skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I have some books on complex networks and some on computational finance, it's common knowledge that such graphs are scale invariant (and not hard to show, because you just measure relations of ups and downs and volatility a.s.o.and see that they are independent from the absolute numbers on the graph scale).
Many people like the works of Benoit Mandelbrot on fractals in finance. Google these keywords.
There is at least one guy (quoted in the article) who wants Lamson under a different license so he can "use it at work". Zed further implies that many VC-backed companies are skittish about GPL software -- even if their services are entirely "in the cloud" -- most likely because it limits their options.

For example, lots of in-the-cloud companies offer locally hosted versions of their services. Does that count as "conveying"? If the company goes belly-up and it needs to sell off its software assets, does that count as "conveying"? How about if the company and its software is bought outright?

I'm guessing these are not questions VCs want hanging over their business deals, and that they are willing to pay money so that they don't need to consider them.
One lengthy blog post deserves a few more blog posts in reply. I suggest

http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/520.html

http://www.scitopics.com/Learnable_Intelligence.html

http://www.psychologymatters.org/aronson.html

But rather than stop at blog posts, I would also like to recommend scholarly articles and research lectures.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/files/u81/Dickens_and_Flynn__...

http://www.psychometrics.sps.cam.ac.uk/page/109/beyond-the-f...

There are a lot of monographs worth checking on this subject before considering one blog entry or the other to be the last word.

http://learninfreedom.org/iqbooks.html
Ask HN: One solution to the iPhone app pricing problem
I started writing this as a response to http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/2009/07/13/my-iphones-not-cheap-but-my-apps-are/ , but most other comments seemed to talk about the lack of marketing for that app.
So I thought that this topic may merit a seperate discussion.

I'm curious to know what other people think about in-app purchases and using that as a solution for the pricing problem that plague most iPhone apps.
--
My recommendation/solution for the problem:
Release a low-priced app with a lot of value
Then provide additional features at a fair price through in-app purchases.

The base app should be cheap (and packed with value). The cheap price should be able to address the entry barrier for customers and the app should convince users of the value of the app.

Customers who've tried out the base version of the high-value app will then be more inclined to a pay a "fair" price (as opposed to a super-cheap price) for incremental features.
--
One risk with this approach is that some users who've purchased an app may be annoyed to find that some new features (in updates) aren't free.
I predict the Shanghai Composite Index will NOT burst between the 17th and 27th July. If my prediction is correct I will happily predict lottery numbers for anyone who asks.
You should offer a default set of recommended modules similar to the Acquia distribution. Let people customize as needed but get them going in the right direction by setting up a suite of the most common, well-supported modules typically needed for a functional Drupal site.
"Linux is not an Operating System?" Come on! That's just pedantic. Honestly, when you hear the word Linux do you automatically think of the kernel by itself or do you think of an entire OS? Personally, I go straight to the latter.
I like the idea of drip outsourcing but one common problem I have run into, and seen others have trouble with, is finding the right providers.

The hourly rates are not the problem, but the quality and source of the worker. I am location agnostic, but finding the source to do the work is sometimes a huge part of the time suck that happens when you are looking to to drip outsourcing.
The largest IE6 population work wise is the US Government and they have little to no intention of upgrading to anything else anytime soon.

I'm currently stuck in the hell of developing web applications for government contracts that are targeted to IE6. For example... No multi css class support in IE6, which kills lots of JS libs. Horrible stuff.
Reddit had this with a less linkbaity headline: http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/90s4u/so_you_know_h...

And linked to the new scientist not yahoo.
They're operating as part of NATO, but this NATO mission just happens to be led by a US commander.

Canadian troops go on missions alone too, and I assume the same is true of the other NATO members.
Safari is pointless on Windows.
Great Tweets of Science
Could say the same for Russia w.r.t to Chechnya, or with China w.r.t to Tibet...
that's weird, it works for me.

(not the image source but the link)

Btw, it's working again.
Worked fine on mine: Safari 4.0.1, Mac OS 10.5.7

I compared it to Firefox 3.5 and it was identical.
Thanks--it was an eye-opening experience, learning how much work goes into making these things.

I never thought I'd know anything about things like interlaced/de-interlaced video, renderable vs. real-time formats, and NTSC/PAL standards, but here we are...
Honestly, when you hear the word Linux do you automatically think of the kernel by itself or do you think of an entire OS?

The kernel, of course. GNU/Linux is the most popular OS based on Linux, but there are other OSes based on it (usually for embedded systems, where the GNU userspace is too large).
Choose 2: Quality, speed, price. I do some freelance work, but not for $3 an hour.
UK conservatives are far more conservative then the US conservatives. I hope they win, and Gary is not extradited.
Great idea! Every package that is built is saved for immediate download or installation when other users choose the same add-ons. So, for every permutation, there is a corresponding "app version". It was my hope that the popular versions would bubble to the top and develop a following. Based on your comment, I think I need to make a "popular versions" box and display it prominently on the app details page. Thanks!
I've heard this called "name-paralysis"
Would you mind posting the source code (or emailing it to me)? I'm interested in seeing how you coded it (not to mention structured it). My background in developing web applications is relatively weak.

But if you'd like to keep it to yourself, I can understand...no pressure.
Unless I'm missing something, can't you just define a classpath and put your jars in there, then javac will look there first. I did all of my development work in Eclipse and it did a lot of the heavy lifting to give you nifty things like incremental compilation and build management.
On the positive side:
Fonts are really important in design and styling, and giving designers the flexibility to use whatever fonts they won't also opens up design doors.

It's the internet, there's always going to be stupid people using stupid things and doing stupid things. Is that enough reason to stop other people from doing cool things? Never.
Microsoft gets paid because they're a business. It is unreasonable because Zed is not running a business. Running a business is hard -- a lot harder than just writing software and releasing it to the wind.
Or a regex as the case was in the given solution from the author.
I agree with what you are saying. You could download images in an hour or design a logo in 2. Unless you are planning on releasing websites by the dozen or have existing relationship with providers, you probably will spend more time, fret and expend more mental energy on whether they will deliver.
What happens when the outsource work isn't to your quality standards? You've wasted a lot of time already, and now you have to dispute it and waste some more time.
I never knew that. Thanks!
I'm not sure if this is "obviously questionable" or not but every person who sells a WordPress theme or plugin apparently doesn't have a leg to stand on if anyone challenges them by releasing their works for free.
Such kind of predictions have a funny impact. Imagine if people start believing the prediction 100%, they would start selling out or short the market. And those actions collectively would result in a crash.
Since food is always available to your cats, you probably wouldn't have gotten the same cry the study suggests. That cry is just for food and supposedly hits the same frequency as a human babys. So, cats aren't exactly controlling their owners, rather just using that specific purr/cry to make it more likely they'll get food. Now, if we can get some study done on the puppy dog eyes and how we (I) can become immune to that.
http://xkcd.com/552/
probably my favorite xkcd
Without science the human population would be something like 20 million people fighting war, disease, and starvation. It's hard to see western style poor as worse off than the average person in a hunter gatherer society 100,000 years ago.

PS: Granted this is looking at science as the basic theory building based on observation that let us learn how to grow food. And carve a better stick.
So because it is difficult and fraught with past failure, we shouldn't do it? I don't really see how anybody could pose a logical argument for allowing a terrorist government to control a country.

We already completely dropped the ball on Afghanistan once and it wouldn't surprise me if we do it again, but if a country is being used to train an army of extremists bent on the destruction of the free world... well, somebody should probably look into stopping that. And I don't think saying "please" works on those people.

Then again, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe if we never invaded Afghanistan and overthrew the Taliban-controlled government, everything would be peaches right now. I certainly wouldn't have wasted a year of my life in the shit hole. But that seems like the riskier road to take, given what I've learned on the topic.
How to get rich links (high quality)
A Case of mistaken email identity
Windows Azure pricing, SLA announced
Let's just call plans what they are: guesses
Dude. I've been thinking about this for a while. I think its ABSOLUTELY genius. And I think it looks really neat.

The UI could be a bit better, but that will come with feedback and time...
In Silicon Valley a Craigslist ad often gets several hundred replies. Unless I get some kind of personalized reply, I dont bother with programming challenges that involve a significant amount of effort. However, I will reply to interesting design questions.

If your screening process is tilted towards screening out the untalented, it may also screen out senior qualified developers who done want to put up with it.
The kernel, of course.

Silly of me to have asked the question in the first place then? I'm aware of many differences between distributions. Still, I wouldn't hasten to claim that the kernel is the only similarity between many or even most distros.
How coume the GPL is so anti-attribution anyway? What would be so wrong if it (GPL) had a requirement for anyone distributing code to maintain any attribution left behind by others?

So I'd have to keep a Help/About with a long list of names. Big whoop.
Free to whom? The freedom to use it in commercial software is restricted by the GPL. For this reason I consider the BSD/MIT licenses more free, for it says nothing except, go ahead use it, tinker with it, change it, republish it, whatever.

Maybe if I thought bicycling..., I think your analogy would work better if it was bicycling as a strategy to fight against the cars and freeways paradigm. The GPL is a legal tactic of the FSF movement, who believe that intellectual property in software is immoral - it's not just the promotion of more free software. Being that the software industry exists within a larger social framework where intellectual property is accepted, and we have many commercial entities doing it, I don't believe that producing more GPL software will result in reversing that move that Stallman was so upset about, that led to the FSF - that move from everyone freely sharing their software in the early days, to closing it up and selling it commercially. For your bicycling analogy, I think the BSD/MIT licenses work fine. Biking is fun, and so is making free software, but biking more as a tactic to end the automotive industry, once again, seems naive. I believe that if the FSF has a moral problem with intellectual property, a legitimate philosophical argument, then it should be addressed on a larger scale than simply in software.

The philosophical reason to use the GPL, rather than the BSD or MIT licenses, is to ensure that users have certain rights to the software they use. - The BSD/MIT licenses are more free for the user, for they can now use it in commercial software, a right eliminated by GPL. This protection of rights argument comes from the mentioned viral strategy of the FSF as a strategy to --combat-- proprietary software, specifically by eliminating this freedom to use it in commercial software (an immoral use).

Trying to cause such a revolution from inside the software industry out doesn't seem plausible to me. Maybe I'm wrong - and maybe they'll win, but I don't think it's doing much -- so I continue to paste in the MIT license when I want to give away software, just so they know they can do whatever they want with it, and if someone wants to paste some of that into their commercial program, wonderful -- knowledge shared - which was my goal of giving it away: to contribute to the general understandings and capacities of software.
Looks very useful, my question is what makes this better than say Meebo, or other in-browser chat solutions?

Frontpage design is clean but it doesn't feel smooth enough. It seems rather flat I guess.

What are your plans for monetization? Sell memberships? You have no mention of this on the site now, if that is your plan you should probably make that clear before a company gets set up with it thinking it will be free.
This is a great idea! However, when I tried your sample site, and clicked on this link:

http://www.launchset.com/user/admin/linkaccounts/

I got this error message:

"There was an error while handling your request."
I don't like radios. I want on-demand, 24/7 access to ANY music I want, ANYWHERE I want it. A radio can't do that, a mobile device, in theory, can, while also offering everything the radio offers (for example, see how many radio station apps there are on the iPhone).

Television as a physical device is unlikely to be replaced - you can't beat a big screen with big sound. I don't like Television the medium, though. The sooner it gets replaced with true on-demand media, the better (again, nothing preventing it from keeping the existing "all you can eat, no thinking involved" model as a subset).

CDs are definitely on their way out.

Trains are a different story - many people argue that we should use trains more, not less.

I HATE dealing with faxes. Of all the archaic technologies that deserve to die, faxes are at the top of the list. Many people use services that send incoming faxes directly to their email, anyway, no printing involved - why bother with the fax then, and not just simply scan and email?

Mail - bills and junk mail, possibly magazines (another thing that is apparently "dying). Mail has become extremely marginalized.
thanks for the heads up, i believe i've fixed the problem.
Wow. Thanks so much!

I think the general idea has been out there for a long time. Many people have written app specific "add-on installers", myself included. I wrote one in php for osCommerce, then realized that the real opportunity was for all apps. Thanks again.
Which is interesting, as a proper regular expression is incapable of testing for a parens match. The set of strings with properly matched parens is a context-free language, not a regular language. But modern "regex" engines are capable of matching non-regular languages, and iterative regex-based substitutions (as his client-side code does--his server-side code is equivalent to the stack-based approach) can approximate the effect.
I'm not talking about western style poor, I'm talking about post-nuclear war style dead, or post-nanotech style grey goo that used to be people. That's why I said "existential threat" (i.e. threats to our existence), not "existential angst".

I don't disagree that science is a net win, but there's some chance that we will use science to extinct the human race or make the earth uninhabitable, in the long run.
Google Calendar tests out new features in Labs
He also didn't explain how he got the "married" data, and he didn't explain how he differentiated between people who were unable to login and people who were unwilling to log in and write code in an unfamiliar environment for a marginal job.

There's nothing scientific about this data, despite the fact that it's been dressed up with words like "correlate". It's seems borderline irresponsible for him to have even written this.
The challenge description says candidates were encouraged to install other programming environments if they so desired. This leads me to suspect they were given root access.
The BSD license allows someone to take the code, improve it, and not share the improvements, which may sometimes lead to fragmentation. This happened in the Wine project, where some companies used the free Wine code and added closed improvements. Improvements to Wine were merged to the closed product, but improvements to the closed product could not be used by Wine. The licence of Wine was changed to the LGPL to stop this.
The best iPhone games give you more enjoyment time than a movie, and so I don't mind paying $5.

There are lots of people out there with 'loose wallets' - you just have to reach the right ones and convince them.
SpaceX Launch Successfully Delivers Satellite Into Orbit [video]
This guy's blog is pretty interesting. Interesting enough that it sucked my attention away for half an hour, damn it. He invented an algorithm for keeping multiple copies of a document in sync and when Google found out about it they immediately hired him:

http://neil.fraser.name/news/2006/11/01/

I printed out a couple of his papers on this stuff for leisure reading.
At least, not with certainty and credibility.
And the content of the advertisement. If it was clear that the job was web programming in a Linux environment, then it's more surprising that a significant number of applicants failed to show basic proficiency with the tools of the trade (SSH and the command line). If it said "Programmer wanted, high pay and stock options, no degree required", then one could expect replies from just about anybody.
while he's using regex, it's hardly a regex-based solution. He's just striping out characters and parenthesis pairs
Post-nuclear war there would still be more people than before science. We don't have grey goo so suggesting it's an issue is probably overblown.

PS: Killing off 99.5% of the world's population would be really hard, and there would still be more people alive than before science.
Germany's Project Blinkenlights is far more impressive.
http://www.blinkenlights.net/project/videos
I think meebo is an entirely different service. It's basically a web-based interface that allows communication on traditional IM protocols/networks, like OSCAR/AIM, XMPP/Google Talk, etc.

So, it's different in that it doesn't really provide company-specific networks, it makes traditional public IM networks web-accessible.

It also, like IM patterns in general, is one-on-one chat first, group maybe, in the kinds of workflow it promotes. If you've used IRC much, this is team- or group- oriented first, private maybe.

We tend to think this fits the real needs of workplaces better, because the group/team approach is more like a meeting (widely communicative, don't-repeat-ourselves, no secrets, etc) vs. hallway conversations (not well disseminated to all those who could benefit from it, inefficient from a repeating answers perspective, etc).

Thanks for the input on the frontpage. We're considering a redesign.

I mention monetization in the initial post. We're planning on charging per-user per-month fees to companies. Good point about being forthright about this; we should really give this thought, b/c we don't want customers feeling like we've pulled a bait-and-switch on them.
A lot of people cite MetaTalk as a reason that MetaFilter works. If you talk to a regular from the site they'll tell you MetaTalk is key to the success of the site because it's a sort of release valve.

The solution to the "not hacker news" problem isn't to shout people down. You need to give them that release valve. The comments are a symptom of a problem, and it needs to be addressed through the site architecture.
I wonder if facebook was paid by adobe when facebook videos began requiring Flash 10. That's the only reason I upgraded flash.
I bought my first Les Paul at Guitar Center, so I'm familiar.

I think if you could get them to push for you, and maybe MusiciansFriend.com (a similarly sized competitor, a la New Egg vs. Tiger Direct), you'd be in decent shape, distributor-wise.

Either way, best of luck. Let us know how it goes.
Econophysicists, roughly speaking, model economic systems using techniques from statistical mechanics; not nearly as silly an idea as it might seem at first blush.
Normally I wouldn't reply to my own comment because it has been downvoted to death (that happens), but I'm watching the votes go up and down and that is interesting.

I'm not casting judgment on Zed Shaw here, just the immediate comment I replied to. It's important to remember that everything we do or say in public on the Internet adds to or detracts from our reputations. If we are doing so on behalf of another company, then it is the company's reputation that benefits or loses.

I took objection to the idea that engineers don't have a PR responsibility. Where I work, all employees do customer support, including developers. How they treat customers matters in how our company is perceived. We just had an interesting discussion on this at Hacker News, in fact: cf. "If You Want to Write Useful Software, You Have to Do Tech Support"

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=701990

So, I contend that being an engineer/developer does not give you a get out of jail free card. Learning how to engage the public is an important skill for all professionals in this day and age.
The formatting is designed for the Peek (www.getpeek.com), but can be used with a variety of mobile and non-mobile email clients.
The Open Prosthetics Project
He thinks this needed a perl script or defining the task by email for an assistant? Seriously?

$ wget -i urls.txt

I understand that this may have been a contrived example, but many of these foreign VA stories sound pretty contrived. Having worked with foreign and remote staff, I know that it is what you're able to make of it. But at the same time, there are some natural hurdles to doing this effectively at a small scale. It'd be easy to spend a lot of time managing the process, doing quality review, and providing feedback.

When you can scale delegation, or when you're talking about things outside of your skill set, then there is of course no question.
And if you want to fight the terms of the license, why not just avoid the GPL?
http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=dtxqwqr_24gq79vm
I've put individual digests on the to-do, thanks for the idea!