skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
By inverting this list, we can get a portrait of the "normal" world. It's populated by people who talk a lot with one another as they work slowly but harmoniously on conservative, expensive projects whose destinations are decided in advance, and who carefully adjust their manner to reflect their position in the hierarchy.

Don't stop there, Paul. This "inversion" idea still has a lot more mileage in it. Just off the top of my head I'd add that the "normal" world is also full of large teams, scheduled meetings, integrated hierarchical social environments, and teams that never die.
Transactional memory is a very interesting concept. I didn't knew it could be used without extensive hardware support like what Sun intended to include in their Rock processors.

There is some interesting information here:

http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-c-stm-compile...
http://ibetatest.com/iphone/controllers/welcome/
$10 per month is prohibitive? How many additional hours of effort will the alternative cost you?
I think comparing 'Android Marketplace' with Apple's 'App Store' is somewhat comparing 'apples with oranges'. Android doesn't require all apps to go through their marketplace so you would expect less downloads per user. Android could flourish without any centralised marketplace. Desktop OS's certainly have.
The simplest explanation doesn't hold much water. I never heard of someone losing data on ZFS but there are whole businesses based on the certainty people will lose data on HFS+. It could be because all the people using ZFS today know very well what they are doing and the same can't be said about the average Mac user, but, still, ZFS seems rock solid.
With 65k apps in the apple app store, it's going to be pretty hard to get any attention for your iphone app.

Launching a cool app on Android first will get you a lot of press. There's just less competition there. There are tons of well read bloggers and journalists who would be very interested in your Android App and the people marketing the phones would probably feature it in their ads like apple did with the "There's an app for that" ads. That's how marketers think. "It worked for Apple, so we'll do it too."

Going to the iphone first will probably take two weeks to a month to get approved while the Android version can update faster with less hassle. You get to iterate faster and get feedback on the latest results. A faster feedback loop is essential to iteration and improvement.

After you get some attention, then you can make an iphone version and if you're a top 5 Android app, that's a good reason for people to take a look.

In the history of software, I'd say look at Microsoft Excel. It launched on Mac which had some crazy new features like a GUI. It quickly became the top spreadsheet on the mac (there was little competition). Launched on Windows a couple years later and went on to dominate the category.
What are you reading?
I don't ever see this discussed here. The level and focus of discourse here should make for great recommendations.

<edit> Should this be restricted to "on topic" material? </edit>

Me, recently and currently:

http://www.amazon.com/About-Face-2-0-Essentials-Interaction/dp/0764526413/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251767831&sr=8-12

http://www.amazon.com/Matter-Great-Design-People-Company/dp/0137142447/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251767882&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Positioning-Battle-Your-Mind-Anniversary/dp/0071359168/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251767926&sr=1-1
It's also a troubling reminder of how when government gets involved in educational programs things can change and potentially for the worse. I have no idea if "Reading Rainbow" is better than things like "Word World" or "Super Why!" (outed myself as a parent no doubt) but it seems as though people could have decided that for themselves.

I don't really care for the new shoes that teach kids how to read though I think that "Curious George" is fantastic. For those who aren't aware it's a trial and error approach to learning where George learns things by experimenting and no one gets yelled at for being wrong.

I think in the end that every time period has hits and misses in terms of shows that actually reach children. Maybe something will come along to replace "Reading Rainbow" when it becomes obvious that a show like that is needed again.
It would not be just different - it would be much better.

With ZFS, Time Machine would not require an extra disk and could maintain nearly continuous history of the whole file system even in single disk configurations. The minimum time between snapshots could be easily adjusted so that not much disk space is consumed in the process.
The compulsory centralised app store model of the iPhone makes it an entirely new beast (apart from consoles). The difference is big enough to invalidate the comparison with Windows. Also the fact that their market share is still below below 10% world wide also puts a dint in your metaphor.
Reading Rainbow was created via government intervention...I'm not sure that's a good example of how government should stay out of education. It seems like government can do a very good job of education sometimes!
For those of you looking for a possible explanation as to why our education system is such a failure, I suggest Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt's book, The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/MomsPDFs/DDDoA.sml.pdf
Why did you change the headline?
The idea may not be, but the moment it becomes a demo it can be worth quite a lot. The story, characters and gameplay can be very valuable, it is how the idea is sold to publishers. This is just like scripts in the movie industry. Most publishers have internal studios, that could possibly be sitting idle. While it is not often done, there is the opportunity for a publisher to move on a developer's idea much faster than the developer could.

The video game industry is brutal, especially with people doing copy cat projects. Look at the current farm games on facebook. The first one was FarmTown, made by a small group. Now some of the facebook powerhouses have released the exact same game with nearly identical gameplay and even similar art (FarmVille from Zynga and Country Story from Playfish).

Or just look at the rivalry between Rock Band and Guitar Hero.

The execution is still worth much more, but I think there is still a need to protect the idea.
Can we please try for less inflammatory titles? Protocol on here seems to be to copy the title from the source.
There are serious economists who look at these issues. The book Snipers, Shills, and Sharks, http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8435.html is a great summary of the research that includes this approach among a hundred others.
I don't have an Apple account, but I do have a Google Checkout account. That means it's much easier for me to buy an Android app than an iPhone app; and indeed... I have bought a few Android apps.

Sales are probably low because only the very very early adopters are using Android right now. When the iPhone was at this level of market penetration, there was no such thing as the App Store.

Give it a year or two.
Okasaki's "Purely Functional Data Structures"

Giola's "The History of Jazz"

Herbert's "Chapterhouse: Dune"
Clickable:

Paper http://bracha.org/hopscotch-wasdett.pdf

Presentation (also covers NewSpeak) http://langnetsymposium.com/2009/talks/08-GiladBracha-Hopsco...
"but it doesn't approximate real world "bidding"."

At the last few auctions I've been at (Mostly Used Computer Equipment) - the people who purchased real volume showed up with a Item List and Price, and just kept holding up their paddle until their price was hit, and then they pulled it down. They didn't really care that someone managed to purchase that Dell Latitude 610 for $110 instead of their last bid of $105. They were done at $105.

So, in some cases, eBay actually does precisely mirror real world bidding.
Crowd-sourcing is often richer in background that was filtered-out by newspapers. I'm feeling smarter about history and real motives than I did back when mass media were all I had.
I'm currently reading "Persepolis," the graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi, and MIT Press' "A History of Modern Computing." I recently acquired a copy of Steven Levy's "Hackers," which I'd like to at least start before the end of the summer.
What utter sadness! I too was inspired to read in mass quantities as a child thanks in large part to this show.

Focus on teaching the mechanics of reading? Not unlike how mathematics is "taught" to kids, draining all of the beauty out of it, only to be replaced with misdirected memorization? No thanks. As dmpayton mentioned, imparting the desire to read is important... the mechanics will be learned with much more joy when there's a purpose in it.

And sure, we can have educational programs about the mechanics; some viewers may need that. But please don't trade one for the other.
> It's all in the number of devices out there. As the number of devices goes up so should the sales.

Actually I disagree. The Android marketplace isn't compulsory so many people would be getting their apps from other sources. It's kind of like comparing the the approval rating of the leaders of North Korea with that of the US. Before the iPhone came along nobody would have thought of using a centralised 'app store' as the measure of a platform's strength.
Assessment of Children: Cognitive Foundations by Jerome Sattler

http://www.amazon.com/Assessment-Children-Foundations-Jerome...

Assessing Adolescent and Adult Intelligence, Third Edition by Alan S. Kaufman and Elizabeth O. Lichtenberger

http://www.amazon.com/Assessing-Adolescent-Adult-Intelligenc...

What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought by Keith Stanovich

http://www.amazon.com/What-Intelligence-Tests-Miss-Psycholog...

What Is Intelligence?: Beyond the Flynn Effect by James R. Flynn

http://www.amazon.com/What-Intelligence-Beyond-Flynn-Effect/...

Handbook of Intelligence edited by Robert Sternberg

http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Intelligence-Robert-Sternberg...

and a host of related books about IQ testing and what it means, to prepare a working paper on the latest research on IQ testing.
Disney Buys Marvel for 4 Billion
Motoman Robot Does It All in Videos
If you're lucky, you might catch him on the campaign trail and have a chat without being vetted. But you can write him a letter without declaring yourself his loyal and obedient subject.

I'm halfway convinced the only reason anyone still puts up with this shit is that Elizabeth in particular seems to be pretty cool. Once Prince Chuckles takes over there might be a considerable uptick in republican sentiments.
Most recently, been doing some skill refreshing with Jon Bentley's "Programming Pearls" and Paul Graham's "ANSI Common Lisp".

Not too long ago, Pepper White's "The Idea Factory".
Made me smile, but I don't agree that "dignity is merely a sort of plaque". That may be right if you're just talking about presentation/grooming, but "dignity" (to me) includes self assurance, courage and perhaps a bit of defiance. All good things to see in a founder I'd say.
What is the semantic web to you?
I run a database platform at http://www.webepags.com and I am wondering what people think the semantic web is. To me, the semantic web provides developers with a standardized, accessible data format.
One thing that made me luck out in this case was the recession.

My old friend, and first employee, is too risk averse to join a startup in a normal environment. But since the company he was working for went bankrupt and he wasn't able to find a job for months, he gladly came to work for me and it has worked out very well.
now this is what web search should be.
It's only a byproduct! You haven't lived until you went to business negotiations with Chinese guys at 11AM, went for lunch at 1PM, came back for more negotiations until 7PM. By 4AM the following day, all of you are still in your suits, sans a few missing ties and pants, sitting at a pavement somewhere and laughing like crazy. I really miss China.
I got books like sheiks got oil. I'm swimming in them. I try to read a little from at least four books every day. (You'll have to look up these links yourself)

-----------------------------------------------------------

On my Kindle:

Anna Karenina, Tolstoy; Clean Code, Uncle Bob; Palm WebOS; Antoninus Meditations, Marcus Aurelius, Emperor; Never Eat Alone, and Other Secrets to Success, Ferrazzi

-----------------------------------------------------------

In my stack:

Daniel-X, James Patterson; Born To Run, Christopher McDougall; The Existential Jesus, John Carroll; Fear and Trembling - Repetition, Soren Kierkegaard

-----------------------------------------------------------

On the way in from Amazon:
The Trusted Advisor, Maister; Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully, Weinberg; Rain Making: Attract New Clients No Matter What Your Field, Harding

-----------------------------------------------------------

I'm thinking about growing another pair of eyeballs so I can read two books at once. I'll let you know how the genetic engineering goes. (grin)
Just How Small Can a Scheme Be?
It would be different.

To say it would be "much better" ignores that one of the primary usages of Time Machine is that it provides easy whole-disk backup in case of catastrophe. In this scenario (the primary reason why many people use it), ZFS is completely irrelevant.

Now, perhaps one could imagine a future version of Time Machine that would read from source file system snapshots while making backups to the external target in order to capture versions that were made while the user was unplugged from the external disk; and perhaps ZFS would be appropriate for Time Machine target disks in order to save space via block copy-on-write. I'd say I expect both of these features at SOME point in the future ("expect" inasmuch as they're obvious wins and one has to think that the future direction of file systems is to include constant time low cost snapshots via copy-on-write), though I don't know if the file system(s) will actually be ZFS-derived or not.

But this is a far cry from saying that Time Machine functionality would be free on top of ZFS. Any future version of Time Machine will include replication to an external disk (or, at least, "the Cloud") and that's NOT a feature of ZFS as it stands right now.
Some more info about their readability formula: it uses "the number of words per sentence, the number of characters per word, and the average grade level of the words in the book".
http://doc.renlearn.com/KMNet/R003520002GE7114.pdf

Personally I don't think this is a very good marketing strategy, and I'm not surprised it's hidden in a 10MB PDF document four levels deep on their website. Either they should:

1. Go deeper and do things like comparing complexity of parse trees of sentences. This might bring ratings more into line with NYT columnists' expectations, but more importantly, it sends a signal to buyers that "we think about this more deeply than you can understand". (And as an added bonus it would generate jobs for people like me.)

2. Give out points randomly --- unpredictable rewards are better motivation than fixed rewards, and shield you from criticism by people who don't like the fact that their chosen books don't earn enough points, so you can spend more time selling and less time trying to justify your ratings mechanism.
I don't trust the human body when it comes to pain. It tends to go on way longer than I need it to get the point.

I also find it hard to think of something that strips away your motivation, even your desire to experience things that have always delighted you, as a positive. It's a very vulnerable state, not something to be sought.

That said, it's part of life for many people, moreso in creative people, and learning to recognize it and take steps to unravel it is essential to one's future health.
Yes, Android is obscure, but the iPhone almost certainly is not the equivalent of Windows. By most estimates, the iPhone has half of RIM's share in the US, while Apple is a bit closer worldwide (figures vary). According to Information Week, the hardware breaks down as:

US: RIM 52%, iPhone 23.3% (up 365% vs 2Q08) HTC 5.6%
Global: Nokia 44%, RIM 21%, Apple 13.7% (up 627% vs 2Q08)

http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal_tech/smartphone...
The Concept of a General Education by Marvin Minsky
> I don't ever see this discussed here.

Nonsense :-).

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=749706

Code Complete 2 [Chapter 7] (McConnell)

Test Driven: Practical TDD and Acceptance TDD for Java Developers [Chapter 2] (Koskela)

A friend is helping me with this one:

The Rebel [Chapter 2] (Camus)
Try Malwarebytes Anti-Malware. One of my friends got a nasty little piece of Malware on his computer last year, and that was the only thing I found that could get it off.

http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php
fdisk it from linux, Its the only way to be sure. :)

Seriously though, the only way to fix stuff like that is to get outside the system. Boot with a livecd like knoppix and run a virus scanner on the infected partition.

There's usually no way for an infected system to "heal thyself" without an uninfected reference point to work from. If you have to boot into the compromised OS to try to fix it, the malware gets the first move.
Code Complete is good stuff. The first volume changed the way I thought about code.
OO i love these threads.

I am currently reading "The Power Broker" by Robert Caro and its awesome so far (~150 pgs in). Just finished Zinn's "A people's history". Next up is "Atlas Shrugged" or "The Power of Babel" by John McWhorter.
Human psychology doesn't work that way, unfortunately - the most a person is willing to pay is generally not knowable ahead of time.
Michel Foucault Security, Territory, Population (Lectures at the College De France)
The Candy Bombers, about the Berlin Airlift, the political and military conflicts surrounding the Airlift, and the Airlift pilot that started dropping candy for the kids near the airport.
Ebay still has auctions? I thought it all went Buy It Now years ago.
Hackers is an excellent book, probably should be required reading for anyone into the programmer/entrepreneur lifestyle, or wannabe.

It gave me my first moment where I was reading a book and thought, "Yes. That's what I want to be doing. What they're doing. But me," when reading about some of the first computer game companies like Sierra, early Electronic Arts, early Apple, etc. Especially the story of Ken and Roberta Williams.

As a kid, I was using the software and hardware made by the folks described in those stories and felt that when I grew up I also wanted to be my own boss, and make and sell my own stuff. Make, sell, repeat. All other BS minimized.
Network Algorithmics - George Varghese;
Back of the Napkin - Dan Roam
Finishing "Atlas Shrugged". While ideas and the spirit of the book have aged only slightly, the way of writing seems way too pretentious for our times. But overall the book is interesting. From historic and ideological point of view.
Neuroscientists Find Brain Region Responsible For Our Sense Of Personal Space
It doesn't follow that increased popularity of organic food would necessarily lead to price increases in non-organic food. That's the great thing about having a free economy - you can chose to believe organic isn't worth the extra cost (as I currently do by the way). Furthermore you can continue to evaluate the evidence and at any point you can decide alter your behaviour based on a new cost benefit analyses.

The only likely way it would increase the cost non-organic is if governments started to force farmers to pay for the 'externalities' (i.e. environmental cost) of their farming methods. But we wouldn't be 'all losers' in this either. It would simply be transfer of costs from people who are essentially mooching off the system (i.e. me by using cheap non-organic food) to the beneficiaries of a cleaner environment (all of us).
The average age of founders is not 25.. I suggest you revisit your assumptions.
Having the "Three More Hours" feature implemented wouldn't effect the strategy of putting your highest bid in. You could still win with proxy bidding the same way you always have been able to before.

All the feature would do would kill the last-minute folks. Nothing more, nothing less.

All of the "bid and forget it" folks (i envy your discipline) still win if you value it more than the next guy.
Good Calories, Bad Calories (Taubes)

About 700 children's books (Assorted authors)
"The Selfish Gene" by Dawkins. This was a result of asking my Twitter friends to decide between this and Art of War for me, and this won overwhelmingly. It's been a great read so far, and I'm really looking forward to learning more about how evolution and computer science can mix.
For a time, I considered this my bible. But it's too idealistic, and goes a long way on some fairly iffy assumptions.

It's still compelling as hell, though.
I thought this would be more interesting, but it's just a rehash of the basic "execution is key" message; the "game ideas" aren't even game ideas so much as generic genre themes. They could just as easily work as pitches for books, movies, or tv series. The mechanics are the message.
Although I agree with the article's overall idea, his example of Okami and Legend of Zelda as games with totally different ideas and similar game mechanics is a horrible example. Okami's game mechanics are quite different from Zelda's.
I'm gonna check out that book based on your glowing review. Thanks!
Talking about bubbles, anybody know how one becomes a "professional derivatives trader"? None of those guys seem very smart and yet they seem to make a lot of money.

Being a professional derivatives trader means that I trade options, full time, for a living. And no, you don't have to be smart to trade. And I'm not a finance guy, how insulting!
Infinite Jest, as a long slow process.

The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo/The Girl who Played with Fire, each of which I found myself burning through in a day (the new definition of the genre of Swedish crime writing, which is amazing).
That's the feeling I'm going for. Hopefully the MIT history of computing book coupled with Hackers and a full load of computer science courses in the fall will help motivate me.
1. Programming Clojure (Not going too well)

2. Refactoring your Wetware (This is a very good book)

3. SICP (Just started looking into this to see if I can attempt to write the code in Clojure)
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Caroll

Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges

Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain

The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education by Grace Llewellyn
Omnivore's Dilemma. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Omnivore%27s_Dilemma
Cancun Rentals By Owner
Cancun is indeed a nice place to have a summer or spring break. Thanks to Cancun Rentals Network, guests can now find accommodations easier and a lot more affordable.
A true second-price auction is one where the bidders (secretly) inform the auctioneer of the maximum price they'd be willing to pay, and the bidder who nominates the highest price wins, but pays the price nominated by the second-highest bidder. This is done in an attempt to eliminate the "winner's curse" and encourage the bidders to nominate their true maximum price. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winner%27s_curse

eBay's proxy bidding system approximates a second-price auction because if everyone enters their true maximum, the person who nominates the highest value will pay (2nd-price + minimum-bid-increment).
The blog is sort of a light grey on black background, but your point is well-taken. ;)

I think that Ben realized in the middle of his presentation that the text he was showing up was illegible, even to those of us who were sitting up close. It didn't really take anything away from what he was saying, it just got a little frustrating after several slides in that color scheme.
Great. Now I'll have that song stuck in my head just like I did for _years_ as a kid.
Possibly. But these are the cool questions that make Hacker News Hacker News and not Digg.