skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The Best Industries for Starting a Business Right Now
The input box seems to be covering the region filter (using FF3.0 on linux) for non US versions.
Seems to provide, more or less, the same results as Google on the searches I tested.

Seems to provide less search options/customiations than Google. (unless I'm missing it?)

Lacks moderation of search results. (hide/promote/comments)

Seems to lack a separate category for searching news.

Video search with hover-play thumbnails is nice but no description?

The links to MSN & Live at the top amuse me for some reason.

Overall it seems to be a good replication of where Google was about 2 years ago. I'd say when they set it as the default homepage in Windows a lot of people will continue to use it since it's "good enough"
This article is two years old.
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The 7-Lesson Schoolteacher
I think a counter point (which I don't agree with) might be a question of slippery slopes - and a problem of many rules based systems. They deliberately avoid allowing for exceptions in an attempt at sending a message to everyone / meeting the needs of the aggregate thinking that it's a true trade off in allowing for individualized approaches/exceptions.

I don't know what the environment is like in Oakland - never been, don't have any reason to think I will, but let's say that it's a very difficult environment, while some of their measures may seem extreme, it's sort of like the broken windows/fences approach to teaching. The thinking would be that by clamping down on the small offences, no one even thinks to commit to the big ones. Personally however, I don't think that that should have been considered an infraction or that it should be considered a broken window.
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On this point, I recommend Douglas Hofstadter's "Person Paper on Purity in Language":
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.html

Hofstadter makes the same point (that words that claim to be both gendered and gender-neutral are never the latter) in a less snarky way in Chapter 7 of his book _Metamagical Themas_, entitled "Changes in Default Words and Images, Engendered by Rising Consciousness". You can find it on Google Books.
Correlation is not causation. Perhaps cities with the longest commuting times have the most incentive to develop mass transit.
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So you're saying people misinterpreted Gladwell's argument?

So his argument was unclear?
I have no interest in buying e-books but, if I did, I would probably continue to use Amazon since I can just order the print copy when there's no e-book version available and have the option of using them on a Kindle. (again, if I wanted e-books which I really do not)
You don't win by being nearly as good as your competitor though.
Implementation is a lot less forgiving than design. Therefore, requiring a working implementation is a way to sort out a large amount of (unworkable) design ideas.
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I don't think it's a school's place to decide what constitutes a legitimate reason to miss school - it should be the parent's prerogative. If the parent says it's alright for a kid to miss a day of school - I really don't think the school should be questioning it.
Actually I saw your comments a being the exact opposite of condescending. You aren't speaking from an 'assumed position of superiority' you are actually speaking as if everyone has your capabilities. I'm just putting forward the theory that you are actually better than average in many respects. Maybe assuming everyone can do what you can isn't accurate.

> I was merely saying that life is short and it is important not to take no for an answer. This is true if you are an immigrant or not.

I still agree with your general attitude. Regardless of anyone's abilities an attitude like this is likely to get the best results.
This is a great habit to get into when you really need to remember/understand the material. I have worked at several science and engineering labs; when someone demonstrates a procedure, you better have a damn good memory if you aren't writing it down!

It hadn't previously occured to me do this in the doctor's office, but it's a good idea - the info a doctor gives can sometimes be (or should be) fairly involved. It's worth writing down.

Furthermore, taking notes allows you to process the information on two levels. The technical details (names of things, etc) can be relegated to the notepad and forgotten. Important general concepts can then receive your greater attention. A doctor who gives more involved advice to a note-taker is a doctor who knows that you can handle more information if you're writing some of it down.
For me, the irritation is the panther thingy in the background on search results. It just looks like someone with no design sense found some clip art and decided to put it there.
With market set to Australia, the logo says 'bing Beta'. It says 'bing preview' for the US. I guess it's not fully baked for non-US markets. I wonder if the advertising campaign is restricted to the US?
Oh come on, it's day 1... I can't say Bing will gain traction or not. But, at the very least, on day one, it's the 2nd best search engine available.
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The search seems fine -- but the look/logo/UI is terrible. And come on, do they really need to spam the search pages with so many conspicuous advertisements that LOOK like the search results? If they want this product to stick, they need to make the search results stand out ...
This assumes a number of things, including: That everyone who visits mininova (or any other torrent site) will download a tv show, that every unique visitor amounts to a unique person (iirc, dynamic IP's are quite popular among .au ISP's) and that everyone will only visit one torrent site alone.

I'm not denying that BitTorrent is big, just that TorrentFreak is very biased and overstating its effect.
Hilariously, the GMail login page was the number 8 result for me on Bing for one of my stranger queries (one of several queries trying to figure out where I can buy grits--the real kind, not instant--in northern California). Apparently where to buy grits locally is a very, very hard concept for a search engine; or maybe I'm just living in a fantasy land and there is no such thing as a place to buy grits in northern California. Google also fails, but not quite so disastrously or embarrassingly (the Bing results were not only useless, they were mostly spam).

It's almost, but not quite equal. Google wins on nearly every query, by a tiny margin (though Google also had a hard time with most of my queries).
The search results seem like pretty much the same as they have been for years. This is just a rebranding and some UI fluff as far as I can see. So yeah, it's day 1 for the new UI, but I was talking about quality of search results.
As someone who has coached basketball I call B.S. You don't put on a press because if you are playing against a team that knows how to beat it you will get destroyed because they will run you into the ground. It's a suboptimal strategy because of this.

What he is essentially saying is that in any two team dynamic system you can gain a short term advantage by playing the suboptimal strategy. In this case it's not going to work next year, because most teams will train how to beat it.

It's like telling your military to charge the opposition. This may surprise them, and you might win, because the opposition isn't expecting it. But next time don't expect it to work.
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If I type "es_msg" into Bing I get exactly what I'd expect, the documentation for a function. When I type it into Google I get "did you mean tos_msg" which drives me batty. And the top two results are useless. The third result is correct.

Bing's "Help" is actually really nice and very fast (in Chrome). Or at least I found it easy to navigate through it.

Bing isn't indexing bug.gd error/solutions properly, though, so that's a bit frustrating.

Bing is definitely very fast. Sometimes felt faster than Google.
Bad article title. I thought this would be about immediate business opportunities in the current economic climate.

A better title would be "Best Industries to get if you want long-term potential regardless of economic ups and downs".
It's not spectacular - but (to me anyway) it communicates a cutesy friendliness - the squiggly fonts and child-like primary colors gives a sense of invitation to poke and pry at the system's abilities, and also conveys a sense of wonder.

The bing logo, on the other hand... the font is poorly chosen, IMHO the kerning is all wrong, it feels like something one would whip up in 10 minutes in Paint, not a professional logo. Furthermore, the choices of font gives me the feeling that they're trying to position this thing as hip and cool (hence the bistro comment), where the system is, as of yet, deserving of none such accolades.
I don't know, I like it. Results are very on par with Google's. Interface is cleaner, now that Google has a rating system and a lot of other info/links per result.

Only thing I don't like is that I can only set 50 results per page, whereas with Google and Yahoo I can set 100.

I'm gonna set it as my homepage for a few days. That's the only way I'll be able to give it a try and come up with a judgment.
The fact that google is going to leave the pricing structure to the publishers disappointed me. While the flexibility draws in more publishers the publisher acceptable pricepoint will not be competitive with the likes of Amazon.
I think the better title would be "best industries to be in, if you started a year or two ago, because if not you're already late to the game and have several fast-rising competitors who now have a year or two head start on you".
How do I convert a PDF to a word document?
You get what you measure. As PG says, high school is best thought of as a day job.
polishing turds, as usual.
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Cool idea, but there's no validation if JavaScript is disabled!

Shouldn't a complete solution automatically fall back to server-side validation?
I really, really like it. I could actually see myself using this.

1. Super fast.

2. Image search is far superior to Google's.

3. Travel search is great. Try "deals to hawaii".

4. I like the name. Easy to remember and only 4 letters.

5. Weather searches work great.

6. I like the related searches and search history on the left.

7. I like the wikipedia integration.
It's better than doing nothing. Even if it's only 5% effective, it may still be worth it.
I'm talking about the original Gladwell article. In the original article, Gladwell points out that there are rules that competitors limit themselves to despite the fact that they aren't explicitly laid out. The coaches of other teams were upset at this particular team because, as they put it, it's unfair to keep using a full court press against 12 year old girls.

The other example Gladwell referenced was of a naval simulation primarily played by people well versed in military strategy. While most players used traditional strategies seen throughout history, one player found that the optimal strategy was something that would never work in real life, but was totally feasible within the rules of the game. The other players cried foul because he went against the "spirit" of the game, despite not breaking any rules.

Again, the point of the article: The best way to win is to not limit yourself by rules that don't exist.

[edit] I realize we're talking about two different things. I don't really have an opinion either way in regards to running the full court press more often at other levels of competitive basketball. I still think people are missing the point of the original article, and Gladwell isn't helping himself by going on about the full court press thing.
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"allow publishers to charge consumers the same price for digital editions as they do for new hardcover versions."

Really? And what happens when customers refuse to pay the same amount?
I've always said, that ebooks are still too expensive. Personally, if an ebook is $10 less than a hardcover version, then I prefer it. Otherwise, not much of a difference.
Others below have mentioned taking AP and SAT-2 tests to place out of requirements. Also worth looking up, DSST, CLEP and Excelsior College Exams.
Gentle Introduction to x86-64 Assembly
If it works as it could, I'd hate to think how many startups just because completely obsolete. Our wiki, internal laconica, document sharing and collaboration software will probably all die if this works.
In the web hucksters' defense (not that I am one, mind you), fitting a few thousand users onto a quad core system (as opposed to a few million) improves maintainability, reliability, recoverability, and a multitude of other things that simply aren't major concerns in the demo scene.

The guys building big rigs care about performance - but never to the same tune as the guys designing F-1 racing cars. Different goals demand different approaches.

If you want to design jet fighters, go do that - and push the hardware to the absolute limits of human ability, but there is a glory in designing commuter jets too, you know.
Go Bing Yourself, Right Now
And how do you create a DRM that doesn't suck?

Dead tree books have DRM which works, albeit in a shape which isn't digital. It is a pain to copy a 300 page novel, but you can do it (there are of course copyright limitations). But all DRM systems implemented fail in comparison. Of course, comparing the two directly is hard as they are very different media.

Books work well because:
- they don't stop working when the DRM vendor goes out of business (see all the music sites now gone)
- you can give them and lend them without problems
- they are compatible (i.e. you changing to a new computing platform doesn't mean that you can't now read your books)

When the convenience of electronic distribution with DRM overcomes the drawbacks then you are going to see some uptake, but the drawbacks seem too large at this point.

To have a future with content worth buying, then maybe the business model needs to change? However, book readings aren't quite as attractive as touring bands. So that is going to take some good thinking. :)
I am watching the revival of assembly --- a decade after everyone declared its death. This article would have been a meaningless hacker article 5 years ago. Now everyone feels they need to write a JIT for their DSL. Suddenly there is a new interest in assembly.
There is truth here - there is a large, unspoken sector of the internet startup world that is consisted of poor ideas with equally poor implementations whose sole purpose of existence is to flip to someone equally clueless for a profit.

There is nothing glorious in this, though entrepreneurs you will still be.

"When I grow up, I want to create failing businesses that I can convince people to pay me tens of millions of dollars to buy!"
Google Wave will take a generation
The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Somehow, this quote leaps to mind after reading that article. In a field where the primary means of keeping score is how much money you have, it seems to me quite impossible for there to be success without avarice.
If I were to graph myself speaking those two words I expect I would have two spikes on the k's of kiki, but bouba would be generally flatter.

We probably have abstractions, connotations, that these sounds share with the physical ideas of sharpness and soft-formed-ness (what word am I looking for). Then, we likely choose our words against these abstract connotations.

That's what I guess before I would look at your explanation as right.
Visual TiVo for my computer
All in one page version:

http://www.inc.com/print/77?partner=rss
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Also the "You should follow me on twitter" remark at the bottom of the page sounds somewhat arrogant to me.
What do you like about the Wikipedia integration? I don't see the value in republishing Wikipedia: http://www.bing.com/reference/semhtml/Melbourne?q=melbourne&...
And these things will die because they have been superseded by something superior. What is the bad thing in that? That is what startups are all about after all.

In addition, there will be tons and tons of new opportunity to build on this. I suppose one can hate the fact that the Internet killed a lot of BBSs, but it sure created more opportunity to build an industry than what these BBSs offered.
You can't trust anything that is done on the user's end regardless of what they have enabled. Something like this is just a bonus from a usability prospective because the user won't have to wait until they hit submit to find out they made a mistake.
Sex Study: Pull Out Method Rivals Condoms, Better Than No Birth Control
It seems to me, the point of the charter school system is to try new ideas in education. This school seems to have certain ideals:

- teach to the test

- observe all rules, to the letter, no exceptions

I'm sure there are better ways of doing education than this, but, there are also certainly worse ways of doing it. And those worse ways are occuring all over the USA in public schools.

These charter schools take many different philosophies of education. Some do better than others (although it's tough to do worse than many of our public schools...) At its best, there's a type of evolution occuring, where the best ideas survive, and the others are left behind.
Getting people to seriously try a new search engine does take some work. The $100 million is probably an attempt to overcome the branding effect described in this article a week ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=626960
Godel Prize Awarded
Google Wave as a tool is the way people visualise what the protocol can offer them, which makes it easy to discuss. Think of trying to have a discussion about http vs. a discussion about web browser with the people who are discussing it. (Most people wouldn't know a protocol if it hit them in the head.)
Hmm, I wonder how much of the difference in search results come from people intentionally gaming Google vs ignoring Bing/Live?

I did a sample search ("rack mount computers") and found 3 different areas for ads on Bing and a single area (well, google shopping, which isn't 100% the same thing) on Google. You'd think with this being MS, they'd burn profitability (e.g. ads) in exchange for market size?

One good point for Bing, however: the results page isn't as 1994ish as Google. Good use of color, less blaring blue-and-underlined text, and an actual layout.

The nebula graphic, however, doesn't make any sense to me. I think Google's pages could use an overhual -- not more stuff on there, just clean up the colors and graphics a bit, like the ubuntu version of google's search page.

Edit: also, the hover box doesn't show up reliably for me (FF3, Opensolaris). When it does show, it matches the background so well I hadn't noticed it until others had mentioned it here.

Overall, a good point's made from this: the search game is probably going to shift towards context sensitivity and user experience. General search is an area where multiple parties (Google + MS) can do a decent job.
Coffee. It's like turning on a light switch.
Being less specific gives you a pretty decent result, though. Try plain old Zelda, then shopping: http://www.bing.com/shopping/search?q=zelda&mkt=en-US...
Ask HN: How to stay focused?
Hello,
I'm trying to work on my own startup for a while. I sometimes do some Ruby and Javascript contracting to burn trough my savings a little slower (ping me if you're looking for a part-time UI guy).

I've started to work on my current idea more than a month ago. But I'm going forward REALLY slowly. And, mostly, because I cant focus. I waste a lot of time on 'hacking here and there' or writing some small utility for myself.

Do you have any ideas how to stay focused on my main project? How do you get rid of hacking on side-projects too much?
"tos_msg" -- interesting that Google is picking up on TinyOS and suggesting the term accordingly. May be an indication that they weight universities highly, since TinyOS started as a university project?
I think you're hitting on the essential point of the article which is customer experience and creating a positive memory.

One of my clients is a high-end boutique. Their purchase experience is good by nice retail standards - high-quality bag, tissue with ribbon, etc. But then the do little extras like presenting your receipt in a little card stock slipcase and hand-writing you a thank-you note a few days later. It is the little things that matter.

I'd agree that the MASA receipt is pretty rudimentary, but as another commenter mentioned, it's largely a factor of the POS system. (And apparently not high on their selection criteria list.)
Hm. The nebula and color gradients feel unnecessary to me, but I think there's potential for innovation in having the recommended searches prominently located on the left sidebar - provided that the recommendations are intelligent enough.

I've thought on more than one occasion while burrowing down with repeated queries that search should involve more of the machine prompting me and less of me guessing at the right keywords. Bing's UI promotes that behavior, whereas my eyes just skip over the recommended queries at the bottom of Google.
Marxism and YEC have about the same level of validity

OK, but your reasoning is still flawed.

There is an all-out, bitter war going on between property (connections, inherited wealth, resources) and energy (talent, ambition, hard work)

If unbannable had used those ideas to underpin his arguments, attacking Marxism would make sense. But he doesn't. He just (sort of) shares one of Marx's observations & moral dispositions. Not everything that Marx claimed, observed, said or saw is disproved. To the extend that Marxism is disproved, it is the political or economic systems.

The same tactic is used by anti-evolutionists trying to draw a connection to Nazism.

This is a close cousin of a straw man. Straw man is a shallow argument.
I would love to see a documentary on IMVU. Their continuous deployment strategy seems like it works very well.

I'd bet they innovating in other areas too, and it'd be cool to hear more.
Searching for "linux download" on Bing turns up this as the #1 link:

http://www.novell.com/linux/download_linux.html

Trying the same thing on Google, however, I get this:

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

HMMM...