skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The Great Cloud Computing Deception
Anyone have any favorite links to a good rapid jquery intro for someone familiar with programming?
Press Release: Amazon.com to Acquire Zappos.com for $807MM
A lot more info! If only more people would upvote the original source.
... and if we ever create an artificial beeing that is self-aware we would have to solve many other issues before thinking of proper punishment. Like: how do we justify that we expect this self aware, intelligent beeing to clean our rooms or take out our trash? Wouldn't that be a new era of slavery?
Congrats to Tony on his second acquisition. (He sold LinkExchange to Microsoft for $265M in 1998)
I sort of did this during my undergrad. But instead it was essentially 9-5 minus whatever classes I had. I would just spend any time not in class during the work day to work on class work unless I had every assignment done. It helped me get ahead and then I could just relax in the evenings because I knew I'd have time to work on things later in the week.

In many classes it's much easier to do productive work in an hour than at most programming jobs. Programming jobs tend to be structured in terms of large projects/milestones, while classes tend to have smaller goals or problems on the problem sets that can be done in < 1 hour. And if all else fails, reading a text book for an hour can be quite productive, and it's nice to let the information settle in your brain before applying it anyway.
Seems like virtual goods are a new type of revenue model. The numbers are really high for buying thin air. Most of the startups should consider adding virtual goods bazaar into their products. With the rising of micro payment options virtual goods possibly will gain more speed. By the way how do virtual goods have effect on macro economics? Isn't it bad for the economy spending money on unproduced and no-value generating goods? Or am i judging virtual goods wrong?
Introducing Internet Garage Sale, a new site from Steven Frank
Yes, true, although I don't feel any free linux backup tool is really up to the usual standards.

Also, automatic backup is a bit annoying for many home users, who do not have the required place to store their data.
I've actually found that I can't get into top "people mode" form without a warm-up. This means that, not only does a random meeting deprive me of a half day's worth of intense "maker" concentration, but I'm not even at my best for the 30 or 60 minutes of the meeting, because I've not warmed up into "people mode".

In my ideal world, I'd be in maker mode all but one day every workweek. I'd spend that remaining day doing nothing but meeting with people. I'd be in better form for both "maker mode" and "people mode", and I'd get more of both done.
I guess I meant the product name. They're still X-25M...
The problem with the meetings PG is talking about is they tend to be in the middle of productive blocks and they are long.

The idea of an Agile standup is usually it is right at the start of the day, when people are still drinking their coffee and waking up, and they are short (the standing is deliberately to keep it short and to the point). Sure, you might have a 10 minute standup at the start of the day, but that's only 10 minutes off the beginning of your 3-hour productive chunk. They can also help you get into the flow by getting you thinking about work.
This deal feels right. Both companies seem to be committed to customer service as their number one goal. Based on what I've been reading about Zappos, Tony & Co deserver this. Great company, great management, great culture, great news!
Windows 7 Passes The Test, Is Ready For Manufacturing
They have good market penetration in the graphic design field, and that's a sector that will be slow to adopt any sort of cloud-computing or mobile solution for day-to-day work due to the size of the files that are dealt with and the exacting quality standards. I'd wager they will be a player in the desktop hardware side of things at least in that area for a while.
Agreed, I hope that even though they will be run as two separate companies they will maintain the corporate culture of zappos even under pressure.
The video from Jeff Bezos is also worth watching (though there's not many details of the deal): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hxX_Q5CnaA
They may not go for the Whispernet model. Perhaps they will give you a SIM card with a very cheap data plan or say 20MB for free per month. Perhaps it will be a prepaid plan. Who knows?

Like you said though, I doubt they'll use the same type of model that Amazon uses for data, simply because it will be easier to hack GSM.

I'm personally a fan of using GSM though, since that means the same device can then be used just about anywhere. And since we are talking about downloading books, the data requirements should be minimal, so using the AT&T network won't be as big of a downside as it is on the iPhone.
How many other things did you have that broke? Oh, you probably don't remember them because they weren't around very long and don't evoke strong happy memories.

You can't rebut an argument about lack of data and selective memory with anecdotes.
I'm far removed from the AI industry, but even I was under the impression that Asimov's 3 Laws had been considered outdated for decades.
Although the comparison of schedule types is interesting, the application to YC's schedule makes no sense.

An investor may use the manager's schedule for his work-day where he meets with prospective investments, meets with current investments, "grabs coffee"s, etc. When he goes home, he does not spend an hour with his wife, an hour with his kids, an hour reading "the brothers karamazov", and an hour of sleep. He goes home and has the maker's schedule.

Similarly, PG mentions that YC operates on the maker's schedule. But what he means is: if he grabs coffee it will cost him half a day's making work, not a half a day's YC managing work. PG, I'm assuming, writes essays, writes code, etc, not for YC investment management but for other projects. YC does operate on a manager's schedule: he mentions that Office hours are scheduled, interviews are in timely segments, etc.

So really, YC spends less time on investment management than other investors. There's nothing wrong with this. That's great. But let's not suggest that management is better done on a maker's schedule.
Hey fellas - any chance of doing this on a weeknight on one of the future events? I'm out by Dulles and it's much easier for me to just hang around that area during the week than to get away from the wife/family during the weekend.
A 1pm meeting (directly after a 12pm lunch) works ok for me. It's the 10am and 3pm ones that kill me. They mean virtually nothing done in the morning or afternoon, respectively.
Inbugz 1.0 (FogBugz iPhone Client) Released
HN isn't reddit, at least not yet. Populist/anti-establishment/anti-elite sentiment doesn't guarantee upvotes regardless of comment merit here.
Except for that whole deleting e-books of customers' Kindles without telling them thing, I agree.

EDIT: I'm curious about the downvotes. I think deleting books of customers' Kindles is in direct opposition to customer service being their number one goal. I have a feeling Amazon isn't all that interested in customer service and I don't remember any super positive things about Amazon culture. What am I missing?
Do you not consider it possible that Harvard selects intelligent, talented applicants likely to succeed, and that a few of them do go on to succeed? Why do you assume there is some upper class conspiracy?

Edit: I'd love to understand why this comment was downvoted - I can't see what's wrong with it.
Amazon bought zappos because zappos is a top notch shipping, fulfillment, and logistics company. That happens to sell shoes but they can easily transition to something else like how they experimented with accessories and even computer goods. Amazon made a cheap deal to buy a younger smaller amazon to add to their existing expertise.

Tony Hseih is amazing to me. LinkExhange sold to Microsoft when he was in his mid 20's and now this. Amazing.
> What’s often harder and more interesting is to get into topology and number theory so you can start to explore higher math.

If you learn the basic ideas of calculus when you're 12, this is not going to dissuade you from learning about topology and number theory too. Prime numbers pretty much sell themselves.
At 1x preferences.
Ask YC:How did you first get to know about HN/Y Combinator?
I first got to know about Paul Graham/YCombinator and the "Hacker News" when I did a Google search for the term "web 2.0" way back in 2007. I read his essay and over the course of time I have probably read virtually all his essays which have been a great source of inspiration to me considering the fact that where I live (Lagos, Nigeria) still has a very poor hacker/startup and VC community.
Thats my story, so I would like to know how you first got to know about Paul Graham/YCombinator and Hacker News?
Nice tut for simple plugins. For plugins that keep lots of state per element and allow subsequent modification thereof, I would suggest building with the jQuery UI widget framework. Among its conveniences are method calls via
$(element).customWidget('methodName')
I was pleasantly surprised to find the core to be completely independent of the template system, meaning there's no custom css mixed in there, and no explicit/hacky support for any of the jQuery UI widgets.
A little off topic but i can't get over that damn name, i read it as "cul" which is, by my shoddy translation, french for ass-hole. "Va mis en cul!" And from its performance that's actually pretty sound advice.
Or sacrifice Tuesdays, for example, to the suits; one meeting might fuck up a day, sure, but eight meetings would fill it, possibly usefully.
I think we make the mistake of thinking everything made in China is cheap. You might be surprised to find out that some expensive and quality items are made in China. Somehow we have come to expect everything made in China to be cheap, though it is more a result of American companies looking for cheaper goods to advertise on the shelf because consumers are not qualified to make an informed decision.

The fact is, any labor will be cheaper in China than in the US. This could be factory garment assemblers or traditional metal workers. The cost of living is so much lower over there that even the best costs less from China than from the US.
[Don't] Test Your Idea With Only One Person
What sort of behaviour change are you after, though?

It's all very well saying petrol prices should go up to help the environment, but the people hit hardest are those in rural areas. Should everyone go and rent a city centre apartment and give up on the countryside because they can't afford to get about?
I'd assumed that was intentional irony. :)
Doesn't it feel like a pretty low-ball deal for Zappos? Only $40M in cash and only $850M overall. I get that they're a lower margin business, but still... I'm SHOCKED that they didn't get more out of it.
It's only an issue if you place importance on it.
So protesters should all smear themselves with a similar paintball colored ink. If everyone has the ink on them, police would need a new way to separate the fakes.
That is an excellent example of how to communicate like a person when you're speaking for a company. For the sake of Zappos' employees let's hope they manage to uphold not just the explicit promises made in this letter, but the implicit one of connection and caring that are carried by the tone.

The real measure of a letter like this is how it reads six months from now.
What is the basis for your comment?
If you want to jump start your jQuery plugins, give this plugin framework a try: http://starter.pixelgraphics.us/
I too am far removed from the AI industry, but I was always under the impression that Asimov's 3 laws have never been considered by the AI community.

Aside from the absurdity of implementing the laws, the whole point of the 3 laws in Asimov's stories were that they didn't work.
Well, what would you assume is fair and why?
I've found that reaction doesn't last very long. In fact, configuring any Linux desktop to look extremely similar to Windows[0] leads users to think everything will be extremely similar. They tend to be more upset upon discovering unexpected differences than they are when it's obviously different from the start.

[0] I say Windows here because I've only seen in with Windows users. Users of any other platform are used to the idea of different operating systems.
Disclaimer: I am the main developer of Inbugz.

Inbugz 1.0 is intended to cover basic features of FogBugz. However, this also means that there are plenty of features in the works (search is coming, for example), so we'd appreciate any feedback.
Front End Coding
This is because you come to a rare and frutrating problem. This type of problems are not different on any kind of systems. They are hard to solve and low number of people tackle on them. If the problem having party is not some kind of big corporation or a person having influence over masses, that problem is non existant for the systems' producer.
Damnit! I should have built that moral and conscious sense into my Roomba! It is a sociopath for not feeling regret when it repeatedly runs into the dog while she is trying to sleep?

For that matter, I probably should build this into my car, that way it can feel regret if the anti-lock breaks malfunction in a crash.

These people really have no idea what robots are like these days. They're just complex tools. We set them in motion with rules we have described for them. They don't have a consciousness, they don't have morals, they don't have regret, and they don't even have a psyche to be psychopathic.
I wanted to learn lisp a while ago, and stumbled on pg's ANSI Common Lisp after reading a few glowing reviews. Then I read some of his essays, then heard about YC, then arrived here. Don't remember exactly when I first saw this board or the day I registered, but haven't been able to stay away since.
It kind of does, when you consider that we're forcing local workers to compete with people who are just desperate to get out of the same crappy apartment with 12 other relatives.

Do I owe the local worker a living? Of course not. But we both pay taxes to the same government, and he is getting shafted due to China's MFN status, and I as a professional who can afford iPhones am getting an awesome deal.
You realise this is nearly a 1 billion dollar deal for a fledgling clothing shop, right?
Asimov's stories also pointed out that when we really do create conscious AI we can't expect them to obey simple laws as if they were tools. They will be just the same as we are and we'll either have to treat them as such or destroy them.

Of course, being closer to the AI community I know that we aren't anywhere near having to treat AI as conscious creatures.

Personally I think we have to realize the people are just complex biological machines first.
Woa .. this will sure upset Mr. Stepanov. The lack of the support for concepts was one of his main concerns about the C++ even back in 1995. I'm sure his feelings didn't improve dramatically since then.

What is an iterator? Not a class. Not a type. It is a
concept. (Or, if we want to be more formal, it is what
Bourbaki calls a structure type, what logicians call a
theory, or what type theory people call a sort.) It is
something which doesn't have a linguistic incarnation
in C++. But it could.

http://www.sgi.com/tech/stl/drdobbs-interview.html
And if you're worried about the "friend" aspect, I'll say that from your description his current approach sounds manipulative. In that sense, he's already given up [EDIT: or on his way to giving up] on the friendship; his "project" is leading him to manipulate his friends.
what if we created it in a way that it wanted to?
Robots--for the foreseeable future--don't have a psyche, and thus cannot become psychopathic.
If they're netting 15% (a number often used for retail) of the billion a year they take in, that's a $150,000,000. So... it's not that low.
I suspect the foundations of my mathematical problem-solving skills were laid when my parents signed me up for extracurricular math classes with teachers from the local Russian community, when I was in elementary and middle school. I started on competition-type problem solving with my middle school math team coach, an extraordinary teacher contrasted with the largely incompetent ones in the curricular program. However, the majority of the techniques I applied to competitions, and I suspect the majority of my overall problem-solving skills, I accumulated through self-study, not a small part of which was from the Art of Problem Solving books from the website linked in the original post. If those were used as textbooks and the teachers knew (and felt) the material, then I think the mathematical education in this country would get a significant boost. If some of the material turned out to be too hard for those less talented at mathematics, the approach would still be the one to use in simpler textbooks.
Yeah, I find it hard to believe that people are considering elements in fiction as a starting point for (what they perceive to be anyway) a large ethical question.
I really like C++. I use python, I use ruby, but I don't enjoy either of them as much as C++. They feel "dumbed-down." And the speed has been nice many times.

I feel that one of the things really holding C++ back is its development model. The benevolent dictator open source approach seems to have proven itself compared to C++'s problematic ISO-standard process. For one thing, mistakes are locked in stone. Non-standardized languages handle mistakes through versioning, which tends to be a much better bargain for all involved.

At the same time, the ISO-standardization means that C++ has some much more computer-science orientated modules than you tend to see in other languages. The amount of thought and optimization that goes into everything is mind-boggling.
Actually, globalization does improve the standard of living for those at the bottom, to the benefit of those on top. People work in sweatshops (which sucks from the point of view of rich Westerners), but they voluntarily chose to do so because it was an improvement on their previous standard of living. So their standard of living improves, and so does the standard of living for those of us who buy manufactured goods at lower prices.
actually i would suspect that Amazon partnered with zappos because zappos has a great company culture and brand, and amazon are having problems retaining theirs as they get bigger.

I am sure amazon doesn't need help doing supply chain - in fact I am certain there'd be significant savings to have amazon fulfill zappos' orders.
Can anyone come up with a situation involving robots that isn't already adequately covered by current tort law?
And here is the link to the the actual PDF (die frames, DIE):

http://weblog.miceda.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/build_we...
This probably just means the meeting is too large. I'd recommend cutting n in half and trying again.

From a smaller n, I'd expect not only a shorter meeting, but also a greater per person output.
It's zero sum at any given moment, but you are correct that the sum constantly increases. It's similar to the stock market in that way.
The thing is, Linux distros, be it ubuntu or any other are bunch of software written all over the world, having no central design policy or architecture, put together. So making a real working and centrally controllable distro is virtually impossible or challenging. These software all have incostencies in their selves or in combinations. so solving most problems in their domains are the way to go. Because of general unix or linux philosophy of having text file based configurations, editkng these to solve most problems is unavoidable. Even gui software for configurations are generating or editing these files.

But diving and getting lost in windows registry is not elegant either..
It would be difficult to use that mechanism to address current deficits.
Skype releases a plug-and-play super-wideband audio headset
I don't expect this to make C++0x any less of a train wreck--it would take an act of God to do that at this point--but it's interesting to note that most standards committees see their role as codification of existing practice, whereas C++0x and the previous standard before it have had a marked tendency toward invention.
Earlier this year, I volunteered with http://www.IdeaVillage.org for a week through the salesforce.com foundation. We helped some entrepreneurs put together a business plan and get some funding. If you're an entrepreneur, and you're looking for a supportive community to incubate a business, you'd find it hard to trump New Orleans.

Organizations like IdeaVillage & Greater New Orleans Inc really want you there, and everyone is willing to help make you successful. Entrepreneurs have the kind of access to the right people that it would take years of kissing Arrington's ass to achieve in the Valley. Plus, it's a fun city, but I didn't have to tell you that.
If you saw a drowning person, would you ask them to be your slave forever in exchange for throwing them a life preserver? That's a voluntary exchange too, but you're still a dick for doing it.

Yes, most of these jobs are better than the alternative, namely, starvation in the countryside where there are no jobs. In the worst cases, (not all) these jobs pay so little that the workers can't accumulate capital, can't send their kids to school, etc. And due to the magic of subcontracting, the large Western employers have no long term investment in the country -- they'll pick up and leave when the next country over offers them a slightly better deal.

In Thailand I met a woman who was working for a private museum. She had figured out that her boss had basically made his fortune through selling slaves. Voluntary indentured servitude for several years, sold out of villages. And this isn't just some backwater, Thailand is where a lot of manufacturing is happening lately.
Sounds good, but don't underestimate kids abilities to be fascinated even by simpler stuff. I learned BASIC at 5 on a VIC 20 - what made me interested was not games, but seeing my dad sit and program it. Just text. I had no idea what he was actually doing.