skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Neil Armstrong and the missing "a".
As we come up to the 40th anniversary of the moon landings, I've just been watching a program about the Apollo program. In a rather rare interview with Neil Armstrong I noticed something interesting.

Transcribing part of the interview, I get this:

The descent was very tricky business.

The challenge was to try to land at a relatively
specific landing site that had no runway, no control
tower, no radar, and no navigation aids.

Our plan was to start at a specific point in lunar
orbit at about 50,000 feet altitude, and something
over 3000 miles per hour, to use one continuous
rocket burn to decelerate to a hover in the landing
area.

The first "a" before "relative" is extremely short, and there is no "a" at all in the first sentence. It's true that the first sentence above does parse without the "a", but it also parses with one.

Armstrong has said that he intended to have an "a" in that sentence, that he rehearsed it, and that he thought he said it. He has also had the recording played to him many times, and has finally admitted that it's not there, and he's surprised.

My theory is that it's a dialectic elision. His brain said it, but his speech path never passed it on to the rest of us.
How To Save The Newspapers, Vol. XII: Outlaw Linking
Will you need Windows 7 to view them?
The thing that really rings true in this story for me is the difficulty that management sometimes has understanding how hard the things we do are. It particularly shows up in cases that might sound like this one, where the solution is simple but hard to see.

For instance, I recently corrected a bug in my code that had been there for a long time. The final code is dead simple. But it took years to detect the bug, and weeks of hard work and analysis to figure out that simple solution. (And of course, who knows -- maybe it's not as hard as I thought, and if I were just brilliant enough I would have instantly seen the solution. If I have no clue what the truth of the matter is, how is my (hypothetical) one step removed boss supposed to make sense of it?)
Are DRM Free Rights A Violation Of People's Freedom Of Speech And Expression?
I don't get it what is the take away of this story? If I play video games at work I am likely to get fired? If I follow company procedures I will get ahead?

Seriously though work isn't track and field you don't win by being better than who ever came in second. You win by working to the best of your ability.
I think the trick is the "equivalent" part. If I got it right, they are using some sort of fuel which provides 1/3 of the energy regular gasoline does. Which means they are probably doing 110/3 mpg on this type of fuel.
I use the Gimp too for my graphics work since I'm not a designer really. One suggestion would be to download one of the free icon sets out there like crystal or such and find a transparent bg png of a standard no/delete symbol and overlay that on top of your other email/twitter symbols in a new layer in Gimp. Here's a link that has some pretty good free icon sets: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/05/24/freebies-round-up...
Compare Apache/mod_php and nginx/php-fpm
newspapers that think along these lines should just take their websites down, and stick to the print edition plus other non-linkable forms such as a kindle edition, an ipod edition, and adobe air reader edition etc.

for all the others, learning how to link themselves to other newspapers and blogs, i.e. learning to take part in the online conversation, is absolutely crucial if they want to have a chance of surviving.
Google mocks Bing and the stuff behind it
That may be true, but it still sounds a bit insane. This is orders of power better than conventional results.
Just a question, does anyone know how to download these videos to watch offline?
I don't know, seems like a clumsy attempt to bitch about the energy bill more than anything.
What does it mean, he asked, when kids are under stress because there is no money in the household, or people have to move more, or are combining households, or lose their health insurance? I believe this is going to leave a permanent scar on a generation of kids.

I've believed for quite some time that the current generation of kids is closer in thought and deed to their grandparents than to their parents. Circumstances are increasingly showing that to be true.
The future of "Free"
Well, with a contrived made-up example you can prove just about anything.
Successful reforms are also thoughtful reforms
Watch WWE The Bash 2009 Live Streaming | WWE Live Stream
that was really well written.

Also, and this is becoming my favourite line sentence ever: its amazing what you can do if you're already famous this dude created b3ta!
You clearly haven't worked at a large corporation. You get ahead by kissing up to the boss, holding large meetings, and creating fancy charts and graphs that explain why your project is 6 months behind.
How Dangerous is Texting While Driving?
Clueless Response
Here's my favorite clueless response to the FOCUS Magazine Bill Gates interview, Microsoft Code Has No Bugs.
Nice find, thank you.
Multiple Intelligences Around the World
Do you make fun of cancer research too? I find your comments to be in poor taste.
What do the words you've taught your mobile say abot you?
There is a real need for a reliability metric. For instance, a lot people recently tweeted rumors about Jeff Goldblum dying. Penalize those people. Other people actually were debunking the rumors, reward them. It will help quality to use an NLP grammar parser I believe. Every time there are rumors/scams on twitter you have a chance to improve your metric.
Boston tech scene on the rebound
Starter Kits For Web Designers
The 7 Software Development Wastes - Part 1
So _how_ exactly did it happen?

It's such a typical distracted and convoluted main stream news that after reading the article my brain was like a messed up Rubik's Cube and I had to twist much just to summarize only two points:

* Aggressive investment in Netbook, which is supposed to be disruptive innovation. This is fine.

* Acer is free to choose low cost parts for its laptop -- this is considerably fluffier as if its competitors are doing (trying to do) the same.

Anyone else has a better idea?
Pirate Bay’s YouTube competitor lives on (The Video Bay)
Hulu really hates the TV, PlayStation 3 blocked
If someone has a perception, even an incorrect one, there's reason for it.
Hi HackerNews. This is an extended version of a response to a complaint about new Linux users suggesting changes to Linux packaging http://ubuntusyndrome.wordpress.com/2009/06/23/johnny-come-lately-linux-heroes/. The point I'm making is not just about Linux though. I thought HN may get a kick out of it...

If someone has a perception, there's a reason for it, even if that perception isn't itself correct.

In regards to the article above, yes, apt makes things easy when you learn how to use it. The modern day 'App Store' concept is an extension of this concept. But there's a world of difference in the user experience of 'Synaptic Package Manager' versus App Store. End-user apps aren't separated from libraries and development tools, categories are aimed at software developers, descriptions of a package called 'foo' read 'This is a package of foo' or 'This is a graphical interface for libfoo' without explaining what it is that foo does. Just as the "Johnny come lately" in the article is ignorant of technical rationale behind packaging, long term Linux users are typically ignorant of user experience problems, which hurt their platform more than the ignorant suggestions do.

This idea isn't just worth keeping in mind for technology, but for life too. At 17 I was working as a sysadmin for a PR company, and was called into a meeting with senior management for not doing another person's job - support for end-user desktops, once my domain, was given to a cheaper contractor while I worked on the servers exclusively. One of the company principles had email problems for days, and the desktop support gent hadn't been able to solve the problem (nor had I been made aware of the problem). However the staff knew my face better from having handles their desktops in the past, and the change hadn't been successfully communicated.

The perception was that it was my responsibility the user's desktop wasn't fixed. This wasn't correct, but as a contractor, it was ultimately up to me to communicate the change in support more clearly to end users, as my pay depended on it. Users may have been ignorant of who handles their support, but I was ignorant of how to communicate to the people who determined by success of failure that their colleagues had outsourced the job.

The end result was I came close to being fired for not doing someone else's work - I'm the one who was affected, therefore it was my responsibility to resolve the issue. What's true or untrue didn't matter, perception was reality.

It's a hard lesson to learn for a technology person - we're used to treating proven truths as the ultimate deciders of right or wrong. But it's a very important one.
I am as well. My agency has an account. They're tools don't do much that you can't do on your own for free, but they do put it all in one place which saves us enough time when doing market research that it justifies the cost.
True story.

I show up 5 minutes late to a lunch/forum about the future of news here in Chicago featuring Carl Bernstein plus the editors of the Sun-Times, Tribune and other local publications. I find a seat at a table of youngsters and find out they're all undergrads at Northwestern's journalism program, where I earned an MSJ.

I introduce myself, tell them I run a news aggregator for local stuff. One turns to me.

"I hate what you do. You're ruining the industry."

"Wha?"

Intrigued, I try to figure out what she means through a series of increasingly specific questions about what she doesn't like until finally I ask the big one:

"Do you think it's wrong for a web site to link to another web site?"

"Yes. Unless they've paid the site they're linking to for the right to do so."

That explained everything. I'm not unsympathetic to her POV. She wants to be a reporter, and those jobs are increasingly hard to come by. She blames "the blogs" for this. I explained that there are many more opportunities out there for her to report and inform the public that didn't involve working for a newspaper. She wasn't interested. It always amazes me how reporters can be so clever and entrepreneurial in their reporting while being so darn conservative and narrow-minded in how they manage their careers.
Marketing is what hurts startups. If you have a loyal tribe how hard can it be?
Oh please. A google search of "bill gates arrogance" returns over 200,000 hits. People like Bob Cringley and James Wallace have made small fortunes selling books about Gates's foibles, frustrations and outbursts.
Finding the simplest solution to a problem is hard, but because it seems simple in hindsight, only those competent in the art can recognize a brilliant solution.

This is just another example of "bullshit baffles brains" and that it takes competence to recognize competence.
I'm a Pro member as well.

I think the subscription fee is well worth it if you are looking to draw more traffic to your website via SEO. It's the combination of the tools and the community.

Disclaimer: Rand Fishkin's a friend (but I would have been a customer regardless).
Grant System Leads Cancer Researchers to Play It Safe
I'm surprised that they were unprofitable. How does a consulting business with great brand recognition, in an industry that's still growing fast, not make boatloads of money? They should be like all those Whateverilents of the late 90's, paying people $50/hour and billing them to companies at $200/hour. (At least, I know of plenty of companies that would pay that much, and plenty of SEOs who would make that much -- and having a middleman with the best brand name in the business could definitely make it happen).

So what gives?
How the TOR Project is helping Iranian protesters
I also have a question about the first lecture. He mentions that the probability of a particular event happening is given by
adding arrows/vectors head to tail, and then getting the area
of the circle with radius equal to length of the resulting arrow. Would this not enable you to have a probability greater than 1?
Heart beat posting device lets your Twitter followers know you're alive
Video Interview: Uniphore | Voice of the web
A video interview featuring the co-founders of Uniphone, a Chennai based startup that was incubated out of RTBI, which is a part of IIT Madras. Uniphore did a soft launch of their product - Noddler at Proto in Bangalore, India.
Speeding FPGAs up to 1.5Ghz by getting rid of the global clock
But it would be a good backup -- it's far better than busy signal (which I have gotten on two different occasions of calling 911).
"evidence to suggest he was so ridiculously unpolished after all those years"
see his testimony in US v Microsoft in 1998... http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/longterm/micro...
Wankendon, hur-hur
Easy. It's not just Acer, it is Asus and MSI and possibly many more to come. And its not because they're doing something exceptional. The business of PC building has changed to their advantage because of two (harshly worded) trends:

1. Computers, even laptops, become commoditized and don't require much of R&D to design and produce.

2. The majority of PC sales are consumers' who, unlike business customers, prefer cheap disposable junk, hence there isn't a single 24-bit true-color laptop available to buy these days: they're all gone. (which makes me wonder: what is the point of these high-tech digital SLRs?)

Don't bring the Apple argument: their success rests on value-add services/software that just happen to run well on in-house hardware.

P.S. Suddenly, IBM's decision to sell off PC business several years ago looks even more impressive.
Unfortunately this will encourage customers to pirate the content.
http://christophdietze.com/weblisp

Lisp interpreter in the browser, even has a graphics library.
http://christophdietze.com/node/23
Yeah, this isn't going to really accomplish much except annoy users.

They're going to have to win an Olympic gold medal to block people like me though: Mac Mini + TV. Their beta desktop software runs very nice, better than Boxee in fact. Haven't paid a penny for Cable TV in two months and never plan on doing so ever again. :)
Day in the life of a Roguelike Developer - overcoming burnout.
I guess the obvious question in all this is, if animal proteins above a certain threshold cause cancer (broadly stated), then what about carnivores? What is different about their metabolism that lets them survive on a diet of pure animal flesh?

As omnivores, do we share any of these processes, or are we really just herbivores that have become omnivores through cooking?

Do you know of any research in this area?
AzəriBlogımız inkişafi üçün bir yenilik
The Real Genius Of The Kindle? The Return Of ‘Unitasking’
It's common enough for people not to know the difference between a tag and, well, any part of the syntax of HTML that is not a tag. That doesn't mean we should encourage this confusion. I see this frequently in technical channels where people have HTML questions but lack the vocabulary to express them or comprehend the answer. One of the very first things an HTML newbie must learn is the correct names for elements, tags and attributes, which usually means unlearning the incorrect use of 'tag'.

Is this a nitpick? Perhaps if your subject had been something other than markup, or valid markup in particular, you'd be right. I think it's reasonable, though, when writing on a technical subject, to insist on correct usage of that subject's basic technical vocabulary.
Exactly. I've been in love with Hulu but after Boxee and now this, a big FU HULU.

I had no problem the commercials in Hulu (would even pay for premium Hulu access), I know people need to get paid. But if the conglomerates are going to force proprietary delivery channels to strictly Hulu-approved devices/software, then they didn't learn a damn thing from the music business and deserve everything coming.

I'm hoping that a Boxee developer makes a plugin that gives me access to my usenet accounts, handles the download, unparing, etc. Very high quality (often 1080p), commercial free, no latency/skipping and super fast for only $18 month.
Arguing by group selection is far fetched as it is almost inherently wrong in concept, and demands further explanation in gene mechanics.

Even if accepting the group selection idea for the sake of argument, there are inconsistencies to what behavior one would expect to find. As the article elaborates on, depression is, crudely put, mental pain, and it comes with symptoms such as general lack of motivation. How does that fit with the over all good of the pack? Wouldn't the expected behavior be acceptance of the omega situation and great motivation to sacrifice itself for the pack (as in wolf packs where there is kinship involved)? How is an individual being gloomy and doing nothing - mental pain being inflicted - beneficial to the pack?
Famous Infomercial Hacker, Billy Mays, Found Dead
I am appropriately corrected. This actually doesn't change my view at all, because when I said "moderately complex," I assumed that the natural numbers where included in that. If you go back to read Descartes and Kant you'll see much of the same treatment - the addition operation as defined by our algebra of the set of the natural numbers is used many times as an example of a priori knowledge.

You are completely correct though - it was very late when I first commented on this and was tired and simply wrong. I'll try and be much more specific in my treatment of mathematics in the future, although I am not a mathematician. I just want to note that I never claimed that Gödel proved that Peano arithmetic was incomplete or inconsistent (although if I remember correctly, he could not prove that the whole of PA was consistent), but simply that the nature of Peano arithmetic does not imbue any a priori knowledge of the universe or our existence. This is supported by Gödel in the broad sense that we cannot generate a "universal theory" of mathematics. However, my main point is that mathematics is not truth, it is only a model of our definitions and observations -- a tool, if you will -- and an incomplete model at that.
Sounds like Obama needs to pull a "Kennedy" and define the goal. Amazing what smart people can do with a little vision.
IBM's decision to sell off the Thinkpad business was a good one. They must have learned it from the commidification of their other businesses like the Hard Disk business.

The margin of Acer is 2%. That is really really low. IBM margins in services must be in 20s.
I explained that there are many more opportunities out there for her to report and inform the public that didn't involve working for a newspaper.

... And still have enough resources (cash) to produce new, valuable information, as opposed to being a gossip outlet or just blogging about things you read elsewhere online?

If there are "many more opportunities" how come they're not obvious? Are there really many of them? Can you name a single operating "newspaper replacement"?

Assuming every nytimes.com in the world closes its doors tomorrow. What are you going to aggregate?
Filtering Companies Can’t Be Sued By Blacklisted Firms, Court Rules
Comment #1 below really says it: Even if you have a 100% efficient engine, it takes more energy to propel that un-aerodynamic Mustang through the air 1 mile at highway speeds than you get out of 1/100 gallon of gas. And that's ignoring rolling friction and powertrain losses. It's a perpetual motion machine.
byrne - I think you might have misread the piece; we were profitable when we took investment the first time and are profitable again now. The "dip" was during a period when we burned the investment capital to grow faster.

And yeah - our rates are $1,000 per hour, which helps moderate demand, but we rarely outsource anything (and even when we do, it's to other very high priced vendors). Strategic SEO (vs. the tactical keyword research, link building, site editing, etc.) requires lots of deep knowledge.
It doesn't matter what the fuel is. You get the same amount of energy out of it, so it's no easier running 110*3/2 mpg on E85 (which is 2/3 the energy density) than 110mpg on gas.
New Fennec Releases (Firefox for Mobile phones)
Yes, I was unclear. When I meant knowledge, I was using Hume's treatment of knowledge, which is predominantly intellect based. That is, instinct and human brain capacities etc, etc, are not part of "knowledge." The current nature vs nurture debate is important, but not what I was talking about.
This story is troubling for several reasons.

- "Lines of code" is a meaningless metric. Please stop using it.

- Charles obviously did something when he appeared to be doing nothing. What? Unfortunately, we're never told.

- There is no treatment of the things that likely are important: analysis, design, prototyping, feedback, fine tuning, etc. Did either programmer try any of these?

- The story infers that using modern magical brilliance is better than using tried and true methods, without ever mentioning what either one is.

I can imagine this story being true. Just as likely, I can imagine the opposite being true. Nothing offered, nothing learned.
It is true that a lot of startups underestimate the value of marketing ("creating a sale for tomorrow"). It seems that most people's idea of marketing is to contact bloggers back to back.
I'm not always negative about digg, and I'm often negative about other aspects of the "new journalism". Mostly because my experience with it is that it's nearly all bullshit, and that disappoints me.
I was a bit surprised that he said something (nice) about Jobs.
To put this story into context, remember that the biggest stake holders in Hulu are NBC Universal, Fox Entertainment, and Disney (27% each).

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hulu
"Tweeting, inverted".

From my knowledge of twitter (have NEVER used it), it allows one person or entity to publish messages for everyone to see.

What if several people want to publish messages TO someone or some entity (like a company), and want them to be seen publicly? You create a channel for that entity on tweet.in and tweet your message into the channel. Others will be free to join in. It'll be like one of those public boards where you can leave messages on particular topics.

So, for example, you'll have messages for the Iranian leaders, condolence messages for MJ, product feedback on Vista, etc.
The economy can’t be re-established on a sound basis without aggressive efforts to put people back to work in jobs with decent wages.

As a college student who will be in the job market before too long, I have been keeping a decently close eye on these economic recession stories. Time and again people have claimed for strong measures, aggressive efforts, and assertive changes. Never have I seen an actual recommendation. Is it just common knowledge what should be done? Bob Herbert says "decent wages" like it is a commonly understood legal term...but what is the market value of their labor? I am not asking this as a free-market capitalist libertarian devotee, but more from the perspective of "Ok, so what do you want [me|theGovernment|bigCorp] to do?"

Also, why the hell don't journalists cite sources? "...and most analysts now expect it [unemployment] to hit 10 percent or higher." Says whom? How many is "most"? Why is it they get away with this?
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