skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't think the "Apple of automobiles" exists, in the sense of there being a premium brand with substantial marketshare that would be operated by an independent company. (Porsche recently became a subsidiary of Volkswagen.)

Edit -- on second thought, I guess BMW could be it. They are still independent and don't produce anything cheaper than the Mini.
That is just completely out of the question. And I won't have people standing up next to me either.
People get their circle of friends and associates, and that becomes their whole world, which in turn becomes the whole world.

You're right - and I'm afraid it might be even worse than that.

A world built of online "contacts" rather than real life relationships is a shallow one at best. So 10,000 people watched my video, and 1000 of them became my friends. How many of those will console me when I lose a parent? And if they won't - then why am I spending time on them?

One justification is that it's the "whole world." In other words, it's important. Maybe it doesn't mean anything - but it's "very important".

I just hope a whole generation of people (myself included) don't wake up one day to discover that we have no real social ties, no firm bedrock on which to anchor identities and lives in the real world.
A year's worth of xvid movies on something the size of a keychain.
Agreed. During turbulence people get injured by flying objects. I dont want to get hit by flying bodies.
Hi, I'm the author of the post. First, thanks for a great comment. This is the reason I keep a blog - people like you that challenge my views and teach me (and hopefully others) things I didn't know before.

A few questions, since you seem to know the subject quite well:

- Can't it be said that the Austrian school of economics is just out of vogue? It seems like it has been swinging back and forth in popularity for the last thirty years?

- What's your take on using chaos theory, complexity and behavioral economics to model macroeconomic behaviour? It seems to me that it's on the way up.
Hate is just the wrong word to use. Do you think Sequoia had a personal dislike for Tony? Or do you think they just wanted to cash out earlier? Even the latter is speculation based on un-named sources, but assuming it's true - where does hate figure into any of this?
Baby names
When deciding upon a name for their baby, most parents are stuck for thought. It is not only fun, but also a very serious activity as the child will have to live it the rest of their life.
So "outside" now means "inside"? Lisp is reviled because it doesn't play nicely with "modern" (read: broken-by-design) technologies like MS-Windows and the WWW stack. Any attempt to make the language more cube-farm-friendly really ought to be called a boxing-in, rather than the opposite.
Yup. You can eat cheap as dirt if you cook your own Indian food. Rice, dried beans, vegetables, and spices--all are available in almost any grocery store for lower prices than anything else. It's really easy, too, and tastes way better than, hmm, just about anything.
You are correct. So far the consensus opinion in medical research is that except for extreme ends of the dietary spectrum a calorie is a calorie. If you are trying to lose weight then some diets make the task a little easier than others, but otherwise the only equation that really matters is calories in as food vs. calories out as physical exertion.
Quite. seems rather unusual that the founders want to grow larger and the investor wants to take the money offered though ...
Etherpad gets a makeover and becomes even more of a threat to Google Docs
Education is not the problem. I live in Mississippi, and can attest that we are bombarded daily with messages about obesity, diet, and exercise.

I am as educated as anyone on the mainstream teaching on this subject, yet I am clinically obese (though not for much longer).

I was poor as a child, so I think I can speak to this subject a little. It's anecdotal, but when accompanied by what I have learned from different sources (in particular, Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes), I suspect that my experience was typical.

Poor people eat an unhealthy diet because they cannot afford high quality protein and complex carbohydrates on a consistent basis. Further, parents in poor families often work excessive hours, and quick meals become the norm due to the lack of time.

This leads to an excessive consumption of refined carbohydrates, creating an insulin imbalance that increases hunger. One of the worst offenders in this category is soft drinks. White bread is another big problem. A coke and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich was a common meal around my house.

Sweet tea is another big offender. I have rarely seen sweet tea outside of the southeast, and almost everyone drinks it here. If you order tea in a restaurant, you are getting sweet tea unless you specifically request unsweetened.

Surely this enviroment is bad for adults, but I think it is particularly damaging for children. Kids that grow up with an excess of blood sugar and elevated insulin are headed for metabolic syndrome and Type II diabetes.

Make no mistake about it, it is insulin that controls fat storage. When your serum insulin is high, your body is storing fat. When it is low, you are converting fat stores to energy. No endocrinologist or reputable doctor anywhere will dispute this fact. Nutritionists are often unaware, resorting to the calories in - calories out causation fallacy.

When you eat lots of sugar and refined carbohydrates, your insulin is going to rise, and you are going to store fat. The worst part is that modern day nutritional education eschews fat and, to a smaller degree protein, in favor of carbohydrates, so the "educated" individual is really in no better position to regulate his endocrine system via diet and exercise.
Wonderful article. Well measured and smart.

There can be a lot of hate on Rails over "magic", but a lot of it isn't that hard to understand.

From a comment on the article:

The obvious example of ‘magic’ in Rails (beyond all the activerecord stuff) that I always mention, is that the controllers (equivalent to Django’s views) don’t take a request parameter in the function definition. They also ‘magically’ render the relevant template without you have to do it explicitly.

Well, the first part of that is that Django uses functions and Rails uses methods of an ActiveController subclass. It's just that the things that would go into a request parameter were initialized as class variables with accessors and then the method was run. Now, you don't see the initialization, but it's not as if you ever explicitly pass "request" to a function in Django through urls.py. You just declare functions as taking that parameter, but in urls.py you say:

(r'apple/$', 'project.apple.views.apple_view')

and "magically" the request object gets passed to that view and magically it's imported into the current context without specifying an import statement.

Similarly, one could argue that rendering a template without having to explicitly specify keeps Rails DRY. With Django, there's plenty of opportunity to make things harder to keep track of if you're constantly randomly naming templates.

--

What makes James' piece so good is that he realizes that it's not about magic or not. It's about a balance. No magic means you're constantly repeating yourself and leaving yourself prone to errors. Too much magic and people can't understand what's going on. Clearly managed memory isn't too much magic in most people's opinion. But it is magic. Is assuming that the action "apple" of the controller "Fruit" should want a template fruit/apple too much magic?

In my opinion, that seems like a sensible conclusion. It's overridable. It follows.

The problem is that there's a ton of people that don't seem to realize that Django and Rails aren't that different. People continually want to make silly judgements between the two and claim one the victor - people who usually aren't the ones developing those frameworks. Heck, even DHH has talked about being able to use Rails 3's routing to add Django powered sections so that one could take advantage of GeoDjango's cool spacial stuff if one wanted. The Django core team is never really badmouthing Rails. There just seems to be people who want to fight over whether you have to say "def view(request)" or "def view" when neither is that helpful or that much of a hindrance. Is this how people keep from having to write their applications? Language and framework wars?

Me, I keep from writing my applications on HN ;-).
The only feature I would really like to see is 'hg serve'. I would like to be able to host Git easily on my website and gitweb just isn't there today. GitHub is nice and everything but it isn't appropriate in all cases
Perhaps "hate" is too strong a word, but the more I think about this, I find it hard to understand why Sequoia would force a sale here. Tony is a very successful guy, who has built something quite amazing and unique. The public market would most likely be very receptive to the Zappos story. Their unique blend of customer focused service has erected quite a defensible market position, and I suspect that once they acquire a customer, the customer lifetime value is quite high.

With all that in mind, why would Sequoia force a sale? They wanted to report a liquidity event. They put a short term profit motive above the desires for building an even more successful business, which, according to all accounts, Zappos stood a very good chance of doing.
Porsche works fine as long as you consider their very long history before the month or so ago where they got acquired by Volkswagen.
I can't say I gave it much time to explore all features - but two comments.
1) Why is the app limited to US users with the time zone options? What about the rest of the world?
2) Extra attendee information would be great - I'm often involved in online registration for sailing competitions and currently use a rather clumsy custom system. Your design is top notch so I was really interested in looking at your app for our use, but we have to record things like boat numbers.
Because they're wannabe novelists.
It's called an Approach Invitation to some. There also a pre-AI, where you can signal to her, so that she can then signal back.
Take an hour to watch this.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4362041487661765149

The quotations of leading nutritionists need to be plastered on discussions like this, as they invalidate most of the comments.

"Weight loss achieved in clinical trials of calorie restricted diets are so small as to be clinically insignificant." --Cochrane Collaboration 2002

"It is reasonable to assume that persons with relatively high daily energy expenditures would be less likely to gain weight over time, compared with those who have low energy expenditures. So far, data to support this hypothesis are not compelling." --AHA/ACSM 2007

"The classical theory that fat is deposited in the adipose tissue only when given in excess of the caloric requirements has finally been disproved." --Ernst Wertheimer, Physiological Reviews [i.e. people in caloric deficit can still be getting fatter.]

"It may be stated categorically that the storage of fat, and therefore the production and maintenance of obesity, cannot take place unless glucose is being metabolized. Since glucose cannot be used by most tissues without the presence of insulin, it also may be stated categorically that obesity is impossible without the presence of insulin. It also may be stated categorically that obesity is impossible in the absence of adequate tissue concentrations of insulin... Thus an abundant supply of carbohydrate food exerts a powerful influence in directing the stream of glucose metabolism into lipogenesis, whereas a relatively low carbohydrate intake tends to minimize the storage of fat." --Edgar Gordon, JAMA

There's no study where they locked some people in a house full of potatoes and some people in a house full of bacon and showed that the potato people got fat. But the weight of evidence that starch and sugar cause obesity is overwhelming. Watch the video.
Well, I don't think I've ever had a flight that was less than 30-40 minutes. So I think that most reasonable people could infer that a short flight less than 60-90 minutes
It doesn't seem all that unusual at all. Let's assume (I have absolutely no information here) that the valuation of the Sequoia round was $100M. This is a 9x valuation jump, and they are getting cash and AMZN stock, which is almost as good as cash. That's a great win for Sequoia, and it's not too unlikely that their limited partners were looking for any liquidity event to ease the pain of the losses over the last 12 months. In fact, the more I think about it, that's not an unreasonable explanation at all.
OT, but are you near the Gulf Coast? I'm in Ocean Springs. I've been looking for hacker meetups, but outside of the local LUG, there's not a lot.
Upvoted for researching the cost and posting that information here.
I think it's just a sublime example of teaching. He made the kids care about the subject matter by making it relevant to them, and there are abundant examples of authors creating first-rate work by riffing off of old themes (Apollonius of Rhodes, for example).
China, a country with 2 billion people has only 300 million users on the internet, compare this with America or Britain which has almost 100% internet access.

You're getting confused between availability of internet access and the actual usage of the internet. It turns out here in the UK 25-30% of the population don't care about using the internet or aren't aware of its benefits.
I also got a couple bogus numbers. (I count those under "refusals".) It's amazing how most women will avoid humiliating you in public even if they don't want to give you their number.

Once, I asked a lesbian for her phone number, in a bar, right in front of her girlfriend. She gave it to me. It wasn't bogus! She never returned my call, but it's an amazing data point about how women will usually give you their phone number if you ask.
Their interests may differ, but VCs don't hate Tony Hsieh. Indeed, if he ever starts another company, I bet they'll be falling all over themselves wanting to fund him.

Also, while the founder/CEO of Zappos may not have wanted to sell, were I an early employee with a lot of vested stock, I might be happy that my stock was finally liquid. Zappos has been in existence for 10 years, and I just might be interested in cashing out enough stock to buy a nice house.

Tony already had enough money, and made a big enough salary, that the independence of Zappos was worth more than having Zappos stock liquid, but I doubt this was true for all of the early employees.
I agree with ajju, hate is totally the wrong word to use. Both parties simply have different interests. In this case, Sequoia wanted liquidity on their investment (the economy is in a downturn after all), while from what I understand Tony wanted to stay independent so that he could continue to run his company. I don't think that this in any way shows that Sequoia hates Tony though.

If the articles are true, it definitely casts a bit of a shadow on Sequoia. Having a reputation for wanting to cash out at any moment certainly isn't good when trying to court entrepreneurs.
Assuming, again, that the speculation that this was a forced sale is true, there could be any number of reasons for it - ranging from the simple (Sequoia needs a good exit in this bleak environment for their limited partners and don't have any better alternatives) to the complex (Sequoia's analysis of the macro-economic conditions and their understanding of Zappos' business disagree with your own).
I'm not sure what "a huge" is, but download numbers from the MySQL website would obviously be weighted towards platforms where the distribution providers for a given manufacturer's operating system don't ship a usable version. Since Microsoft doesn't provide MySQL as the OS manufacturer, nor do Windows distributors like Dell ship a packaged MySQL installation, then it makes sense that Windows would be well represented in download numbers of binaries from the mysql website.

There's also a trend, at least in performance centric circles, to start building from source with patches or using third-party binaries, like those provided by percona, and other stuff not provided for on the mysql website.

Downloads from any one website are ultimately not indicative of the actual usage of the software, especially when it comes to freely repackagable open-source.
A while back I had a long, 1 hour train journey underground. In the mornings when I had a Palm Vx, then later one of those generic HTC phones I used this: http://www.plkr.org/ and synced up all the news sources I read (bbc, guardian etc) - even with dialup it didn't take that long.

Audiobooks too.
People have been saying for years that Apple needs to come out with lower end products or they'll die. Their steadily increasing profits (even through the recession) and massive cash reserves say otherwise.
That's actually a category called "single-serving websites"

http://kottke.org/08/02/single-serving-sites
the CEO has had a great exit under his belt, Zappos had strong revenues, and a founder that wanted an IPO.

I'm not sure a VC could find a "safer" bet for a startup aiming large.
This is awesome!! What a creative solution to encouraging creative writing.
Apple has an operating system monopoly. On high-end computers.
There is a precedent for traveling like this and it's not very positive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Slavetrade2.jpg
Immigrants: the new, high-tech entrepreneurs
Agile does not necessarily imply XP.
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You're starting your rebuttal from the wrong point.

No, you are :-) It's not a zero-sum game like a casino. There is value created by the allocation of resources. That's what Warren Buffett does. OK so it's not what LTCM did, but that's a flaw in the implementation, not the theory, of capitalist economics. The gambling metaphor simply doesn't fit.
My drive to/from work is about 30-45 minutes of almost zero traffic most of the way, so it's very low stress. I listen to various podcasts. Mostly stuff from IT Conversations or VentureVoice. Otherwise it's Public Radio or the local jazz station.

When I used to commute by train, I read a lot. Mostly fiction (discovered there was going to be a Jurassic Park movie when someone next to me noticed I was reading the book!). Still haven't finished Njal's Saga...
Social media money system
For well over the last year Perry Belcher and Ryan Deiss have been quietly developing and testing…

"Social Media Money System"
I see two or three a week, but that may be a function of the places I spend my time. They strike me as tippy and underpowered. I could see using one in the city, but I wouldn't want to take one from Portland to Seattle, or to the mountains.
Yeah, the original EEE happened because there were a ton of super-cheap (<$5) portable DVD Player screens, underclocked Celerons, and ancient chipsets flooding the market in Taiwan.
bobsqu

http://www.angryflower.com/itsits.gif
While that is true, the more interesting question is why some people are driven to consume a large number of calories despite the desire to be leaner.

Also consider that even obese people tend to reach a balance in their calorie consumption and expenditure even without a change in diet or an increase in physical activity.
Too bad zapazon.com is already taken. :)
That's great and is EXACTLY what I was going to say. I think the entire aircraft should be capusules or pods - smaller than the hotel ones - just big enough to turn over in. There would be room for your carry on, a screen in the ceiling for infotainment etc. Imagine how many could fit on the A380!
There's a big difference between being successful and being change-the-world successful. I'm sure Apple would love a piece of the latter but given their business model it probably won't happen.

I can't imagine Jobs is happy about being just being a billionaire when there are guys like Gates who dwarf his wealth and success (and therefore have the cash to actually saves many more lives and alter world history)
Yes, both parties have different interests. One commenter pointed out that the employees could have really wanted this, as they likely don't have the financial security Tony has. I am sure there are more than one Twitter employee wondering when they can cash out some shares.
Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 3 Comes with Ubuntu One and Linux Kernel 2.6.31
Fun with NULL pointers (how the Linux 2.6.30 exploit works)
Frank had already won when he didn't fuss or punish them for the fake notes. It's like PG says in his FAQ, kids can tell which teachers actually like them.
Fuel efficiency has increased, the industry is just not always optimizing for the miles per gallon metric.

The Model T 4 cylinder made 20hp. There are 4 cylinder motors today that make 200+hp and go 20+mpg in the vehicles they are used in. The fuel is obviously being used more efficiently.

Additionally, modern engines and their exhaust systems control particulate matter in exhaust to a much higher degree than ever before. These systems rob efficiency from the actual energy output of the motor, but have been deemed a metric that should be optimized ( by the general public and regulations).
Good point.

That said, I think the statistic actually includes portables, not just desktop machines.
Apparently you missed the news last week the Apple dropped from 4th to 5th or 5th to 6th (can't remember exactly) in the top PC manufacturers in the world. The recession and the shift to cheaper PC's was cited as the cause.

Not necessarily a bad thing but it's definitely not a 'boost' in sales.
Swarm intelligence is a fascinating concept that has interesting possibilities in the computing world. Whether it be finding near optimal solutions to NP-Complete problems through the use of algorithms like Ant Colony Optimization or applications in robotics, such SI approaches to common problems will gain an increasingly amount of importance down the line.

As I'm entering my last year as an undergraduate in Computer Science, I'm thinking that my senior project may deal with utilizing swarm robots in some sort of pathfinding problem. Now, if only I could afford enough arduinos...
Yeah, the benefit of building a round greenhouse escapes me. The sun tracks in a straight line over a certain vertical range depending on your latitude. You get more bang for your buck by building a rectangular structure than a round one.
I grab my laptop, ruby my eyes then walk to the next room, place my laptop on the desk and sit down.
Disney CEO: Hulu could charge for content
European Venture Capital’s Structural Weakness
A few HD movies would fit well on it. It doesn't have to be important data, just big data. To the people of 10 years ago, a 16GB flash drive would seem similarly ridiculous, but we've found uses for them.
The mission has not exactly covered itself in glory. To quote from an editorial in 'The Hindu' recently:

"But why did ISRO choose to draw a veil on the problems the Moon mission was facing? Information now available with this newspaper suggests that the first major subsystem failure occurred a few weeks after the spacecraft was launched. An official press release issued when the spacecraft’s orbit was raised two months ago gave no hint of any malfunction. Had the problems not been reported in the journal Science and the Indian media, ISRO would probably have chosen not to disclose them. The people of India have unstintingly supported the space programme. ISRO needs to repay that trust with openness and transparency."

http://www.hindu.com/2009/07/20/stories/2009072055480800.htm