skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
(In the following text, replace "you" by "I")

"A community that has a deeply ingrained culture of NIH."

Lisp is a NIHer's heaven. I know something about it, I've just spent 3 years learning new stuff and reimplementing the universe with it (I'm not done yet. Give it some decades...). Learning Lisp is a friggin' Pandora box. It gives you absolute power (that corrupts you absolutely), it makes you discover crazy powerful and sometimes hard to implement paradigms (ex: Dataflow), and of course you have to try to implement them so you simply never get anything done. Sure, you do things The Right Way, but the investment in implementation and learning time is absolutely prohibitive. Gotta admit I'm not sure if Lisp made me a NIHer or I was just drawn to Lisp because I'm one but Lisp sure is an aggravating factor for that.

A few days ago I finally decided to STOP LEARNING and STOP REIMPLEMENTING THE UNIVERSE for a few months so I can finally launch my startup (some utility site for a niche MMORPG).
The article really mixes two messages: "behavioral economics works" and "Obama knows what's good for you". The second one is claimed without any evidence, so I chose to ignore it.
Tips for Difficult Conversations
Just to put things in perspective the next round of YC is not exactly a 'no luck' process either. Basically PG and company meet with you for 10 minutes to meet the team, and discuss the project and plan. Now, tell me, how they can possibly judge people and projects in 10 minutes, in a rational even-handed way.

I'd say Ycombinator is more about winning the lottery, than doing everything right. I am fairly confident that YC receives far too many really good applications to be able to really vet everything. And also, to be fair if you are looking for mentorship, I can imagine this year will be a little different from normal, as the number of teams has doubled, and PG and Jessica have a new addition to the family. As for connections, if your scrappy you can make your own connections -- and $25K for 5% is really not that great of a valuation.
Or Haskell. (With a little coercion.)
Man, what a mess, it's hard to even find something to say about most of it, but I found this interesting:

"In Saudi, it's hard to be straight when you're young. The women are shut away so everyone has gay sex ... I need to find real gays, so this is the best place. All Arab gays want to live in Dubai."

I'd never really thought about the fact that Arab teens would "go gay" in response to their natural libidos being locked away, but it makes sense.
The summary of license terms are listed on the mpegla web site.

If you run a website where users pay to view h.264 videos, either by title or by subscription, you need to pays fees per video if you reach a certain number of viewers. Note that these fees are payable now, there is no grace period for this.

For streaming of videos where the end user does not pay (eg. YouTube style services) the terms state:

"In the case of Internet broadcast (AVC video that is delivered via the Worldwide Internet to an end user for which the End User does not pay remuneration for the right to receive or view, i.e., neither title-by-title nor subscription), there will be no royalty during the first term of the License (ending December 31, 2010), and after the first term the royalty shall be no more than the economic equivalent of royalties payable during the same time for free television."

Free internet streaming is therefore covered by the grace period, but lists the payments required after that as being no more than the equivalent of that for free television - the costs of which are listed in the document.

So it seems that in some cases (subscription video) you do in fact have to pay fees now.

And in the free internet streaming cases the wording does suggest there will be a cost. It is certainly possible they could decide to make such usage free. This is far more likely to happen, imho, if there are alternatives to h.264 to enable content producers to negotiate the fees with mpegla.

Currently if you are streaming h.264 on your site, you're taking the gamble that mpegla won't want a cut of your profits post 2010.
according to this lawfirm

hedge fund
Sure, it was obvious. But it was trying to hard to be funny.
Daniel Weinreb: Fundamental problems with the Common Lisp language
No, not the sigils, but the level of over-engineering just to get going. Look at that first code example. Unintelligible or what. If this is where Perl's going, I'm glad I ditched it several years ago.
"At least then we can vote the sons of bitches out if they pull shenanigans."

This is a tempting argument that people come to when they describe government-run programs in democratic political systems, but it's ultimately flawed. None of us is very likely to, 2 to 6 years from now, vote against the politician who appointed the bureaucrat who appointed the bureaucrat who pulled shenanigans, based solely on that one, singular issue. It would take an irrational level of monomania and obsession to track down the elected official to hold responsible and vote against him with no consideration of who the opponent is, whether he would do any better of a job, or how the candidates would perform on any of dozens of other issues. All of this, of course, assumes that the district in question isn't gerrymandered to the point where any opposition of the incumbent is futile. Even without gerrymandering, I somehow need to convince half the voting public to vote against the guy for me to get his shenanigans out of my life!

Whereas in a free market, if Dell pulls shenanigans you can buy Lenovo next time, and it doesn't really matter what the rest of the voting public thinks about Dell's other product lines or how charismatic Michael Dell is on television, because you don't have to put up with his cheap laptops anymore, regardless of public opinion.

Health care is a heavily regulated market, not a free market. It's optimized for the profit of certain large firms. A socialized system might perform better, but a legitimate market system would likely perform better, too. It's not the free market that's failed, it's crony capitalism. Or, put another way, crony capitalism has succeeded in enriching the cronies, but failed at serving the consumer.
But you're playing the house to his Martingale bet, right? If the game was repeated, you should be willing to bet all your money on it, since the odds are in your favor.

I think the question checks your ability to understand the mathematical potential payoff, but also to weigh that against the real-world consideration of risk.
"neo-liberal" could also be referring to Dubia being socially liberal compared to other Islamic nations.
Ask HN : How does time synchronization works?
When network latency is unknown, how does time synchronization works in networked computers.
Aren't the customers more important?
Alternatives to Microsoft Office
Why would you hate it? Finding mispricings in the market and correcting them should be very rewarding.
Google Vince Update favors Big Brands
As suspected, there has been a Google algorithm change which seems to be favoring big brands. Matt Cutts recently confirmed this change.
The author acknowledges this in the third paragraph from the bottom:

"Perhaps Dubai disturbed me so much, I am thinking, because here, the entire global supply chain is condensed. Many of my goods are made by semi-enslaved populations desperate for a chance 2,000 miles away; is the only difference that here, they are merely two miles away, and you sometimes get to glimpse their faces? Dubai is Market Fundamentalist Globalisation in One City."
VOIPSCANNER.com - SaaS VoIP security scanner in beta
> The goal of the green movement, at its heart, is greater efficiency in all walks of life.

Except that it's not about efficiency. It's often about a suggested lifestyle. (Hint - efficiency doesn't imply minimal.)

And, the "efficiency" arguments are often false and or irrational. (Nuclear power anyone?)
How to Earn Links and Tweets to Your Blog Post
I built it: http://twi.bz. It's very, very alpha. Email me with any problems.
Friendfeed solves my problem that my friends use services i don't use. For example several of my friends use flickr, but i don't. Friendfeed aggregates all their actions and gives me a nice overview.

The sad thing is that i have to manage my "imaginary friends" as friendfeed calls it, since those friends don't use friendfeed themselves or they do and i don't know about it.

Friendfeed leads me to a very private usage. My stuff isn't public, so friends can find me easily. This dampens the viral effect. Friendfeed doesn't encourage people to get their friends into the system as well.
I use an Apple TV with it. Love it, but the AppleTV is slightly frustratingly underpowered in some areas.

I'm hoping to upgrade to a Mac Mini later this year with Boxee. Will definitely look at the API side of things.
>> The government knows better.

> Again, neither your sarcastic disdain nor your parroting of a right-wing canard make this statement any less true as it pertains to this article.

Hmm. Did govt know best during the Bush years?

Do you really want to argue that general skepticism towards govt is wrong? If it isn't, do you really want to argue that it's a "right-wing canard"?

Hint: saying that someone is "right-wing" or taking a right-wing position isn't actually a cogent argument. The folks who care about the lables either already agree or strongly disagree. The undecided don't care about the labels or the tribes. (Clue: "destroy Bush" was only the goal of leftwing fanboys.)
NK fails to put satellite in orbit - again.
Hey AP How About Running A Real News Web Site?
> Also, remember that under Eisenhower, top rates were as high as 90%.

Also remember the vast array of shelters and the like that went away with the Reagan tax rate cuts. If you're going to argue that someone isn't telling the whole story, it's poor form to leave out huge details.
Perhaps you can just "name and shame". I.e. say you want to learn language x, then force yourself to report in public upon your progress every monday. You will feel whether you made good progress --- and you will definitely know when you did not do a thing.
GM and Segway create new vehicle
Chromebug is Firebug for XUL applications and extensions. http://getfirebug.com/extensions/index.html#chromebug
If everyone could do it, it would probably be less successful for everyone. Part of the reason NiN and Radiohead have had such success is the novelty and rarity of their approach.
Twitter is also growing at 1350% year over year.
This is an even better post than the previous. I think Weinreb hits the spot and demonstrates that he is pretty well oriented about what's going on at the grass roots.

Now, all the community need to figure out is what to do about these problems. Because the diagnosis is sound, in my opinion.
> Forgive me if I'm not scared about Obama firing CEOs of bailed out firms. ... If we're going to bail out these firms, getting rid of the incompetents who brought them onto the dole seems like the obvious first step.

Getting rid of incompetents sounds like a great idea. Too bad that Obama isn't interested.

We're still waiting for the politcal class to take a hit. (Barney Frank anyone?)

Heck - we're still waiting for Obama to fire advisors who ran Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into the ground.

> What's the point of pouring money into a nonexistent technology

It's unclear how being able to hit and destroy ballistic missles in certain cases is "nonexistent technology".

Nope - it's not deployed, but ....
you're working off the strawman version of rationality. people are are perfectly rational...from the perspective of small hunter gatherer tribes inconstant conflict for status and resources.
I remember seeing a proof that when there is an systematic
asymmetry in the network latency it is impossible to
guarantee synchronisation.

It practice, however, it is reasonable to assume that latencies are randomly distributed and are largely the
same in each direction. Under those assumptions it's
fairly simple to come up with strategies that mostly
work.

The real difficulty is finding an optimal or near-optimal
strategy.

However, to answer your original question, it is provably
impossible when the conditions are unknown and are allowed
to be pessimal.
This article seems to boil down to the idea that you need to enunciate clearly. I find some of the explanations of throat speaking VS. Mouth speaking to be suspect. The sound originates in the vocal chords and is shaped by the mouth no matter how you speak.
How do you infer that?
His thesis: The Shuffle's controls should mimic the iPhone/iPod Touch/Trackpad's gestural interface. I think that's interesting, but sop short of saying this is what they should have done. But as long as we're using Apple's ideas to make suggestions to Apple, how about a shuffle that has an intertial interface like the iPhone/iPod Touch?

* Shake to re-shuffle the playlist

* Flick in one direction to advance to the next song

* Flick in the other direction to regress to the previous song

Just kidding... I like the Shuffle :-)
> If the food industry follows the city’s wishes, the health department’s Web site announces, “that action will lower health care costs...

Unless the health department lowered their budget requests....
Sun's Six Biggest Mistakes
No, "neo-liberal" has a very specific meaning and is used almost exclusively when speaking of markets. Just by reading the article, you can see that there is nothing socially liberal about Dubai--I mean, come on, you can inherit debt. That doesn't sound like anything approaching a social democracy.
I think you ought to check out NTP.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Time_Protocol
You are missing the point. The people that got turned down for interviews didn't even get feedback. It is just a glorified "sorry and we really appreciate you" letter with a "let us know if we're wrong and you do something awesome" attached to the end.

So this is also the stage where many people hang their heads down and go back to their normal routine of nothing. But this is the only flaw in the YC system. It takes people who are not entrepreneurs and wholly dedicated to their idea and gives them an opportunity because they are a good hacker. Now once it gets to the interview stage they access how dedicated you are, but who wouldn't be at that point?

So please don't make some hugely dramatic post. Paul and Jessica would (and do) say that they are wrong about many startups. Not only the ones from interviews, but even with the applications. There are so many high-level applicants that it is hard to access who fits where.
Funny you say this... my startup is called We Will Never Stop.
Ask HN: How can I tell if I'm working with a savvy business person?
We all know that suits have trouble picking good hackers. But I also think the opposite is true - I have difficulty detecting a savvy business person.

I'm in talks with a sales / marketing guy who knows a niche extremely well, having been a customer himself and having done a substantial amount of market research. He's looking for a hacker to implement a startup in that space, but I don't know if he has the chops to execute on the management side. Any advice?
My screen res is 1440x900 and my browser is Safari 4 public beta. If it isn't legal to display the full recipes on your site I wonder if you could around that by doing a split-pane thing - with your content on one side and the source content on the other, that's cheating a bit but not nearly as much as if you scraped everything as your own. I wonder if there are any free-use recipe databases you could use. Smart design on the search - you might want to highlight this on the front page as your sorting algorithm inspires confidence in the search results. Good luck!
:-) and given what I've head from Paul on the Gillmor Gang in the past, not a surprise about that particular direction.
The idea is to keep the heat inside, not the air. Passive houses typically come with special ventilation systems that completely exchange the air once every 2-3 hours, while keeping >80% of the energy inside. This kind of design is becoming increasingly popular here in Germany.
Ah, I didn't realize "neo-liberal" was an economic term. Thanks for the correction.

To clarify what I said though, relative to any western society, Dubia's laws are obviously more strict. However, when compared to other Islamic nations, Dubia is more liberal. As the article discussed, the fact that gays in the region migrate to Dubia is an indication of this.
"That's the home page of your web site. Where's the news? Where are the articles? Where's the FRONT PAGE!!! You know, like a newspaper front page that shows me the top articles of the day. Surely you've heard of front pages of this style."

Uh... that's not their business model and doing what the author suggests would certainly upset their content distribution partners. That would put them in competition with the companies that pay them very well for their stories and as such would be a short-sighted approach. And, despite not showing news on their home page, I'm guessing AP is doing a whole lot better financially than the newspapers that do what you're suggesting.

More upsetting is their attempt (successful I think?) to own the news that they break for a certain period of time.
"we can reasonably presume that the author means 'needlessly inefficient.'"

Well, even that's wrong. If there was no need at all, then it wouldn't be done that way.

I do this stuff for movies I watch all the time: "Well, Morpheus didn't know any better about the humans-as-batteries, and didn't understand how computing power might be a more reasonable use," and "Equilibrium might be set farther in the future than it seems to be, which would explain how things could have gone this far." When you have to fix up what a columnist really meant, I think that's a sign that something is wrong, and I agree with the your parent poster that this columnist either doesn't understand what he's talking about or is writing for effect without regard to accuracy.
Check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marzullo%27s_algorithm
This article is coincides with a lot of current UK media attention on Dubai including many programs on UK TV (e.g. http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00jqgww/Panorama_Slumd...)
Sort of like jumbo can be used to describe shrimp.
The one thing Sun could do right now is whatever it takes to make Oracle support Solaris x86 as a tier-one platform. Right now Sun isn't even an option in a lot of projects because of this, and Red Hat is only an option for the same reason.
Greenspunning
Quick thoughts...

Much of this (debtors prisons [and people fleeing Dubai immediately upon losing jobs and leaving behind luxury cars/apartments to avoid it], modern day enslavement, under-classes [predominantly based on ethnicity] and lack of civil-rights and liberty for most classes) has been publicised for a long time among the ethnic communities.

However, it seems when times were good it was easy for western people to turn a blind eye and what most people saw in the mainstream western media were positive articles about how great Dubai was/would be (due to vested interests?), even ignoring obvious issues regarding Arab law and culture and environment.

Now that the worldwide financial crisis is catching up with Dubai it is good to see these issues being brought out into the mainstream and exposed more openly, but I cannot help but think it is predominately because Westerners themselves are now being affected. Where was the outcry for the Fillipinos/Bangladeshis/etc. in mainstream Western media before?
Twi.bz: the transparent URL shortener
I'd probably advertise yourself as:
Twi.bz: the URL shortener that's transparent.
You see, people at the political extremes, both right and left, desire control in a deep and profound way.

They hate anything which wrestles control away from their philosophy.

And so they use any crazy/authoritarian/doomed/etc scheme as a straw man to attack liberalism/libertarianism.

Because in their minds, only their control of society will lead to peace and prosperity. Any loosening of their control must lead to doom.

Therefore if it's a disaster it MUST be because it veered off from their philosophy.

But the irony is that both far and left and far right are untied by their desire to control society.

And that's why they can never attack the control elements.
They can never blame the disaster on them, they WANT something like that.

They use the failure to attack everything else and just call it an obscure word for too much freedom!
I'm not saying you should be blind to what is happening in your market, but I'm a strong believer that you should focus on making your product the best for your users that you can, and try to ignore a lot of the noise out there. Do what you do and do it really well.

FWIW: I think this applies more for smaller startups, and less for giant brands who are wielding and fighting against 100 million dollar marketing budgets.
Sounds like reaction to Lisp syntax is a good heuristic for choosing managers not to work for.

A good manager will either 1) research more thoroughly and come up with a more sensible reason to not use Lisp (there are many reasons not to use Lisp for many kinds of projects) or 2) delegate technical decisions to the technical people he hired and trusts to make those decisions (with some way to hold them accountable for meeting objectives).
There's also good ol' elbow grease, you could hire a programmer to data mine / scrape a competitors site to gather numbers and etc, if the information is publically listed.

But depending on the biz you're up against it might not be useful, i.e. you might need to keep an eye on who and how they're marketing themselves.
5 great Firefox extensions for twitter
Billionaire Attributes Quicklist
I got rejected too. Was applying alone. Does it make hell lot of difference? Somewhere I read they do accept solo applications
can you imagine how pissed joggers would be if it worked like that? :-P
glad to see a climate change post that is not denial, which seems to be the hallmark of nickb/pg and other horatio algers hellbent on selling you a rosy future.

I don't know whether the numbers in the post are correct since I'm still hoping for a sub 450 solution and can't be bothered for the moment to consider other scenarios.

in any case lets not forget that all that desertification and other ways of fucking with nature (ocean acidification!) means NO FOOD for x% of the world's population, i.e. mass starvation.

most "industrialized" folks somehow seem to suffer from some irrational smugness that they won't be part of those x%.

I live where climate change based desertification started 10 years ago. in sudan it's already killed 100,000+ people. in california it only started 3 years ago so people are still in denial.
Done. Thanks for the feedback.