skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Oh, god, not Shalizi. Back when I was a younger fellow, still willing to devote long chunks of my time in pointless internet debates, I thought of writing up a long critique of Shalizi. He's wrong, and purposefully so. He invokes straw man arguments. He cherry picks whatever evidence he needs to in order to make his points. The fact that he believes something is wonderful evidence that it's probably not true.

A friend of mine once told me that Shalizi's world view was explained by a certain instructor he had as a graduate student, and most of his argument is derived from there, but the name escapes me right now.

Regardless. I happen to believe in evolution. Shalizi believes in a magical equality fairy. One look at an SNP map proves him wrong.

Edit: I just realized that you were trying to follow my suggestion to look into "the literature" and mistook Shalizi's blog entries for actual journal articles. He never published them anywhere as far as I know. Nor could he.
We don't need these fanboy comments 'round here!
My advice is that you go to a professional bike store and get a decent bike.
Haven't we learned our lesson? The first iPhone came out with EDGE data only, while the market was just starting to see 3G handsets. Yet the iPhone absolutely trounced the sales of said handsets, and accounted for far more data usage from its users (read: people were actually using the data features).

This continued worship of pointless technical specifications is why the competition has failed to catch up to Apple. Your average consumer doesn't care how much RAM it has, or how fast the CPU is, or how many pixels across the screen has (beyond "ooh that's crisp"), they just want a phone that works.

And overwhelmingly in the smartphone market, the iPhone is still the only phone I would say "works". The BB comes close, and Nokia needs to hang its head in shame.
charity to third world countries doesn't decrease net suffering. when you save a starving man and he has 5 children, all of whom lead miserable lives are you ahead or behind?

charity is about signaling your fitness to others. (like everything else)
Yes. There was an Economist article related to this, about progress in health care in India that wouldn't really be possible in Western countries: http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13496367

Health care isn't just about making new treatments possible; it's also about making existing treatments efficient and inexpensive.
Mutant Weasels - An Example of Genetic Algorithms
if you're against nuclear power go read up on the subject until you realize that you're wrong.
For the unitiated, Theodore Dalrymple (a pen name) is a passionate and lucid writer and I don't deny his is worth reading. He is also politically strongly conservative, and this understandably colours his view of the world. The "England in terminal moral and social decline" meme is these days a popular theme in the media, but reality is a lot greyer than that.

For example, it is all very well to criticise social services for failing to protect certain children in danger (as he does with the Climbie case - tragically neither the first nor last time such a thing has happened) but I personally find it strange to hear criticism from a person that supports a party that historically has not supported, and often decimated, the social services sector.

The truth is that the social underclass is a problem that nobody has a real answer for, never mind their party and never mind the country. Some problems are hard, maybe too hard to solve.
I was disappointed that the only reference to Ronco was the title.

Can we make turkey jerky now?
typical mac users wouldnt know the difference between an open and closed system because they dont do anything on their device except what it comes with or is sold through official channels.
The judge that was hired to determine if the previous judges should be sacked wish it to be known that they have just been sacked.

The Pirate Bay Trial has been completed in an entirely different style at great expense and at the last minute.
You'll have to give a little bit more information than that! :)
That's an interesting line of thought. I also share the opinion that preference, aesthetic or otherwise, is intimately related to ethics.

"There are, of course, lots of arguments for or against torture or peanut butter, but they aren't moral propositions. For peanut butter, they might be about health; for torture, they might be about what's legal, or what works to stop terrorism."

That's quite an assertion. It borders on Nihilism. You imply that there is no different between preference & what we see as morals.

I don't think you're free and clear though. There are all sorts of ways to draw a distinction between the two. From a utilitarian perspective, you could argue that torturing causes pain & is therefore bad. From a rights/liberty perspective, you could argue that it violates some ones rights or liberties. Form the Kantian/Deontological or many other perspectives, you'd see that you would not want torture to be widespread or that it is inherently wrong.

Basically, almost to the extent that morality can be said to exist, torture can be said to be wrong. Peanut butter eating can be said to be right. Hobbit houses are quite clearly in the peanut butter category.

In a more practical sense, you just answer the question about whether you should coerce or encourage others to eat peanut butter, stop torturing or build hobbit houses for any reason other then that they will enjoy it.
Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World, Jill Jonnes

An extremely detailed and engaging book on how electricity was brought to the United States.
Entrepreneurial videos, podcasts - Stanford eCorner
Try finding a copy of Computer Lib/Dream Machines by Ted Nelson (1974), it's pretty awesome.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0914845497/

To establish his credibility he lists both his "technology credentials" and his "counter culture credentials". If I had a time machine it would be nice to send him a copy of "Worse is Better". If he had read it maybe he wouldn't have failed at inventing the web.
There seems to be some sort of difference though. A manufactured version of traditional Japanese houses would feel a lot closer to the handmade then a manufactured version of this hobbit house.
Extra extra, read all about it! Chrome is fast!

Ok, you are blowing everyone else out of the water now. Can you take some time to focus on features? For me, vertical tabs are a necessity.
> Really? Which evidence is that?

The UN's climate change committee's numbers. They found that action now was economically justified now only if they used a negative discount rate.

Do you want to argue that they dramatically overstated the costs now? Or, do you want argue that they understated the costs later? If you like both of their numbers, then you get to argue, as they tried, that spending $1 now to eliminate a problem that will cost <$1 to fix later is a good idea.

It's almost unheard of to use a negative discount rate because time is worth money.
Blackboard started as two separate companies, one of which was called CourseInfo. This is the part that forms the core of Blackboard's software offering.

One of my professors at Cornell told us a bit about how CourseInfo came about; if I remember correctly, it started as work one student was doing for a particular professor to keep said professor's class website organized, and it grew from there. At some point, Cornell's administrators deliberately chose not to employ the student who was building what was evolving into CourseInfo in order for him to legally keep all the rights to his creation. It's really kind of a heartwarming story of higher education fostering entrepreneurship right on its own campus.

Flash forward about a decade and my professor was telling us they were concerned Blackboard was considering suing not just its competitors, but universities who built their own educational software in-house for patent infringement. Well, it was almost a heartwarming tale of student entrepreneurship.

I would like to point out that the leadership of Blackboard now came from the Blackboard side, not the CourseInfo side. Still, the Blackboard software really is horrible. I used to complain all the time that our top rate CS department students could definitely build a vastly superior system, and then I found out that we actually did build the god damned thing. Oops.

At least the CS department at Cornell doesn't use Blackboard though; http://cornellsun.com/node/21160
We have something called CMS instead that's worked on by Cornell undergrads and graduate students.
Ask HN: How should we seek a funding partner?
I'm part of a small startup that produces a kitchen-oriented TV show. Owner handles the content, I handle the production. It airs locally, viewers like it, and we have a solid business plan. Owner of the business is a good salesman and entrepreneur, but comes from another line of business and has always operated as a sole trader.

There is a good lot of sweat equity but it's time to move past that stage; in short, we need to capitalize so we can monetize - mid 5 figures, then mid-6; mid-7 is a possibility but we'd prefer to generate positive cashflow before that.

What we don't have is professional capital-raising skills - although we're comfortable explaining the show and the business, we feel we need to look beyond our social circle for potential investors. We also need someone who understands capital structures, fiscal oversight and so on - a CFO type, basically.

We're put some ads up on Craigslist, but I'd welcome any advice on how to recruit such a person (or indeed, how not to do it).
The Mac in 84 onwards was run by a man who thought Apple had to sacrifice its design integrity to succeed. Since then it has been placed back in Jobs' hands, and he's taken a decade to fill it with people who believe in his design philosophy. Note that the iPod has maintained its virtual monopoly thanks to design alone. So far, no competitor has arisen to match the iPhone. I'd love it if one appeared, but it hasn't happened so far.

You seem to think that design progress is a given. Look at Microsoft for the counterexample. They have progressed their design several major times since Windows 95, and each one has taken steps back. The fact that window borders are now twice as huge as they were a decade ago, or that gradients have been added where gradients are not needed, makes me think that the people designing Windows simply don't know what about Apple's design appeals to people.

Phone design seems similarly hedged. I play with every major phone that comes out, because I want somebody to get Apple scared enough to turn more competitive. So far, nothing done. I don't know why companies feel the need to place meaningless gradients for backgrounds, or shade things in pretty ways that reduce functionality, but they all do, and they seem to think it's helping. Apple's not perfect here - there's a lot about their designs that I dislike, especially regarding their iPod classic - but they at least understand what they're supposed to be doing.

Most estimates are that about 95% percent of downloads are free so that would make about 50M apps sold.

Apologies for saying "sold". You're right. I happen to think that 50M sales are very impressive nonetheless. I also don't think that free downloads are as easy to come by as you seem to think. Most people are averse to downloading software. I don't download free things to my cell phone, and I'm a geek. That Apple has made app downloading as simplified as they have is a testament to their systems.

Wow you iPhone guys sure are sensitive.

Of course other platforms that actually allow you to install software without the approval of their 'app store' can't trumpet numbers like these cause they don't know about every single app their users are installing. It's called freedom.

I'll assume you've heard all the counterarguments I want to provide right now, and simply choose to ignore them. If you want to be an ass online you're allowed.
Secaucus NJ
Secaucus , New Jersey , zip code 07094 is a town in Hudson county that sits on the banks of the Hackensack River.It is a small town, boasting just over fifteen thousand residents.
Steve Pavlina. As much as I hate his idiotic articles, he slammed himself in deep levels of crap and then got out gloriously :)
...Finnish companies.
A/B Testing and Qualitative Testing
Most of my Mac-using friends use Adium and Firefox. Some of them even understand what plugins are. I've got a friend or two who've skinned their Mac, though why anybody would dislike Leopard's version of Aqua rather baffles me.

Typical Windows users don't know their device comes with official programs because every machine is loaded with crap. No Windows user within my acquaintance uses Notepad as their basic writing tool. They think Word is a default because it's so common. Meanwhile, I know a lot of Mac users who use TextEdit for everything. I only use Pages on rare occasions.

Typical Linux users are fringe to begin with, but of the casual computer users I know most couldn't tell the Ubuntu app directory from the App Store. Meanwhile, I can run quite a lot of Linux stuff on my Mac because it supports many of the same functions of Linux.
good stuff. I like this article. Paul Rand was a great designer.
and your opinion is based on what?

I know a number of Mac users and not a single one of them fit your stereotype. I also know a much larger number of Windows users, and strangely a large percentage of them do fit your stereotype.
Apple seems to have drifted away from it's carefully trod line of empowering and protecting users into the realm of protecting users from themselves.

I tend to think that Apple signed some of it's soul away when making media deals and situations like this may be a part of those legal agreements.

Not to troll but I think Microsoft started focusing on it's business to business dealings more than on it's users at one point and eventually became what it did.

Unfortunately this is a common pattern for successful corporations. I wonder if it is driven purely by fear (of lawsuit?) or by the types of executives you get when you reach a certain size.
You're allowed to install unapproved software. You just can't jailbreak your computer and then expect to download Apple's new updates, most of which rely on their streamlined system's not being broken.

I find that I have everything I need on my iPod touch as-is. A friend of mine disagreed, jailbroke his iPhone, and he's pretty damn happy with what he's got.
The Creative Brief: Questions to Ask Before Designing a Logo
The various accounts weaved into The Jargon File. Gave me, early on in my programming life, a pretty good flavor of what being a hacker was really like.
I've learned a lot from Philip Greenspun.
Fliggo (YC S08) launches TwitVid - the TwitPic of video
Excellent book. I've long since lost my copy, but I think I'll try to procure another today.
600Mhz xScale CPUs have been in PDAs for years. CPU "speed" no longer links directly with clock speed. It could very well be 600Mhz and feel worse.

If they can get rid of the UI lag, that's worth bonus points over obscure new features.
Mark,

I just clicked on your profile and took a look at your work. I would have put you in 35-55 age bracket, considering what you have done and the image you have successfully projected. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw you were 16.

Take this from me; you're destined to great things my friend. The sky is the limit. But don't let this get into your head; someone like you is obviously driven and very competent, try to keep yourself grounded on the side. Discover spirituality or philosophy just to keep your sanity. On behalf of the rest of humanity, let me say that "We" want you to do Good, since whatever you do you will do it to perfection. You have the golden-touch, and with great power .. comes great responsibility.

Regards.
Having been a Mac IT consultant/monkey for a number of years in a past life I'd argue the printing system in Mac OS X is still flaky, annoying and poorly designed... but to each his own. :-P

(I nag because I love.)
You can try contacting Michael Crawford (see his post here: http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2008/4/10/17522/2391/4#4).
The Hot Zone by Richard Preston. It's not actually a "tech book" but it is a true story about the highly technical science of how a deadly virus spread.
Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age
So apps can't spy on you, I hope.
I'm surprised you don't mention Windows Mobile. I'm not is the US. Can you guys actually use WinMo phones in the US? Do you have access to something like the 'HTC Touch HD' over there? This isn't a rhetorical question I just don't know. I'm not saying it is better. The iPhone UI is better and will be for some time. But I'm surprised you don't even mention it because in terms of another platforms with numerous apps available, WinMo is the main one in my 'rest of the world' view.

Edit : ...and android

Before the iPhone pretty much all mobile devices were intended as 'business' devices. By being the first ones to really design a smartphone from the ground up as a 'person oriented' device Apple were able to get ahead. But in my view that advantage is unlikely to persist for very long. When the UI gap is closed features such as 'being able to load programs faster' or 'being able to play a more realistic game' or 'being able to view a web pages the same as on a desktop' will start to be the differentiating factor.
Tesla: Man Out of Time touches a bit on the race between Edison and Tesla. A very good book as well.
Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure by Jerry Kaplan. Recounts the true story of GO Corporation and the folks involved including John Doer and Bill Campbell. Been awhile since I picked this up but I remember it was a fun read.
This is for the post above this one.

Your last point kind of illustrates you have no clue what you are talking about.

If boomers are such great spenders, I can assume you think they have the most buying power? Then we shouldn't see any decline in the things they buy such as newspapers, all those old brands of cars,....

Again if you actually read the entire article I address and argue a lot of your points backed with data.

I guess time only tell who is correct.
All I have to base my opinion on is some familiarity with Blackboard/CourseInfo and a few friendships with schoolteachers, but I think you would need to approach marketing to high schools and colleges differently. Most high schools, even fairly good ones, are going to have a dearth of technical knowledge present in the administrative staff, so lightweight is good. They need software that is as easy to set up as possible, and they need be assured that it's reliable--schoolteachers and administrators are deathly afraid of parents and lawsuits, and something that loses grades is anathema.

(And I second what mahmud said above; the accomplishments in your profile make my head spin)
After the others catch up to their UI methods

Two years on, they still haven't.

Two years on and they haven't even tried. The only one I've heard on the near horizon is the Palm Pre, and Palm employ ex-Apple designers.
'Super Angels' Shake Up Venture Capital
Must Read Twitter Download For You Twitters On The Web
Today I have a great resource for you Twitters out there on the web assuming you are Twitting already or are thinking about setting up your first Twitter account.
I'm sold, good find. I wonder waht the costs and hosting requirements are like? You'd think this would be a no-brainer for both municipalities and chambers of commerce. The imagery is great for consumers but I can see the 3d models being useful for everything from traffic simulations to real estate development. It's like Google Earth on crack.

http://www.c3technologies.com/en_demo.php for demos (plugin must be installed) The 3d is a little ropey when you zoom all the way in and set the view angle very flat. Things like cars and trees sort of rise out of the ground as if they were hills...and that sounds much worse than it is. I'm amazed. Now if you used these 3d heightmaps as correlation data for some 3d analysis of streetview images we'd be in James Bond territory.

Also http://www.c3technologies.com/en_documentation.php?id=1
Thanks for taking over the thread for me plinkplonk. I posted a dense teaser and went to bed, then work for the rest of the day. You pretty much answered all subsequent questions the way I would have :-)

Let me add that beginners couldn't go wrong with mathematics texts by Serge Lang, first-rate mathematician and master teacher.
Aside from this, even if the teams are able to improve the algorithm tremendously, Netflix is looking for the wrong solution.

The ability to predict that, say, movie ABC would score a 3 from customer X really isn't very helpful for anything.

As a Netflix customer, I want them to suggest things that I'm likely to rate 5, and perhaps to warn me away from things that I'd consider a 1 or 2. I want to ignore 3 and 4 movies, so it doesn't matter if the algorithm can predict them well. It also doesn't matter alot if it is able to ferret out every possible 5; as long as it gets a substantial portion, everything is great.

I played a bit with this contest when it first started, along with a friend. In just one night, I was able to beat Netflix's own algorithm by enough to get us onto the leaderboard (temporarily). And the algorithm I used was nothing fancy, just correct scaling and normalizing using means and standard deviations: high school math. Unfortunately, neither of us knew anything about algorithms for collaborative filtering, so we quickly reached a plateau.
Your comment reminded me of the Neal Stephenson short story Jipi and the Paranoid Chip: http://www.vanemden.com/books/neals/jipi.html

Worth a read, and very apropos.
You're separating Gates from his company. Microsoft started off as a fresh and exciting company, and it's gotten a bit stinky. So his case is valid.
"The New New Thing" by Michael Lewis is great: entertainingly written, and actually quite instructive about SV culture. "Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure" by Jerry Kaplan was also very good.
I would be interested in:

- if they're leveraging any new algorithms (categorical, semantic, or otherwise) and hopefully he could briefly explain the new ideas involved.

- any shifts in research and development regarding semantic search algorithms, semantic web and how Wolfram|Alpha plans to contribute to these trends.

- specific types of research information (DNA, relevant research information) and use cases for businesses (i find that the service is novel, but not particularly useful to businesses)

- how frequent they will be updating the existing data, and how frequenty they will be adding data

- shout out to U of I?

btw - can you guys focus more on the startups instead of how-to's? i miss the days when sites actually reported on new startups and not about gossip or top 10 lists.
Apple's followed an unusual path because their current tyrannies are much different from typical tech tyrannies. This decision doesn't help them as a company, and it doesn't hedge any corporate maneuver of theirs. It seems absolutely ridiculous and stupid. It implies that the procedure they're using is fucked up on some level.

While that's outrageous and really pisses me off, it also gives me hope that Apple will find a way to fix this problem without damaging the idealism of their company regarding their products. This isn't stagnation of thought. It's outright insanity. Perhaps it's curable.
For a tablet to be really useful to me it would need to be a hybrid. Tablet for reading and browsing, laptop for email. But there is a middle ground of texts and chat that can be easily taken care of with handwriting recognition.

...[handwriting recognition is] better than you remember.

edit: Actually, I would be perfectly happy to have a $500 tablet with a small screen and without a keyboard for reading and browsing as long as there was good handwriting recognition.

I prefer handwriting to typing for longer essay type papers because it feels more natural to me.