skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I found these ideas very refreshing, coming from a business of NetFlix' size and maturity. If these slides resonate with you, you may enjoy Maverick by Ricardo Semler, an auto-biographical account of how he transformed SemCo (a brazilian company) from a rigid, process oriented organization into a business that values freedom and good judgment. As we start to grow GitHub, these kinds of stories are truly invaluable. I've worked for the kind of high complexity, high process companies that this slide deck rails against, and I have no desire to ever be part of that world again.
fair enough q but the legal structure of organizing people is a reactionary force and well behind the changes taking place in society (for instance web businesses with distributed operations still need a shopkeepers style business permit in some jurisdictions - "the business has to be somewhere where do they get their mail?").

in the case of corporations and their modern alternatives tax-engineering is the driver more than the things we are talking about.

w/r/t liability the corporation is an extremely inefficient mechanism for the elimination (or lately society's assumption) of the liability. the underlying risk of the entity has no bearing on the price of this risk (a break even bomb factory pays less than a profitable pillow store). the increasing importance of director's insurance shows the market has a way of addressing this and may provide the harbinger (if not the "write-up") you seek.
First Digital Camera With a Built-In Projector
I've long thought that laptops would eventually come with built-in projectors.
The people of California figured out how to cut their taxes and increase spending at the same time using ballot initiatives. The Legislature has extremely limited authority to close the budget gap because most of the spending is already set, and the Republican rump won't allow taxes to be raised.

California's taxes as a percentage of income are really not that bad. It's #10 as of 2006:

http://www.taxadmin.org/fta/rate/06stlrev.html

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/03/texas-is-not-the...

You gotta pay for services. If Californians want to have taxes like Arkansas's, they'll have to put up with services like Arkansas's.

Looks like we get to find out!
I once thought to myself that I needed to set the coffee cup to zero, then I realized that I actually meant wash it.
Even better, Lisp Flavored Erlang: A lispy syntax for erlang:

http://github.com/rvirding/lfe/tree/master

Epic! :-)
Steal This Professionally Reported Content
If any Netflix employees are reading this, it would be great to hear your comments on how well those slides reflect the actual culture.
I saw this today, definitely cool factor.
Latest Starbucks Buzzword: 'Lean'
Touching Base With Your Social Media Sphere
Very nice talk. Paul sounds very passionate and down to earth. One of the things we should all work on is decreasing timesinks.
UK sends senior diplomat to Ahmadinejad ceremony
Why TV Networks Should Support Net Neutrality
Wow.

I don't know if I've ever been so impressed by a corporate document.
> Tax revenues are now above those levels (after adjusting for inflation and population growth).

Got a source for that?

> Do you really want to argue that CA isn't spending enough money?

No, where was I saying that? CA has a problem where it's spending money it doesn't have, not that it isn't spending enough. There's certainly plenty of spending cuts that could happen too, but the Republicans and Democrats can't seem to agree on much of that either.
Device Offers a Roadside Dope Test
You can not replace Omakase with robots, but I would gladly have my day-to-day food requirements met by robotic cooks that:

- Allow me to arbitrarily adjust the variables involved in making my food, and thus discover the perfect bowl of noodles, the perfect burger, etc.

- Reduce service costs to the minimum, allowing restaurants to further compete on ingredient quality and other factors.

- Never burn my toast.
That'd be pretty pathetic; they were in YC.
I am referring to the risk that investors face of losing all their assets (beyond what they invested in a company) in case the company fails. I don't understand why people would put up money for investments in such cases. Are you saying that insurance would cover them?

Not to belabor this but the idea of investors being shielded from losses beyond their risk capital was what gave the corporation its huge expansion over the years. That is how public companies came to be formed, for example.

Still not understanding how investors would be motivated to invest in most companies without such protection.
Pretty good, and happy I read it because it reaffirms the no-vacation-policy policy, which some contacts have recently been trying to talk me out of.
While focusing on a problem, my google-fu always seems to diffuse. An example from today:

ie7 css background-image second try load page

Unsurprisingly, this did not return the results I was looking for.
You're right, the future may surprise you! Just go and watch "Back to the Future 2" again and then ask yourself: "Where is my anti-gravitational skateboard and a self-drying jacket, self-tailoring jeans?"

Or even something simpler: "Where did 24-bit true-color laptops go?"
congrats! been using this for a few weeks now, you guys definitely have the buzz going
While I want to be concerned if this is a very real threat, I have a hard time getting worked up due largely to the many scares that we have nowadays like 'Swine Flu' and 'Avian Flu' or even the 'Banana Fungus'. (Wikipedia is your friend)

I realize that these things can be very real threats, but the media leeching off of the mass fear surrounding possibilities with such far-reaching consequences really desensitizes people. Such reporting makes it hard to sort out which are real threats and which are not. Not only that, it makes it hard to figure out what the real consequences are if these threats are realized.

Questions like, "How does this affect wheat-related grains such as spelt?" are not presented to the reader. So what happens if wheat production takes a major hit? Will we be able to deal with it? Will other crops pick up the slack? Will grains such as oats, kamut, spelt be unaffected? Are there practical considerations related to growing such alternative grains in different localities (the article does mention that there are many varieties of wheat bred to local conditions)?
they're 100% accurate. This deck is very similar (if not identical, it's been a while) to the one you're expected to read at the "meet with Reed" meeting one month or so after you're hired. Netflix is, without a doubt, the single best company I have ever worked for (even better than my own company).

I put away a start-up idea to work there. It was worth it.
What could they be raising capital for that needs an IPO?
Isn't this something like how QVC works - take stuff and fail fast or explode the market for that whacky items with copycats?
AP Will Sell You a "License" To Words It Doesn't Own
Good post, I'm (more or less) an emacs guy, but vimtutor + this + 1 to 2 days of my time might certainly convince me of switching to vim.

(warning, by no means am I trying to instigate yet another emacs vs vim thread but here I go)

Not to hate on emacs, since it has served me well as an advanced editor for the past year or so, but I sometimes feel so lost in its sea of features and a never-ending config file that I often end up saying to myself "If I only I could take the time to learn lisp maybe I could really start using emacs that way it should be used", nevertheless, learning vim versus learning lisp is certainly more cost-effective for my time.
The attack doesn't require physical access. It makes rooting potentially undetectable and unfixable.

It also uses a very unexpected attack vector, which means there could be some surprising effects. Remember slow-propogating floppy disk viruses? Think about the way keyboards are shuffled around offices.
Wow, I read this article when I was ten years old. Later, when I had an IIc I indeed tried to code up the Mandlebrot set. I don't remember if I got it to work, but it wouldn't have been too impressive in GR or HGR.
Free legal documents for entrepreneurs
i would challenge the average hacker to step back and think about this. mark zuckerberg was a fan of perl (not the most attractive language, but hey it gets the job done). facebook still operates on php.

do a waybackmachine search on facebook's earliest version. it seems that within weeks of their initial launch, they were in every online college newspaper and several major news outlets. facebook marketed the hell out of their application, and it beat a lot of rival college apps (some who made threats against the facebook team early on and tried to ddos the site).

make your code easy to maintain, build a good product, and market the hell out of it. people are not going to come if you build it unless it has an overwhelming viral effect. but i'm seeing sometimes that a competitive advantage means being in techcrunch before someone else.
Most large companies don't want what they call "brilliant jerks." The problem is, not all these people are really jerks. Some just don't like being told what to do. That subset tend to make particularly good startup founders.
Pay per tweet will never really take off just like pay per post never really took off. The main reason it people listen to two main sources of recommendations: figures in authority and their friends.

Pay per tweet doesn't really pay enough to give people an incentive to bug their friends, and it certainly doesn't pay enough for celebrities to so obviously tarnish their credibility. 140 characters isn't exactly enough to be subtle.

And, finally one thing pay per tweet doesn't have that even pay per post had is the ability to buy page rank. All in all I can't see it taking off, because advertisers aren't going to pay the masses to scream into the void if they don't generate legitimate leads.

Unlike other forms of advertising, online advertising is easy to track and only innovation that genuinely works sticks.
Robots already make your toast, and consistently get it wrong.

Robots for the next decade will certainly increase costs of chefs. You know short order cooks at most restaurants get paid close to nothing right? 10/hr = 20K/yr = 10% the cost of today's robots, and probably 2% factoring maintenance. And thats just for the hardware. The problems we're talking about require better hardware (for perception and dexterous hand) and unavailable software.

Lower on the spectrum of dining, the "cook" is actually a microwave. People don't want to know how much food is just reheated. Ever eaten a "hot continental breakfast" at a hotel? Biscuits and gravy, bacon, scrambled eggs, sausage, etc. - all reheated from frozen. Disgusting.

Finally, it's pretty arrogant to assume the perfect burger is just the right combination of ingredients and permutation of steps. The perfect burger is 100% an editorial creation.
Bikes should be treated like cars in one way: there should be a formula for the amount of wear and tear a vehicle makes on a road surface that is used to levy an annual tax on all vehicle owners. But if the tax is below a certain floor, no tax is due. Which would end up meaning, in practice, that motor vehicles are taxed, and heavier motor vehicles are taxed more heavily, but bicycles pay no tax.
One thing that PostgreSQL can do that mysql cannot (so far as I know) is lets you define your own triggers and even your own data types. In pretty much whatever language you choose.

PL/Ruby http://moulon.inra.fr/ruby/plruby.html
for instance, could be used to define an insert trigger that would check the values being inserted into a table and perform arbitrary actions based on them; say, an alert if a user on a watchlist (another table in the db) changes certain values in their profile entry, for example.

It can lead to a fairly clean coding style where data consistency and manipulation code lives in the database.
marketing is the most important part of any business from software to products. Marketing creates demand for a product. Peter thiel has always said the most important part of any internet business is distribution. If people don't know about your product and does not know why they should use it then it will go out of business.

Case and point: twitter vs plurk. both are basically the same thing, but twitter is going to put plurk out of business because twitter markets itself better.
The end of twitter as I know was when my mom joined.
Bicycle Neglect (cycling infrastructure in Pacific NW)
Yes, but only when I'm in a hurry.
Great to see a legal team get involved in the community like this and offer a helping hand.
I'm sure it will be good for there business in the long run.
Google News Visualization
This is a series of posts discussing the practical issues of cycling infrastructure. It raises issues that a lot of communities overlook--how a few bike-hostile bottlenecks can make an entire area too difficult to commute by bicycle, why sandwiching small bike lanes between motor traffic and parked cars is an unsafe and impractical solution, and how existing infrastructure is biased to the interests of motorists to the exclusion of even considering bicycles as a valid transportation method.
thanks for the good information
Maybe I'm missing something, but the linode FAQ says:

How am I billed?

We currently offer monthly, annual, and 24-month billing cycles. If you are interested in pre-paying, open a support ticket and we can accommodate you. When you sign up, your first invoice is pro-rated until the end of the month. After that, your subscription is automatically renewed on the first of each month (for annual accounts, on the anniversary of your first full month).
At netflix, when they say they don't want "brilliant jerks", what they mean is they don't want "constant ass holes".

Context vs. Control.
Pirahã defies Chomsky's theory of universal grammar
Network Neutrality Back In Congress For 3rd Time
Or just losing your wallet with all your cards...
Sadly, this often makes no difference. Marketing can be done with prototypes, screen mockups, or less.
I'm not a physicist, but parts of this are entertaining to read, especially:

However, in spite of these beneﬁts of performing the card-
drawing experiment it would be a terrible waste if a card
really did enforce the closure or a restriction on the LHC.
It should occur with such a low probability under normal
conditions that if our model were nonsense, then drawing a
card requiring a strong restriction should mean that our
type of theory was established solely on the basis of that
“miraculous” drawing.

Delightful nonsense, indeed!
Robots already make your toast, and consistently get it wrong.

Only because toasters require new instruction for every piece of toast, and I, like most everyone else, consistently give them the wrong instructions -- I place the toast in the wrong place, I set the toaster too hot, I set it to run too long, and I never perform sufficient experimentation to determine what the right variables are for a given type, size, and quantity of bread.

Robots for the next decade will certainly increase costs of chefs. You know short order cooks at most restaurants get paid close to nothing right? 10/hr = 20K/yr = 10% the cost of today's robots, and probably 2% factoring maintenance. And thats just for the hardware. The problems we're talking about require better hardware (for perception and dexterous hand) and unavailable software.

We have an long industrial history of steadily decreasing costs, steadily increasing power and features, and producing hardware and writing software that was hitherto unavailable.

The question isn't whether we can do it, but whether we'll invest the resources necessary to do it.

Lower on the spectrum of dining, the "cook" is actually a microwave. People don't want to know how much food is just reheated. Ever eaten a "hot continental breakfast" at a hotel? Biscuits and gravy, bacon, scrambled eggs, sausage, etc. - all reheated from frozen. Disgusting.

People have varied tastes and acclimations. What does that have to do with a Robot Chef?

Finally, it's pretty arrogant to assume the perfect burger is just the right combination of ingredients and permutation of steps. The perfect burger is 100% an editorial creation.

Isn't cooking the perfect burger exactly a question of ingredients and permutations of steps adjusted for those ingredients and personal preference --- regardless of whether it's a robot or a human doing the cooking?
SnippetsEmu Vim plugin - An attempt to emulate TextMate's snippet expansion
TextMate-like snippets in Vim:

SnippetsEmu
http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1318
> Did you find the work world even more time-fragmented than grad school?

Precisely. (Though I know of grad school only through second-hand accounts, it still sounds like Valhalla when compared with nearly any kind of ordinary work I can think of.)
When I was in Redmond, the detectors had a visible rectangular outline on the roadway. Running a bike along the edge of this outline seemed to make them happy.
He backs them up with a link at the beginning of the article.
Personally, I prefer not to waste money on housing that includes unnecessary rooms, even if I can think of hilarious pranks to play on burglars with them.
> All software has bugs.

I challenge you to find a bug in the firmware of my IBM Model M keyboard, circa 1984.
I came across the article in "The Magic Machine".
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Magic-Machine-K-Dewdney/dp/071672144...

I seem to remember doing a very blocky Mandelbrot set on a 286. Good times!
Ask HN: How do you record your thoughts?
Wherever you are, if you have a thought you want to record, how do you do it? What if it includes illustrations as well as text? What devices are ideal for this? Is dictation software good?

Some of my own ideas as far as devices:

* Pencil and paper - Pros: Lightweight, flexible. Supports illustrations and complex layouts. Cons: Hard to edit or search retrospectively. Low bandwidth text entry. Requires space to store. Easier to lose/damage than well-backed-up digital content.

* Laptop (e.g. MacBook Air, MacBookPro, or EeePC) - Pros: Fast text entry. Searchable and editable content. Cons: Unpleasant to carry around everywhere. Illustrations and complex layouts are awkward.

* Tablet - Pros: Fast text entry. Supports illustrations and complex layouts. Searchable and editable content. Cons: Unpleasant to carry around everywhere. No Mac tablets.

* iPhone (or G-1, etc.) - Pros: I've always got it with me anyways. Content in searchable and editable form. Cons: Low bandwidth text entry. Very small display area. Illustrations and complex layouts are awkward.
"At Netflix, when they say they don't want "brilliant jerks", what they mean is they don't want "constant ass holes" ".

"constant ass holes" equates to "jerks". How does the "brilliant" part come in to play?

pg said
"The problem is, not all these people are really jerks. Some just don't like being told what to do."

This interpretation makes sense. I've seen this happen in large companies. "He is brilliant and very good at his job, BUT he doesn't take orders (blindly)".
I agree. I also believe that more devices are outside the U.S.
Top 100 Web Sites of 2009
No, I'm a jerk not a constant asshole. Most companies try real hard not to hire idiots. Netflix is such a company.

Orders are not given at netflix. I choose the project I want to work on. Hence my comment "Context vs. Control", it's taken right out of the presentation.
If only it were all that easy.

Though I suppose a little work is better than the coffee cup exploding because we forgot to free some memory for the toaster.
Anyone who thinks a code-level matching function is easier to understand than regexps* doesn't understand regexps.

* for those tasks which really are regular, of course
The Furobiker
This is my blog where i write satirical posts about latest events, movies, technology, and my favorite topics include almost everything related to love and politics.
Adding a Facebook Fan list to your blog or website
Today I would like to share that how to add a Facebook fan list to your blog or website (like I have added here at right sidebar). This is the best way for your blog/website readers to connect with you on Facebook.
Those are the markings of a society that hasn't (yet?) adapted to cycling and cyclists. Here in The Netherlands cycling lanes makes drivers more aware of the fact that cyclists can use the road. The lanes are done in red asphalt, while the normal road is done in black. Drivers tend to steer clear of the lanes.

As for the "smart lights", they are pretty much the norm here for all intersections. Cyclists usually have a button which they can press.
I use my iPod Touch's Notes app to jot down things I need to do, buy or remember. It's cumbersome, but since it's the device I carry around, it's the obvious choice.
Apple let's you know you are being considered (you need to sign releases and stuff) but we didn't know we had been selected until the commercial aired and our server went nuts... No need to jinx it by talking about it early! -jake (Bump)
I'm not sure whether this is inspiring, or frightening.

To paraphrase: "I pledge my allegiance to the Borg and will always give of myself and care for it above all else including my own needs."
If you're sitting on the best possible hand in Texas Hold 'Em, and you get your opponent to fold without ever having to show your hand, your hand had influence on how things worked out. Presumably, you wouldn't have been as confident and aggressive with your hand if it wasn't good.

If you have the best possible hand in Texas Hold'Em, and your opponent folds - he's the one who made the right move, not you.
I'm not in industry but in academia so I'm hesitant to say anything concerning commercial development. I can't ever see it being a negative thing, but the difference between a toy kernel like he is proposing and a real system is larger than many people think. For example, knowing how to use the GDT and the LDT is definitely required, but knowledge of SMP design and general hardware architecture (think chip design, memory hierarchy, etc) are equally important. If you were looking for a career in systems design, definitely read the Intel Manuals cover to cover -- then go look at the Linux/BSD kernel to see where things were explained so poorly that they may as well be wrong. I would also highly encourage you to take part in a systems open source project (since I work on virtual machines, I would of course suggest Xen or QEMU).

If you like, a much simpler version of the Linux kernel, Kitten OS[1], is used to run at Sandia and in sequence with the Palacios academic virtual machine[2], which is what I'm working on. It may be worth looking at, although I still highly recommend that you look into actual production code.

[1] https://software.sandia.gov/trac/kitten

[2] http://v3vee.org/
Sounds like an awesome place to get fired from.
This is just the tip of the iceberg.
I also do that for to-dos and reminders. But what about longer, more structured, narrative thoughts? Paragraphs and mini-essays, in other words.
These example resemble anecdotes I would typically find in a Dan Ariely talk.
Nice overview of the most recent focus for collective navel gazing.

I suspect the only way for 'reporters' to prevent second-hand reporting is to write articles that have a high signal-to-noise ratio. Articles that can't be reduced further without losing most of the value.
The Future of Graphic Cards
Maybe this is just an exit for the founders and investors?
Interesting. In your observation how good has the Company been at not hiring these so-called "Brilliant Jerks"? I've found one of the common failures in engineering management is knowing when to get rid of smart but disruptive talent.