skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Make it a grungy panda and I've got a university full of students who'd like a word with you.
Here's a more illuminating 2004 article by
Bethany McLean:

The paranoia that keeps driving Goldman Sachs to the top

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2004/...
This poor dude... probably has the neural capacity to learn and be intelligent. Sadly, he's the same type of fad monkey trying to call the kettle black and hoping to get rich quick. Oh well, I'm hope he'll learn by experimentation. Well, at least he's got a cool car and slick loafers. YEA!
I am not interested in a roomba because I don't see it getting in around and behind the toilet, the place I most hate to clean. Sweeping the wide open floors is easy enough to not even be worth $50.

But something like the above, that has:

Enough hand eye coordination to catch a rolling ball.

Enough facial recognition to sort of be able to tell people apart, like a human who's bad with faces.

Enough speech parsing to understand simple command even if you have to repeat them a few times.

Enough knowledge, I'm thinking something like Wolfram Alpha here, to able to be instructed to perform simple tasks.

Then it could do simple tasks like clean behind the toilet or work the fryolator at McDonald's. And if it's mass manufactured and cheap enough to build and cheap enough to buy, then we could see something interesting.

The slow uptake of humanoid robots into the everyday workforce. How long before we have robot janitors?
Because I-beams are perfectly rigid and don't flex at all?? I'm guessing "would render that problem so small as to be unnoticeable" but maybe the pendulum is so light that effects are drowned by random noise or don't exist - there must be a potential well to climb out of before lateral forces cause axial flexing so I'm probably wrong.
Impossible is nothing.
From a developer's perspective, I think it's important to talk about this until Apple addresses it, or people move to a different platform.

I think the problem is the sheer arbitrary nature of their decisions; it seems like there is a "Wizard of Oz" effect going on - Some mysterious force rejects applications, but you can't ask about the rejections or the reasons because nobody who speaks to the developers is authorized to do so.

It's devolving from an irritation to an evil (in the Google sense of the word).
Smugness can be a factor, but there is this general goofiness about the Segway. Whenever I see a Segway tour downtown (OMG its a Segway-gang! Run for your lives!) or someone "walking" their dog with a Segway in my neighborhood, I can't help but start snickering.
"But where's the money?"

It's not in search, as far as Yahoo is concerned. Having gigantic teams dedicated to tweaking search algorithms and running servers was obviously not working out to Yahoo's advantage in the long run... they were losing market share to Bing, and who knows how much they were spending to try to innovate in search? As far as I know, they've been losing money on searching for a long time.

Is Yahoo ever going to be rolling in money again? No, and maybe not ever. However, they have a metric ton of products that can generate revenue: commercial licenses for service APIs, cloud computing resources, etc, and now they'll be focusing more on their advertising (which is REALLY where the money is these days). As far as staying afloat as a company not raking in the big dollars, this was probably the best bet without some major upheaval. They can focus and develop and sell things that actually might have a chance at making some money.
Useful Productivity Tool: Create Your Life Handbook
How an Apple Tablet Could Pit iTunes Against Amazon.com
The iPhone belongs to ATT.
The fact that it has a fruit logo on it is irrelevent. You are paying to use ATT's system get used to it.
When apple does a deal with FOX for the next Mac you will have a machine that can only access Fox.news not the BBC.
But it will have a nice smooth case - so don't worry.
But most likely illegal in most cities.
I wouldn't be surprised if it uses neither. My guess would be it has encoders to know the state of the joint angles (so, a type of proprioception) but probably not for foot contact.

If someone has a reference to some technical details, though, I'd be very interested.
Though much of GitHub is open-sourced, the core app itself is not (yet). We just don't want to not be able to use the winning entry to best improve the site for the 150,000 open source projects we provide free hosting for because the winning code is GPLd or something.

We are trying to encourage the development of open source solutions to this problem so everyone can benefit, though - all entries have to be open source at the end of the contest, that is a rule. We want everyone to learn and be able to use the results of this contest. I would encourage the use of more permissive licenses, but I didn't want to enforce it, thus the disclaimer exempting us. Otherwise the 100,000 users we provide free Git hosting for don't get to benefit from the best solution, either.
Gadget eye candy: 15 of the best tech designs ever
operate in the 10-70mph range

I had to laugh at the thought of a Segway doing 70mph. I'm all for taking risks, but have you ever done 50mph+ on just a moped?
Posters on e.g. segwaychat.com have often said they'd like to have more speed. But I can't imagine falling at 20mph... it's bad enough falling at 12.5mph, believe me.

(The "dork factor" is what prevents me from doing the smart thing and wearing a skate helmet. Instead I only wear a pair of wraparound shades. Stupid peer pressure...)
Well it's really a brilliant plan if you ask me... give the winner a bottle of nice bourbon and the concerns about licensing turn into concerns about getting laid and performing random stunts of awesomeness that result in hospital visits. I'm in!
That is exactly the problem, this will work until it fails. Score to date: 0.

But we do have examples of such crop failures due to monocultures in 'regular' agriculture. All we have with regards to a GMO problem is speculation and a hope that it will never happen.

The only instance that I'm familiar with that shows a little bit of what the risks are is a south african incident where farmers lost up to 80% of their GMO corn crops.
Welcome to carrier controlled Mobile software development. Life sucks, telecoms don't like competition, wear a helmet. I continue to be amazed at the outrage generated by Apple fan-boys over an issue that has been happening in the mobile world for many many years.

Perhaps the solution to any company that exerts dictatorial control over it's own property is to throw a legion of Apple nerds at it?

(This isn't to say that these arguments are wrong...they're just several years late to the party)
There are two open source ethics. The first (MIT/BSD) says "do whatever you want with it." The second (GNU) says "keep software free."

The latter places heavy restrictions on certain ways to commercialize software, e.g. selling it without making the source freely available.
I think Macs are targeted towards art/design professions, and casual home users. I think they're great for those audiences, but unless you fall into one of those categories, I think Ubuntu is the right choice. It's very stable, lightning fast, has a ton of great software, and it's free (comes on cheaper, more versatile hardware, too).
July has been a prolific month for pg.
If you think that, you haven't seen the way Apple works deals with companies.

AT&T is leaning heavily on Apple because it's scared, rightly so, that they'll lose a lot of money when the iPhone goes to Verizon, which it will.

I also don't approve of that snide little comment at the end. If you've got something to say, say it, and leave the snark somewhere that isn't here.
Yeah, this is a great companion to Real World Haskell (which is firmly in the "tutorial, not reference" category).
You have a totally skewed way of thinking if you think we need free markets in order for people to avoid starving.

You need to take that up with the historians of economics. The last few major famines in my lifetime were all in countries that have adequate capacity to produce food, but had governments at those times that tried to impose Marxist socialism on their populations.

More to the point of this thread, will you allow the smallholders you mention to use whatever means they find economical or convenient to grow food on their own land, or will you insist that they grow only "organic" crops?
Local produce is almost never organic. Locally produced prepared foods also almost always have preservatives and flavor enhancers as well.

Locavorism also saves so little in shipping energy and cost that it's almost worthless in any health or environmental sense.
Managing Your Small Business’s Online Reputation
I liked that rant, until I reached the part making fun of FETs: "What the hell does a FET do? Nobody knows, but I guarantee some nerd spent months writing a graduate thesis on why it's important (and failing)."

That's just ignorant. FETs are week ~3 of an intro EE class. It's like saying "What the hell does a function do?" to make fun of C.
Well a more diverse histocompatibility complex is supposed to make for a stronger immune system and an allergy is described as an immune overreaction... but yeah I also have no idea what I'm talking about.
It's in the job description:

Getting caught required. Jail time preferred.
Same here, but it seems that all the Lisp and functional action happens on the coasts.
"Chapter three will be the two-horse race of Microsoft and Google"

Starts singing - - - I'm so excited.....

Dude, Yahoo search was dying anyway, which is a shame because people like Yahoo, it's just that they have not been advertising so much. Like google had the benefit of viral marketing, to counteract it, Yahoo should have aggressively marketed itself to put its name out there. I mean, people in Europe probably hardly know of Yahoo compared to Google, which I do not think is true in the US.

So, in an ideal world I would have liked the Yahoo search brand to be kept, but the brains behind it to be of microsoft. This way, if played right, there could be a serious competitor and who knows we may get a 60 - 40 market share, and in that dream world, the publisher, or the user would hold the power.

As a side note, interesting that although Yahoo stock has gone down around 11%, Microsoft's stock has barely moved, I would have expected it to shoot up.
Not to mention there's exactly ten of them. This is the best article ever.
"I think I get why people don't like the GPL -- it forces them to do something, whereas other licenses don't. If you use GPL'd code, your code has to be GPL, there is no option."

Unfortunately, that's not true.

From http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20031214210634851

"When you hear that the GPL is viral and can force proprietary code to become GPL... you'll know that isn't true.

If you steal GPL code... a forced release under the GPL can't be imposed on you.

You do have a choice under the GPL license: you can stop using the stolen code and write your own, or you can decide you'd rather release under the GPL. But the choice is yours. If you say, I choose neither, then the court can impose an injunction to stop you from further distribution, but it won't order your code released under the GPL."
'Agreed' gets +1 and 'applause' gets -8. I don't want to get semantic on y'all, but WTF?
Here's the problem I've got: In the past if I didn't like what the carrier was selling, I moved on because the other options were equally shitty. In this case, the iPhone's hardware and OS is superior to what the competition offers (that's how it stands today, and of course this is just my opinion).

Apple has also marketed to developers more heavily than I can ever remember Symbian or Blackberry doing; of course the developers are going to be pissed off if Apple starts doing ridiculous crap like this.

Of course, on the other hand, I fail to see how "life sucks, telecoms don't like competition, wear a helmet" contributes one iota to any possible solution. Being mad about a problem gets results.
Arm Swing Challenged http://www.funnyassblog.com/random-funny/arm-swing-challenge...
I agree with what you're saying about the problems that C has (or rather the problems people have with writing safe and secure C code), but I do think the language matters; just from the perspective of having any hopes of being adopted.

C is largely immune from all the language wars, because it's everyone's reference point. I think it will be very difficult to get enough people to sign off on another language for systems development. Everyone thinks they know what everyone else should use; and it makes for a very fractious environment with regards to what languages should get used... C# and Objective-C are good examples of that.
Why do humans swing their arms as they walk?  Riddle answered
Create a Space Shooter in Less than 10 minutes
I would argue that it contributes perspective :-) but that's obviously debatable.

I would wager Apple didn't know what it was getting itself into. Most large companies who want to enter the mobile space don't. They failed to plan for the degradation of AT&T's network as they failed to plan for the level of anti-competitiveness exhibited by most carriers.

Getting angry, by the way, will do nothing...reducing Apple's revenue, on the other-hand...

Please please keep in mind that every one of Apple's developers and customers is entering their walled garden by choice. If their control really bothers you...go get an Android device.
Hah, he even links to Trevor Blackwell's built-in-a-weekend-in-Python Segway that pg references.
I met a guy who built something like that in Panama. He's also from the Bay Area.

http://www.cocovivo.com/index.html
HTML Purifier - Filter your HTML standards-compliant - Anti XSS
I love my roomba!

It single-handedly licked my kitty-litter tracking problem. it keeps my place completely swept on a weekly basis (I've a small studio loft, nothing huge) - preventing me from stepping on the odd tiny rock that was drug in by my workboots. It devours dust/hair bunnies which come with long hair and a cat. I never swept so the 120$ woot price on the roomba has changed my place from gritty to well kept.

Altho damn, now I wish it scrubbed the floor behind the toilet.

Back to the meat there - I think that the next advance in robotics is going to be alongside artificial limbs and human assistance devices. AI introduction into society seems to receive such strong philosophical opposition that I doubt we'll see much in the next 10 years.
well, I'm using my Facebook account, so chance are this is really me. :-)
Numbers follow a surprising law of digits, and scientists can't explain why
I have read the essay. I agree with the points. However, they do not take into account the number of Americans that have the skills and desire to create a startup but for other reasons can not afford to be founders. Shouldn't we address those reasons first?
there's no "about" or "company" link. I want to know more...
http://www.paulgraham.com/5founders.html

Back when this was posted, I said what you did, that putting him on a list with Paul Bucheit and Steve Jobs was mental, but then I've never really understood the Loopt hype and it was one of the worse Paul Graham articles anyway. The fact that Sam's made it here is still pretty damn impressive.
It'd be nice if there was a leaderboard (as Netflix had) so we could see other's progress (to see if our implementations stand a chance, or if we're wasting time).

Edit: Scratch that. It was hiding up top (http://contest.github.com/leaderboard)
I've read a lot about it over the years, some of it a very long time ago. So no specific titles come to mind. But, in my experience, articles aimed at would-be women entrepreneurs tend to take the bootstrap approach. It's probably an excellent approach during a recession.
Ok, I'll bite.

What do you do?

I have a Mac right now. Why? I do tons of web dev and I need to test multiple environments- mac, windows etc. I can do all that with one machine via virtual machines. Not so easy to do mac os testing with a PC.

I do most of my dev in a debian vm that is setup to exactly match our production machines.
A search engine that allow you to find and download music mp3s, i wonder what could go wrong.
We have them on Hacker News too. They crawl around the #startups channel.

Some people care more about a quick buck than they do about making good things. There's nothing wrong with that, though I'll never quite understand their obsessions.
That's precisely my point - if people get angry then they'll start looking at options like Android. That's why talking about it and raising awareness of what's going on is important.

If people adopt the mindset that this is just how it is, and it doesn't matter, then why would they ever leave Apple's orchard for greener (android-ier) fields?
Maybe if you had a helmet that looked like it took more work to wear...
Here are some:

Gmail

AdSense/AdWords

Google Scholar

Google Maps / Google Earth

Google Books

Google Image Search

Google Apps

Google Code

Google News

Chrome

SketchUp

"Innovation" in the strong sense of something super-radically new is not that important, at least to me. Let's not get distracted by that.

The reason I like Google is that things they make are well done. They don't have jingly-bobs popping up all over the place and lots of new "features" that actually make things worse. Their stuff has generally started simple and good, and gotten better. I don't find myself resenting using Google's stuff, cursing at the stupid bugs all the time. Their products have lots of nice little touches, like the way Google search will evaluate a mathematical expression or look up the time in a given location, and it searches PDF and PPT files and renders them decently in HTML. Google Groups now searches bulletin boards and discussion lists as well as Usenet groups. Google Maps does a really nice job of finding bus routes in San Francisco. It often just does what you want it to, without your having to ask, and without getting in the way.

When using most Microsoft products, I usually have the feeling that some "manager" has decided that there's no money in making things work nicely, but there is money in "shipping it". For example, the auto-numbering bugs that have been in MS-Word more than 10 years now and annoy people every single day.
I want HyperCard, exactly as it was, but for Windoze. How can we go about developing this? It's 1986 technology, so we should be able to reverse engineer it today, right? How about Python or Lisp to replace HyperScript?
Who cares about the experiences, let us just hope it isn't some dangerous physical disease.

If you want to see your god, use the classical way -- eat too little, suggestion ("prayer") and get some infected wounds from self flagellation. :-)

Edit: I don't think atheists generally puts an experience like that in a religious context, but assumes it has something to do with brain functions (or that some strange mushroom got into lunch). Point is, you won't hear about these becaues atheists don't think they are religious.

Edit 2: To the downvoters, if you RTFA it mentions a classical problem that gives religious experiences: epilepsy.
And I thought he would at some point finally talk about new features of the 1.1 release. Well, thinking time's over for today.
ptacek rates a mention
Ah! Well then if you're talking about taking action over anger at Apple, then Here Here! Go Android Go! (At least until Google starts blocking applications too)
I would laugh if Google stopped serving their map tiles to iPhones. Google controls a lot of the iPhone (and of the Internet), and I think they should "remind" Apple of that.
Lesson learned: Diagonal stripes, low contrast text, and angry fruit salad colors give me a headache.
Really? I frequently walk home from work - just over 2.5mi. If I wanted to get all superior, I can proclaim that anyone driving for a trip less than 2 miles is lazy, but who am I to judge?

"walking distance" varies for everyone, and I know plenty of people who get in cars to go to the corner store.
I see that you didn't read the whole page carefully: http://contest.github.com/leaderboard
Even at 70mph you'd still run into the problem pg expouses - looking like an effortless dork.

As for this bit - "imagine something that worked like the Segway, but that you rode with one foot in front of the other, like a skateboard. That wouldn't seem nearly as uncool." - have you seen the Scarpar? It's only 35mph, but definitely, definitely cool.

http://www.scarpar.com/video.html
It's ironic that most peppers are now sown because of their irritant properties.
Apophenia: Would the real social network please stand up?
Interesting bit of trivia - Filberts and hazel nuts are different names for the same plant.
Ordinarily, I wouldn't post the nearly contentless "Agreed," but since the opposing point was made in reply to my post, I thought I should say something to show that I read and was moved by roc's point.

Any recommendations for what I should have done instead?
If we all ate organic, a third of the world population would have to starve to death from sheer shortage of food.

Don't talk about animal feed, either--we'd have to raise more cattle just for the manure if we didn't use chemical fertilizers.
For the record, not all scientists accept the research regarding birth control and mate preference as sound science. There's not even good evidence that humans can detect (even unconsciously) the MHC genotypes of another person (most of the papers don't show a statistically significant effect), which the referenced paper takes as one if its premises.

In addition, in the paper referred to in the article, there isn't a lot of difference between those on the pill and off (the error bars tended to overlap):

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18700206?ordinalpos=1&...

It was also not a random or blind trial: "allocation to the pill/control group was entirely the decision of the volunteers, not the experiments."
This looks like such a fun startup to work at. I think attitude goes a long way towards success.
It's unfortunate that you'd like to tell us what annoys you, rather than being constructively supportive. Hacker News is a community where hackers get together and support one another, being blunt about feedback is one. Talking about personal annoyances does not fit in to what this community is all about.

I'm thinking I'm misunderstanding you, but if you have any feedback, we'd love to hear it. If it just plain annoys you, that's fine as well. If you don't mean it personally, I won't take it that way.
Steve Yegge wrote about it back in April[1]. He compared legalization of cannabis to software requirements which look easy until you really try to work out the details.

[1] http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2009/04/have-you-ever-legali...
you think a 10 second holding page is good?
Hm... i found ogg, wav & wma links.
But most's - mp3 links.
Interesting, a they break the law by providing such a search?
I don't think Segways were ever really intended to compete with bicycles. People make that comparison alot, but it's really not valid.

A closer comparison is a scooter or moped type of device. Those will fit through some doorways, but being gas-powered they are generally excluded from use or storage in most indoor areas. Cost is comparable, although the scooter would win out on distance and top speed. Most scooters are also too heavy for a single operator to pick up and move, and they also don't generally break down to fit easily in the trunk of a vehicle.

Segway's, even the non off-road models do quite well on dirt/trails, so that isn't an advantage for the bike. They could go in the streets as well, the only limitation there is erratic legislation, so it's hard to make a direct comparison.