skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Quoting a guy that lived over 200 years ago doesn't prove a point, though I like Paine quite a lot. Remember that he lived in a simpler, quieter society.

Government is necessary to avoid a lot of sorrow. It gives us regulated foods and highways and it stops a lot of greedy people from doing bad things, while in theory allowing the people who're rich based on merit and talent to thrive without punishment.

I think that government should be a choice on parts of the people - I'd like a few more anarchic societies in the world for people who don't want to deal with regulations and are fine with risking themselves for freedom - but civilization thrives under a good government.
Indeed, fitting a line would have demonstrated the main point just as well (that Usain Bolt is way outside the normal progression of the record).

Of course, it would have also implied that by the year 3000 some guy will be finishing before he starts, but from the data given that's no sillier a conclusion than the one given.

PS. Seriously though, well done Mr Bolt. I'm not usually impressed by athletes, but this guy really seems to be way out of the norm.
Indeed, but beware:

Origami = art

Factory = work.

Do you want to make money or art?
Where 'Communism' has been most earnestly tried...

- there has been death and deprivation, which has only let up as societies turn back to more traditional organizing modes

- because of the clash between the high hopes and sad reality, those expressing preferences to live another way are often imprisoned, while under non-Communist regimes 'Communists' are free to write books, be professors, start communes and cooperative living/production units, etc.
did not read, but like the @dcurtis-like format
I think the parent's use of "big boy" was ironic; if someone is patronizing me, I might say "Listen, I'm a big boy, I can handle it." I don't see it as, necessarily, saying I'm in a class above others. Just that I can handle the responsibility someone else thinks I can't.
Could test early and test often be substituted successfully?
The answers to legal questions are almost always, "It depends." More facts are always needed than given to determine how the case might come out. I say "might come out" because you need to remember that you have a jury and a judge interpreting fact and law. And how those two play out vary by jurisdiction.

There are potential tort liabilities. Each jurisdiction has its own rules of law for that. An understanding about "proximate causation" will put you on the path to assessing your own tort liability risk.

A study of contracts in your jurisdiction is needed to assess your contract liability risk.

Every jurisdiction has its on strict and products liability laws, so you need to learn those, too.

Further compounding your issue is what jurisdiction's rule of law applies? The facts and the lawyer's skills will determine how that plays out.

So the answer to your question is, "It depends."
Hardly! I'm saying "we're not strangers to what you're experiencing, but your conclusions are incorrect".

You can believe whatever you want, but belief alone won't make it true. Accept the environment you've found yourself in and then do what you can to adapt to and correct it. That's what I've done.

Bitching about it without action is going to do squat.
Im interested, but live no where near the Valley. Located in Melbourne, FL...

My contact info is in my user info on HN. Find me and we can talk if you don't get any hits on this.
Please don't joke with this :)

www.hackerne.ws get's me a blank page as well. The plot thickens (I know it points to the same IP). Hopefully, I won't have to google for HN with site:wikileaks.org to untangle this.
Urban Outfitters to sell 700 rescued Polaroid cameras.
Dear downmodders, if you disagree speak your mind. Feel free to downmod away but at least let me know which bit you disagree with and why.
Reminds me of Gladwell's little bit on Dunbar's Constant in The Tipping Point. He brought up GoreTex as a company that, by splitting its company into miniature groups of under 150, thrived despite nobody having job titles.

I'd like to see a nation try to work itself using Dunbar's Constant. A government based on the idea that people can all relate to one another in small groups would be radical.
...

Ok, I can't respond anymore. I said what I thought. I still think that. I don't have the time or energy to argue with you. I should never have stepped into this puerile drama.

If PG doesn't appreciate my presence on this message board he can ban me. It's his site, fair's fair. But I can't respond to you. I could spend hours writing the history of why I think what I do. I think I could convince you that my response was reasonable. But I just don't have time.

The funny thing is, the social norm which keeps me responding to you here rather than just logging off and ignoring it is exactly the same rule _why has breached :D
Are you serious? The guy's whole post is one massive trollbait designed to make people angry.
FYI, I'm cleaning up the documentation right now, so we can finally release this thing. It's taken way too long time when you don't have a guy who says "okay, release it!"
@dcurtis is a professional. I'm an amateur.
I agree, but I also think that there's great value in trying to change the environment entirely.
Both.

Not necessarily, but possibly, within the same project.
It's not all that different. The biggest distinction is they keep the bulk of their iteration private. They use themselves as the ultimate customer and iterate until they have a product they love.

See Also: Blizzard, Apple
How can you say that it's well written when it's smugness is over the top?

I thought it was one of the worst articles ever linked from HN, both in its annoying tone, its irrelevance, and is lack of actual points.
“Instead of saying the obfuscation ‘just makes development/releasing harder,’ try saying obfuscation ‘just makes flippancy/esotericism easier.’”

— _why / http://rubyforge.org/pipermail/camping-list/2008-May/000673....
I would rather make art than money. Money is wasted away on details. But art, oh art, is beautiful. Art can do things that money never can.
If you're angering the techno libertarians, that's a pretty decent sign you're doing something right.

Also: techno libertarians on the internet == unintentionally hilarious.

EDIT: this comment score is a pretty decent sign I'm doing something right. :)
Congrats guys! I've enjoyed using it during the beta, it's a great service.
it might simply be a peering problem, something between your provider and HN.

Have you done a traceroute ?
Are people here really taking this seriously? You believe Sir Richard will read your tweet and make you a millionaire? The combination of Branson + Twitter + Fast Company should be overloading your hype detectors. Come on.
No, it's not. Again: I've read Squashed for a long time. He goes back to the very beginning of Tumblr. Usually, he writes for himself and, perhaps, for a small core of readers who like his opinions. You need to understand that Tumblr's different from most blogging platforms in that it has a built-in community, so that the people who use it frequently feel a lot more freedom to express their opinions in a more personal way. Marco Arment, who's on Tumblr's staff, just wrote this week about how he never tries to write for news aggregators anymore.

So Squashed disagrees with the people who flamed out against him, and I'm certain he believes what he's writing, but don't see it as him trolling. Rather, it's him writing how he feels without thinking about who's going to read it. I'm certain he didn't expect Hacker News picking on him, and so didn't make an attempt to round out his writing and make his ideas balanced.

He has that right. Since when do bloggers have to write for any audience other than themselves?
This reminds me of my favorite _why quote, paraphrased:

"Camping is magic, plus some other stuff."

(camping is an anagram of magicnp)
Bing Reported as Running on Linux
Agreed. I liked the post, but it is not the sort of post that should be on Hacker News. It wasn't intended to be and it doesn't fit here.
I hope it can be resolved soon. I am really missing New Mogul
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=173683 :-)
A quote from one of my favorite books. The speaker is a poet from about 500 BC:

"Some of my best friends have been doctors, and excellent people they were, most knowledgeable about the minds of men, whom they see when the poets do not. But doctors are taught their laws, and they keep those laws if it kills you. Some of them here in Sicily come asking how a wanderer like me has kept such good health to past fourscore. I tell them this or that. It would be uncivil to say that whenever in my travels I get a touch of fever, I go quietly to bed and send for the local wise-woman."

Pretty good advice today, too.

I'd like to see Robin's point of view get a wide hearing. I'm afraid he's trying to paddle against a powerful current the other direction, though.
Good gov't huh? That's the one where 2 wolves and a lamb vote for what's for dinner? Democracy is the ultimate expression of might makes right, the only justification of voting is that since the majority can beat up the minority the minority better go along from the start. Can anyone here point me to ANY rational reason anyone should go along with a gov't other than to avoid being assaulted or worse?
I'm totally blown away- great job!

The music is phenomenal, the design is beautiful, through and through it's just the perfect site to listen to while working. Badass!
It's not puerile drama. It's a debate. I was enjoying it, and I wished you'd have continued rather than resorting to calling me a pussy.
> Indeed, in 50-100 years, when China or India have caught up with the developed world in terms of GDP per capita, the potential entrepreneurial gains from being able to market to a Billion people at once will make US business fortunes look modest.

I don't know about India (but I'm sure it's a similar situation), but in China you have vastly different cultural groups across different regions. It's a large country. And I'm talking a larger cultural divide than "East Coast" vs "West Coast" in the USA.

I doubt that you'd be able to having a marketing campaign that included all 1 billion people... It might be viewed by close to a billion people, but you'd have to be targeting a smaller demographic.
I agree downvote-as-disagreement is bad.

However, at the moment, your only comment downvoted below 1 in this thread makes the claim "I was thinking Communism more in the idea of 'let's not let the market be entirely free'".

That's such an aggressive redefinition of Communism it borders on falsehood, so I understand the downvotes. There are many, many critiques of the free market and proposals for moderating market activity for the greater good. Very few of these deserve to be lumped under the heading 'Communism'.

The Communist critique of markets and capital/ownership is larger, and their program, in both theory and practice, different. 'Communism' means something, and that something is much more than the innocuous "let's not let the market be entirely free".

(For example, you could wholeheartededly agree "let's not let the market be entirely free" and still be shot as a counterrevolutionary by a dedicated Communist.)
There was unlucky timing - it got upstaged by this thing called "Linux" that appeared around the same time.
It's gone over a year, and I'm still embarrased of how silly that proposal was.
Well look at that, it was him: http://imgur.com/yq9o1

dolphins.ram has "Jonathan Gillette" as the author. Yet another reason to hate Real Player.

I would feel bad about posting this, but since everyone's apparently going to go around assuming it with almost-proof already, I guess it can't do much harm.
A true libertarian believes that the only thing the government should do is protect our country from others protect the rights of the people.

Thats it. Not a single thing more.

The number of people who really believe that is vanishingly small.

I know, I was a party member for a long time. I did a lot more than just post on blogs and read reason.com.

So if that 1-3% of the population were able to have its way, who is really the evil tyrant?

Remember, international waters is only a few dozens of miles from our coast. People say that communism has never succeeded - but neither has libertarianism. You can start today.
Patient capital, markets that work and ending the endless emergency of poverty
_why: "Goodbye until I can shake this."
Ask HN: SCORE - Service Corps of Retired Executives - Startup Resource?
I am wondering if anyone has had experience with Score. They seem to be all volunteer group and a place for advice and such for startups, or just as a sanity check on the legal/business aspect of things (not lawyer-legal advice but just general). Their focus is all startups (not just tech). Seems like a good resource for early early stage startups. Considering dropping by there sometime.

Have anyone else had experience with them?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCORE_Association
Headius aka Charles Nutter of the JRuby fame is angry about _why's departure
nickb == _why?
Thanks for the feedback. I agree with many of your points. The 18.3% was the click through rate from the article.
I kind of like the idea that my food's been inspected for poisons, my highways won't collapse on me, I won't be raped and killed when I go for a walk outside, and that companies don't have permission to turn into dictatorships. I like the last point a lot because I wasn't a fan of Internet Explorer and I'd have hated to have to use it. Petty reason to like antimonopoly practices, but hey, I'm free to be petty.

Even the stuff the government fucks up on are fundamentally good ideas that I hope one day get revised. I like the philosophy that I get a say in who gets elected, though I wish we had instant runoff voting and caps on campaign expenditures. I like the idea of having free education, though the school system is awful. I also like that I have a right to avoid the government in favor of private practices in most cases.
Warp Drive: A Cottage Industry Emerges
A clue: http://away.autognosis.org/
Thanks, kirubakaran! In that post, folks were worried after missing him for a week (which shows how valuable his presence is!) - he hasn't been seen here or at his own NewMogul.com for over 40 days now.
All the evidence we have suggests that human history and prehistory is primarily concerned with two things: firstly, people making stuff, and secondly, people taking other people's stuff and optionally killing them. This is widely true for societies ranging from stone-age tribal groups, all the way up to the present day.

Of course many beliefs are created and imparted by society at large, but not all are. The belief that our planet is roughly a sphere is more accurate than the belief that it is flat, and the belief that the Earth orbits the sun is more accurate than the reverse. I'm fairly sure we've hit on something with the whole "People would rather be rich than poor," idea.
The Mercenaries in Facebook's Midst
The big deal is that you can get sucked into all kinds of issues, and meeting with competitors can distract you from your main business. If you don't want to sell, you shouldn't go. If you might sell, you better have the amount of cash you'd demand in mind before you go and be ready to walk away. Those are the only reasons I can see for bothering to meet.

I elaborated further in a comment on the original thread.
He's already pg, so he can't be _why.
But there is no 'call to arms' for change. The only thing that he seems to be advocating is that 'techno libertarians' need to realize that "do what I did and you'll be rich like me" is a fairytale. It's a fairytale even if a libertarian's utopian wet-dream where to come true. Everyone in a society can't be highly successful, but most of the people he's referring to don't seem to think about their calls of "just grab life by the ball, and you'll be ok" beyond their own anecdotal evidence.
I'm gonna have to agree that the format of the article had me jumping around and genuinely trying hard to figure out where to even start reading.

I like the message though, since it does show how so many things can help market a product online.
There is a difference between the economic systems of capitalism/communism and the democratic state of freedom/tyranny
I would say the quick summary would be:

"In the aggregate, variations in medical spending usually show no statistically significant medical effect on health."
The convenient part of event brite for me is their extensive API, do you have anything like that planned?
Anyone looking for a co-founder in NYC? My email address is in my profile.
The Future of the Digital Space (part I: The Framework)
They outed him, too, and discovered his real name to be Nicholas B-something.
No reason it can't be both, but given a choice between making something that makes me happier and making something that makes me money, I'll go for happiness.
That would be the "structural breaks" idea. The process in the last 80 years that generated the downward trend in times has changed recently due to technology, etc.
They'd rather be "rich than poor" because we have a society that says rich is awesome, poor is terrible.

I'd agree with you if you'd said "comfortable rather than stressed", but there's a difference between the two. Everybody can be comfortable at once. Not everybody can be rich.
I don't know that we're looking for a co-founder at this point -- we have a team of three that should pretty well cover our needs.

But we'd really love to find a good graphic artist for icons, layout, etc.
A bit tangential, but...

>What is the fewest number of colors sufficient for coloring the plane so that no two points with the same color are a unit distance apart?

For a given point P, aren't there an infinite number of points that are a given distance from P? I.e. the points that correspond to a unit circle with origin at P are all that unit distance from P. What am I missing here?
Yes, the on-time numbers are really shady. Because so much of an airline's performance is measured by their on-time percentage, they find all kinds of tricks to stretch the truth and shave minutes off the reported delay times. These numbers can significantly affect their funding, performance reviews, regulatory oversight, contracts with airports, unions, etc.

More good reading:

http://www.usatoday.com/travel/columnist/mcgee/2009-06-24-me...
is that a bad thing?

The description he makes of how they cut the game into one level and had a team essentially scrum on it for months bis kinda agile.

I've seen GN do a talk about developing HL1 - one of the things he said was that he learned a long time ago to come up with your own design process. Because "otherwise you spend as long getting a team into someone else's groove as you do making the product"

:)

(Valve IMO are a masterclass in how you can spend years developing a game and still maintain a huge number of fans: mostly because everything that leaves the door is a quality product and so much fun).
"Swede" is a term from the movie Be Kind Rewind. It refers to homemade remakes of movies.
wow. seems like just a few months ago.
Can CAD Programs Replace Hands-on Experience?
I've recently thought about getting a digital SLR to take my photography up a notch (or several). My brother is a semi-pro nature photography, so I naturally asked him to give me some pointers.

The biggest, most salient point he made was: screw the body, spend all your money on lens. The body is cheap, and even low-end stuff produces pretty great results in combination with a good lens. If you run out of headroom with the body, it is also likely the cheapest component to replace.
Downmodding isn't for disagreement anyway; it's about the kind of comment HN users want, not the stance taken by the commenter. I don't have downmodding power, but I chose not to upmod you because of your flippant tone.
The Real Live Search – Bing API experiment
I believe he was referring to Rambo III. :)
Isn't it generalizing too much? Andrew Wiles worked on Fermat's last theorem for 7 yrs in secret, nobody even knew he was working on it until he published the results.
I was referring much more to Tom's being downvoted. He was at a universal -1 for a bit, which frustrated me.

I kind of misuse terms a lot. I say Communism when I mean socialism, and vice versa. In reality, I'm just anti-extremism. (I once discussed with some friends forming a political party on the concept of "extremist moderatism", or the idea that the only thing bad is extremist worldviews.) So in my view, neither capitalism nor communism is a be-all end-all, and the real solution is murkier and in the middle.
Just FYI, I don't see an e-mail address if I click on your username here. I am logged in.

(I'm not looking for a co-founder at the moment, but would be interested to hear about any projects going on in the DC area.)
New Wi-Fi Technology Using White Spaces
Yes. About 10 seconds after first seeing the blank page. The trace looks healthy and ends ok. Pinging news.ycombinator.com directly drops nothing. HTTP apparently is where it chokes. Thank you for your interest.
EDIT: telneting to tcp 80 just get's me a killed connection when I press "G".
Interested, but your profile seems empty..
Well, isn't it the things wrong in the release (e.g. failures) that drive the next release, that is to say learning from them?
does it have to be a choice? why not create value with art, and exchange that value for money.
The final line is great: "The only truly failed project is the one where you didn't learn anything along the way."

If the project is original or interesting, you almost have to go out of your way not to learn anything.
It wouldn't surprise me if the health of the average person is not significantly affected by the amount spent on medical care. So what? The whole point of insurance is to protect the policy-holder from the risk of outcomes that are much worse than average.

My seven-year-old son has a friend with hemophilia; if he didn't get regular infusions of clotting factor and similar treatments, he might live for another ten years--fifteen, tops. The quality of his health coverage certainly has an effect on his health. And he is exactly the sort of patient that the insurance companies will drop like a hot rock at the earliest excuse.
It is easy to fall in love with technology...
Scratch that. I just realized that he wasn't referring to desktop computers when he said consumer devices. I now think he meant set-top boxes and things of that nature.
It is puerile drama. _why enacted his attention seeking stunt, and what do you guys do? Shower him with attention.

Deleting your blog is a pussy move and I have no qualms letting you know that fact.

There's nothing to debate. This is teenage-level stuff, complete with teenage-level temper tantrums and teenage-level poetry. It warrants nothing but contempt.

The funny thing is, you're trying to paint me as some kind of prick here, but you'll be exactly the same sooner or later. If you retain any honesty at all you'll call out bullshit as bullshit whenever you see it, and pretension as pretension likewise. The even funnier thing is, I really like _why and greatly appreciate his efforts. What I do not appreciate is this Michael Jackson-like circus of hangers on, all trying to outdo each other in post facto adoration. Fuck that shit, unalone.
I thought nickb was a pseudonym as well. There was a conversation wherein one of the HN biggies hinted he was a well-known tech person who didn't want his name getting in the way of conversation. I could be misremembering, though.
It's so easy to judge people without being in their shoes. There are a million reasons why it would be ok to disappear.
A few thousand? Of what nature are these?