. error logging is almost always accompanied by an exception being raised. (btw, on our rails app we use the logging-rails[1] gem, that emails those errors to us)

warning - something seems wrong, but we can somehow still continue, or it's an error that I don't want an email about. For example, blocking spam on a form submission.

info - useful stuff to know what's going on with the app. User registered / logged in, payment received. Those are also sent to graphite for measuring

debug - all the other stuff you need when writing code.

[1]https://github.com/TwP/logging-rails
I don't think that is currently the central aim of the Federal Reserve, if it ever was.
I must confess, my desktop adventure with OpenBSD was quite short. Not that I didn't appreciate the simplicity (and I think that's the key appeal), but just the bareness was a little too much for me. I'm sure others will feel differently; I've got a friend who keeps his desktop and server Puffy and he seems quite happy. Then again, he's also quite odd.

I did get a kick out of seeing my old Celeron Windows 95 machine now running a modern OS, browser and chat client.
One other funny point...the other Chris Yeh (who works at Box, another collaboration software company) used to work at Yahoo as their head of the Developer Network.
Depending on the case, the judge can order that the loser pays more if they feel the case was fraudulent, misleading, etc.

See Samsung vs Apple, initially Apple didn't have to pay Samsung's fees, but after Apple annoyed the judge with their non-apology apology, the judge ordered that Apple pay [1]:

As to the costs (lawyers' fees) to be awarded against Apple, we concluded that they should be on an indemnity basis. Such a basis (which is higher than the normal, "standard" basis) can be awarded as a mark of the court's disapproval of a party's conduct, particularly in relation to its respect for an order of the court. Apple's conduct warranted such an order.

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2012/1430.html
It's the first and part of the second. I've never heard of Korzybski but I arrived at a similar idea that makes physics easier to grasp. I prefer to say gravity is well modeled as curvature of a manifold instead of saying gravity is a bending of spacetime. I also prefer to say someone is acting foolish than to say they are foolish. Never realized they could be connected as part of the same general philosophy. Thanks.

It's very easy to slip but I've gotten better in time.
We Are All Related
I don't get the lawsuit route at all. If your car is good then eventually people will come around to agreeing with that assessment even if the media likes gasoline cars today. If your car isn't good then you should fix it and move on with your life.

I realize a lot of money went into development but it seems crazy to sue your way to success or even think that could work in the first place. I don't think any of these major media outlets are really afraid of getting sued by Tesla anyway so if intimidation is the point then it won't work.
Which Long Magazine Profile of the Aaron Swartz Case Should You Read?
Why not send people to http://www.chrisyeh.com, my ancient, hand-coded personal web site?

I think I only update it every few years because I hate having to rev up the ol' FTP client.
Also, slightly offtopic, but when you read the actual text of these judgments, you really get to see the depth of the analysis that is put in before a decision is made. It's not just a bang of the gavel and "Next case!".

It almost reads like a code review, the way the text is parsed ;-)
The idea on solar sails is that they don't need to send something in the opposite direction, they steal momentum (vectored in the travel direction) from the gases and/or photon radiation emitted from the Sun.
I'll always up-vote these comments, I have invested a small amount in Bitcoin but am fully aware the whole thing could tank and never return, I consider it to be an interesting experiment for myself. People do need to know how risky this is though.
The article is fluffy and wrong. Writers, composers and programmers all get better from doing. For each new program written, you expand your style, your vocabulary and learn to express yourself in a simpler and more precise manner. This enables you to solve larger and more complex problems. Varying your environment, genre and language makes this learning even more intense.

In e.g. stockbroking and mathematics, the vigor of youth may very well make up for lack of experience. But what I've seen convince me that even though the common perception may be that's true for programming too, it's really very, very far from the case.
Mike Butcher & Paddy Cosgrave on what makes London Web Summit special
I'm not really sure about the main point of this comment, and I don't do 'big data' even though I dropped the buzzword into a recent annual report, but I thought the main focus was on "discovery" of reliable relationships in the data.

The statistically interesting aspects come from a large number of variables, not observations.

Edit ... And so I think the comment's focus on the curse* of dimensionality and "small data" is misplaced.

* edit #2
I'd much rather people plan out a working session, provide materials in advance, and then push to a resolution than rely on random serendipity.

That being said, I generally prefer working in the office to telecommuting, despite the distractions.
£90k for a car is affordable? Can we swap jobs please?
>Hackers are behind stories like

You are probably a little behind the times. Like 15 years. The term "hacker" has stopped meaning exclusively these kind of guys for agres...
The talk is available as video here: http://mirror.linux.org.au/linux.conf.au/2013/ogv/
Working Children in Iran
Working Children in Iran
Force?

LOL. Inflation is force, currency is force, but let me guess - property rights aren't a form of force right?

Sorry, but bringing the use of force into this is the first sign I'm talking to a libertarian, and one that is not open to any form of reason.

Hoarding the primary means of exchange (what BTC advocates would really like BTC to become) is a negative for society. As the hoarding increases so does the value of the item, encouraging more hoarding and less lending and concentrating wealth in the hands of those that already have it. Not really a recipe for a healthy economy.
Will Smart Phones Finally Kill the Business Card?