skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yahoo is terrible. The only reason I even go to Yahoo! is Yahoo! finance, however, as soon as I get my hands on some real data sources again, Yahoo! is gone completely.
I'm hearing from some SEO folks that since Google started running CSS and JS, standard DIVs that get shown as tooltips or accordions or sliders now count against your page quality because CSS and JS hide those divs until the user hovers over something or clicks something (which the Googlebot doesn't do).

They're saying these are counted as hidden text, and considered a spam technique. What I see people using them for is usability and self-discovery.

Anyone know any data on this?
I used it back in 06 via my Windows Mobile on EVDO and don't recall calls dropping. More so was a clunky interface, which was not great for answering calls while driving.

I'm out to save money and I'm not a huge phone person, rather more of Internet communicator. I canceled cell svc a few months ago and only one time I wished I had a cell when I got a flat tire.
Good article
http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0504.html
I label Christine Varney as the most likely Google killer.
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/07/27/varney-getting-pushback-...
The "Right to Record" should be a civil right trumping all others.
I disagree. There is only one Google Killer.

Google.
Scare your writers with layoffs and cut out their bonuses, get a 45% boost to your bottom line. How lovely.
I used skype over EVDO frequently at my last job. Worked just fine.
RethinkDB (YC S09): MySQL Storage Engine Built From The Ground Up For SSD
Yahoo and Bing are full service search engines. If they execute well, they could eventually become "Google killers".

I think the premise of this article was that just because Blekko is in the search space, doesn't mean it's trying to replace Google (or Yahoo or Bing). They think they can succeed by being Mt. Dew rather than Pepsi.
Well, unless you're in a one-solution-per-customer type of business like consulting, the first one seems way off track. Who's your boss when you're making a video game? Your millions of potenial users are not going to call you in for a weekly progress meeting every Monday and a conference call every Thursday.

I don't know if managing an 85-person student group orchestra is any indication of running a business, but I personally like solving the problems that come up, especially ones that aren't directly related to the field. So scratch #4 too.

Finally, I know that you have to manage your time well to run a business. You can't be working 24/7, or you'll just burn out. Therefore, you will still have time for a personal life if you're doing it right. (#2)
I hate to complain, but I am so tired of these articles that just repost all the same old icon sets that have been out for years (or years in the digital sense). Every month a new one of these posts comes out, but with the same icon sets as every other post. Pet peeve.

http://webdesignledger.com/freebies/21-best-icon-sets-for-de...

http://speckyboy.com/2008/07/28/96-best-ever-free-icon-sets-...

http://www.problogdesign.com/resources/30-best-free-icon-set...

http://www.webiconsets.com/

And the list goes on.
Congratulations. Another YC 09 startup.
Humour is probably an easier and more polite way to demonstrate dynamic intelligence in a group setting.
'Tisn't "product killers" but "category killers". Google isn't the Microsoft killer because they've a better desktop platform, it's that they're making desktop platforms irrelevant. All we can know of the hypothetical/eventual Google killer is that they won't be competing on but with search/advertising.
vaksel: who are you? you stole our thunder :( actually :)
Look into the Belizean IBC (international business company) system. They provide easy registration (fully automated) and you pay nothing but a yearly fee. Belize has become a great location for basing companies, although dealing with banking can be a PITA.
IMO, on search and presentation of results, Google can be beaten.

I just do not believe that what they have there now is the best that can be achieved in this field. It's plain, makes limited use of colour to provide more information about results (is this page for a business, is it a forum, is it a MFA info site, is it a blog, or a mailing list archive?), gets pretty messy once the top and side ad positions are full, may rely too much on the title tag in presenting results, could provide larger targets for paging, etc.
If you really don't see anything wrong with having the largest prisoner population in the world

The U.S. also has a very high crime rate compared to China and the European countries. More criminals means more people in prison.

The American legal system is like the bad parent who alternates between being over-lenient and being violently strict. Much of the time policing is actually far too lax. Most people selling drugs are never caught, most gang killings are never tracked down, and most home burglars are never captured. This lax policing allows too much crime, and eventually the police are forced to react. They do so in a blunt and ham-fisted manner. Cops break into the wrong homes in an attempt to make headline grabbing drug busts.

Think of it in terms of math: which has a higher prisoner population, the country that catches the perpetrator of 98% of crimes, or the country that catches perpertrators only 10% of the time? The answer is the second country has a much higher criminal population. The lower probability of getting caught increases the amount of crime, which means total jail population is much higher.

Asian countries like Singapore and China on the other hand are the consistently stern parent. In Singapore there is a 99% chance of getting caught if you murdered someone. Thus there are virtually no murders, and a very small prisoner population.

Both sides of the law and order debate need to realize that American law enforcement is simultaneously too tax and too heavy handed. This is not a contradiction, its the reality.

Many American cities (Philadelphia, Baltimore) have homicide rates that have been unseen in Western civilization since medieval times. This is a huge problem. It needs to be addressed. Any proposed reform that tries to lower police abuse without also lowering the crime rate will result in failure ( and by increasing crime, will in the long term actually increase police abuses).
That's a nice sentiment, but what does it really mean?

Google would only be completely to blame for lost market share if its competitors were completely stagnant, which they are clearly not.
In Asia, you can get free unlocked phones just by signing up a contract.

In US, you get free locked phones and you still have to sign the contract.

You see the difference? If you have already signed the contract, why do the carrier still has to lock your phone to its network?
It's time for a change: Do less with less
What if Microsoft had a Windows App Store? A speculative FAQ.
On a very tangential note, that Outbound Greeting category shouldn't be in the redesigned menu; it should be in the Preferences app.
Very true. Completely slipped my mind. I'll get one up tonight.
nope, just your karma points.

Stealing thunder = releasing the same exact product, a month before you finish.
Almost all of his complaints are like this one, they depend on what you are doing. Only a consulting company could have all of the problems he claims. And having multiple bosses is usually a plus, no single boss that can fire you or lay you off.
Outsurviving Y! as a search engine just got easier...
One detail: according to Martin Brundle, the BBC commentator, it was more like 60mph (100kph). When Massa was knocked unconscious by the spring, his feet came to rest on the accelerator and brake - both were down when he went into the wall.

It was a terrifying accident.
Next time get paper stock certificates so at least you have a souvenir.
Grats guys!
People fill in blanks. It's silly and often wrong. But it can be right too. Contrasting makers & managers in that context with the other little clues hint at the pre agreed up division lines in a pre existing debate.

You could stir up the other side just as easily. Hint at a 'then find someone to make it for you' step in a process. Allude to engineers being replaceable or product ideas coming from marketing. Religious people can get very offended if you call a miracle supernatural.

It's easy to get people going when it's part of an existing debate.
Congrats. These guys seriously know what they're doing from the talks I've had with them.
There is no Google killer, but there are thousands of vultures ready to exploit any weakness.

At worst Google will end up as Yahoo/Microsoft, a legacy company that did something important in the past. They just have too much brand equity to fade into the sunset.
Congrats guys, sounds very exciting!

I just had one of those "why didn't I think of that" moments as I read through your wiki thinking back to this paper I read a few months ago: http://publications.csail.mit.edu/lcs/specpub.php?id=773
Thanks, Bill! We're all very excited here.
There's a service called Cyclopath operated by the University of Minnesota that's doing exactly that, albeit only for the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.
Ask HN: Technical problems with Google Voice
I got a new Google Voice number 3 days back. Today a lady called me and complained that she has been getting a lot of calls to her phone from my Google Voice number for last one month. Every time she tries to answers that, the call hangs up.

Apparently there is no way to complain to Google about it. The only feedback page asks what you like and don't like about Google Voice, it's not a complaints page. Is there any Google Voice team member reading this? ;) Please help me.

Edit: added Ask HN to the title
The Funemployment Phenomenon
I can't recall the last time I needed an icon. I need easy curved borders on divs and color palettes. But icons?
It's not a tragedy of the commons. If you look at how actual money is spent there is plenty of money to cover all costs. Sales tax, gas tax, and property tax should be enough to cover the services that benefit the corporation. Now when the government is involved in all sorts of activities that in now way benefit the company -- non infrastructure/police/fire services, and a company wants to opt out by moving that's not a tragedy of the commons since they aren't externalizing any costs or exploiting any resources.

Some might argue that education, welfare, etc are beneficial to a corporation, but in reality they're not. They are to benefit the community -- the individuals receiving the output of those services. Of course a company requires educated people and if there aren't any available then they will have to develop schools to train their employees (something that has been done in the past).
I've got an iPod Touch, so I don't really think I'm in your target audience here, but here's some random thoughts that popped into my head, based on your Flickr screenshots:

For all views:

* Are you sure you don't want default statusbar instead of black one? Either the blue for the nav bar or the status bar feels somewhat out of place. Maybe using a darker blue instead?

For http://www.flickr.com/photos/39014474@N04/3765806150/ (Members)

* Are the phone/message/chat icons on the right side big enough to tap on without accidentally hitting the wrong one? And how does it work if you have two contacts in the same group? Might get a bit cluttered. If it works out, awesome. I do like how it looks and having the options available right away.

* Is anything going to be placed underneath the person's name? Right now it's just white space; Maybe place the person's last status update or location down there?

* Would tapping on a member bring up their profile?

For http://www.flickr.com/photos/39014474@N04/3765010947/ (Live Map)

* I know you say what the arrows do, but its not immediately obvious by looking at them. And what's the member info do?

* Does this only show one member at a time? Or if there are multiple people from your group in the same location, would it show them as well (with a blue pin?)?

For http://www.flickr.com/photos/39014474@N04/3765010909/ (Chat)

* Does the tabbar show the number of unread messages you have? Can you be in multiple rooms or private chats with people?

* The curve around the input field feels wrong.

* How does it look with multiple people when the window is filled? Might get or feel cluttered.

For http://www.flickr.com/photos/39014474@N04/3765805994/ (Msg Board)

* Again, the curve feels slightly off here.

* Can you use / instead of .'s between dates? It might be ISO 8601 compliant (I don't know if it is or not), but it looks weird.

* Can you post videos?

* What distinguishes this from Chat? Why not merge the two and keep some sort of history recorded? Yes, one's live and one's a record, but they serve an almost identical purpose.

For http://www.flickr.com/photos/39014474@N04/3765010849/ (Home)

* Whats the difference between the slightly faded group and the non-faded groups?

* I like the indicator for how many messages you have waiting to be read and how many people are in the app and active, but it might be a bit small. And how does it work with long group descriptions? (ie: Another word added to Siamese Cat Lovers group description)
And that's why I've never done it! I've never heard of anyone actually trying this, but I bet you're right that it's been done.
> Having read Paul Graham’s wise words — seriously, go read it already — I feel somewhat less guilty about being such a jerk during my “maker” periods.

I think pg makes some excellent points, but this is also why I mistrust his conclusions sometimes. Quite often, some dysfunction gets explained away as a trait of being creative. Seems a bit too easy. The NYTimes writer seems to be aware of this temptation as well.

There are lots of other reasons to hate meetings, and not all reflect so well on the 'makers'. Many meetings just waste time, of course. But programmers sometimes do need to be dragged to a table to commit to an estimate, make some difficult decision, or justify their progress. None of which is pleasant.

There's a lot of empirical studies showing that interruptions are pretty damaging to knowledge workers' productivity. I don't know of any study that shows an hour-long meeting really has to mess up the rest of your day, or that one cannot focus in small time increments. I know it's harder, and that I personally find it difficult, but to me this seems to be within the scope of human possibility. Something tells me that if it was literally a matter of life or death, I would find some way to be useful during a three-hour window.
Yes, because Halliburton, Tyco and Accenture are the model corporate citizens...
All you managed to do is show why division by zero is not allowed. It doesn't show 0 is not a number.
Shatner turns Palin's farewell speech into poetry. Sheer Magic.
We should treat companies that move overseas as dead to us. The estate tax on death is around 50%. Please pay as you leave.
You guys are gonna kill it. You deserve it. Great concept.
There are a whole bunch of tough-to-avoid assumptions which make the 2046 joules likely to be imprecise. And in any case, as you say, force is ultimately the relevant issue. The article is meant more to put the impact into perspective by comparing it with familiar projectiles, and not so much as an objective modeling of the impact.

Edit: by way of full disclosure, I wrote the article.
Database consistency problems require traditional databases to use complicated locks. Because RethinkDB data is always consistent, locking is unnecessary.

You may not use locking for concurrency control (plenty of "traditional DBs" don't, either), but you still need some sort of concurrency control scheme -- just using append-only/log-structured storage doesn't make CC free. I'd be curious to hear how you guys are doing this.
The Google Voice support team is pretty active on Twitter. I have seen them respond to several inquiries. http://twitter.com/googlevoice Best of luck!
Does RethinkDB support full text search?
Very interesting. I wish you great success.

Since your primary market will probably be developers, describing RethinkDB will be necessary, but not sufficient. Also, demonstrated performance will be necessary, but again, probably not sufficient. I, for one, want to understand what goes on under the hood (and be able to describe it to my customers).

The "Time to Insert 2 Million Records" graph was impressive. How does the "Time to Retrieve, Sort, & Present 2 Million Records" graph look? How about the "Time to Modify 14% of the 2 Million Records" graph?

Your append-only approach sounds great for adds. How is it for changes and deletes? How will garbage collection affect performance?

"No more locks" is a great claim, but how will it work in a real world enterprise-quality app? User A takes 30 seconds to change Zip Code, Phone Number, and increase Credit Limit while User B takes 10 seconds in the middle of that to change City and decrease Credit Limit for the same customer. Who wins? This is a difficult scenario in both optimistic and pessimistic environments. I can only imagine how it's handled in a "no lock" environment.

(I'm not looking for answers here, just spouting off what's on the top of my head, but I will be looking to better understand on your website. Your white papers oughta be interesting.)

You make ambitious claims. I look forward to seeing you fulfill them. Best wishes!
Cocoa with Love: Rules to avoid retain cycles
Content Management in the Information Management division.
Some might argue that education, welfare, etc are beneficial to a corporation, but in reality they're not. They are to benefit the community -- the individuals receiving the output of those services. Of course a company requires educated people and if there aren't any available then they will have to develop schools to train their employees (something that has been done in the past).

My point is, when everyone stops paying taxes, there won't be any educated people anymore. Each company will have to get into the business of training people, making the cost higher than not paying taxes.

Classic tragedy of the commons.
Most industrial strength storage engines use multiversion concurrency control, but they still require a fair share of locking - row level locks that protect the data while a second copy is made, for example. No storage engine is entirely "lock-free", but we have only very few extremely granular locks. This is completely different from what was done before (as far as we know), and from a practical perspective is as good as lock-free.

I don't think I can explain the technology in a comment, but we'll definitely be releasing more information in the coming weeks. We had to get this release out for now. Stay tuned!
For the moment, we allow one writer at a time, but unbounded (I think) readers. The only locks taken are for arithmetic operations; no locks are held while performing I/O or even memcpy(2). You can read more about that bit in the paper about our caching architecture on the wiki.

Eventually, we will allow multiple writers, and use some form of STM for that; we just haven't gotten to it yet.

If you'd like to speak interactively on this, shoot me an email.
Twitter's new home page: Finally, Twitter understands what it is.
What process did people use to discover patterns like this? Is there a special rule for being able to incrementally build up a pattern in Life?
Creative Zii Egg Plaszma: An Android Based Multitouch Computer
We'll have more performance numbers up soon; for the past few weeks we've been working on features to get wordpress working, but we'll be profiling and tuning, and we'll get you and everyone else your graphs in good time.

Hope you enjoy the papers.
Thank you, this is a great post! We are looking forward to answering all of these (and many other) concerns by publishing benchmarks, papers, blog posts, tech talk videos, etc. We hope to do all of this in the coming weeks, we just took it one step at a time.
Here's a pic showing the damage to Massa's helmet and eye
http://static1.buenosairesherald.com/media/news/images/desta...

The teams are all very concerned about safety and I expect much stronger helmets and visors in the near future. The fact that he walked away without any broken bones is a testament to the excellent quality of modern F1 safety cells protecting the drivers. Unfortunately this accident could still be the end of Massa's career due to the damage to his eye socket.
In fairness, log-structured storage is not a new idea. This paper is a great, classic read on the subject: http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~brewer/cs262/LFS.pdf
Have you tested what attractive icons can do to conversion rates? I have. Suffice it to say that "free" is the last thing I need in an icon set, because whether they cost $25 or $500 if you use them well on an actual business you'll recoup the costs very, very quickly. (The difference between the stock Java icon set and one which was more appropriate to my users was 100% back in 2006. If for some reason you're using signup or download text links instead of buttons drop what you were planning to do today and make yourself a big,　obvious button.)
Not while reading, but I'm notoriously bad when I'm on the phone...small objects all over my house and office are in a constant state of displacement because I pick them up and set them down somewhere else while on the phone.
The Link Between Procrastination and Failing Fast
Coffee and water. I generally try not to have more than 2 cups of coffee a day if possible.
One thing people are missing is that using bikes doubles as escalation in the arms race between Google and locals who don't want their neighborhoods to be photographed with Street View. Considering that extreme cases of the conflict included a situation where a human chain was formed to prevent the car from driving into the area, it seems remotely possible that unpleasant incidents might occur when some Neighbourhood Watch attempts increasingly hostile measures to restrain an overzealous Street View cyclist who won't listen to reason. While I don't know that the photographers' walking orders look like, it seems like most of the cases involved photographers who were being flat-out callous to the locals, making the situation more severe than necessary and giving a bad name to their company. Since Google are the people suffering the consequences and getting the resulting negative publicity, it's still Google's problem. Google's PR, of course, isn't helping the matter when they act like the locals don't have a legitimate concern in not wanting their property mapped.

See, I recognize the usefulness of having access to this data, but it's still personal data. It's not like it's impossible to construct a useful database of locations in a manner respectful of local residents' privacy; but unexpected issues always arise. The very mission statement of Google opens a philosophical can of worms: "to index the world's information and make it useful". Useful? Who to? How can you tell when making a piece of information 'useful' to one person becomes an affront to another person's human dignity? This really is a problem for which, no matter how much one tries to foresee complications, there's always some new issue popping up. Resolving the issue requires a much greater amount of accountability - accountability to the public whose information is being gathered and 'made useful' - than we can get out of Google as a publically traded corporation. Heck, it arguably requires much more accountability than we can currently get out of the United States' _democratically elected government_ (otherwise we wouldn't be worrying about things like wiretapping).

So certainly this Street View thing is all in the name of progress right now, but I'm not certain that it's worth the while to humanity to be able to see photos of bike paths in Google Maps before we've got some answers to the accountability question.
MySQL's pluggable storage engine model is so much win. You can have MyISAM, InnoDB, InfoBright and this in the same database engine for the same application. And there are many others.
Not right now. We've only been at it for two months!