skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Review OurDoings again
I've made tons of changes since the last time it got reviewed here, so please give it another look.

It's thousands of lines of BRL (i.e. Kawa Scheme embedded in HTML) and a few dozen lines of shell script.

http://ourdoings.com/
I read it, and it boils down to a discussion of the allocation of health care resources, which is economics/politics.

For instance, if you're going to critique it, he says:

> Such a transition would require the slow reduction of Medicare taxes, premiums, and benefit levels for those not yet eligible, and a corresponding slow ramp-up in HSAs. And the national catastrophic plan would need to start with much broader coverage and higher premiums than the ultimate goal, in order to fund the care needed today by our aging population.

It's very difficult to take away benefits that people already have, which is eminently a matter of politics.

Also, note the "POLICY" at the top of the page. That's pretty indicative that it is politics.

I'm not saying it's not a good article, but it certainly isn't about hacking code or electronics, and only tangentially related to startups (in a way that lots of things are, if you want to make tenuous connections).

pg, however, thinks it is worth having this sort of article, so I am asking, honestly, how one distinguishes a good politics article. It strikes me as being a difficult thing to do, but perhaps he has some insight that I am not picking up. Perhaps it's simply a matter of taste.

The article obviously appeals to hackers (myself included), but I am not sure that it appeals more to hackers than to other intelligent people, so that test doesn't really work.
I stopped reading after the first three paragraphs when the article had already managed to drag in paradigm shifts and Socrates.
Are you sure the case-label-fall-through has been its most controversial feature? It's so obscure (most people haven't heard of it) and rarely-used -- I'm guessing there are other aspects of C that are more controversial, or at the very least, more widely debated.

By the by, we've used this "feature" a fair bit in C and C++ for protothreads in small embedded systems: see http://blog.brush.co.nz/2008/07/protothreads/ and http://www.sics.se/~adam/pt/
There is the possibility of analysis paralysis. In the extreme case where everyone had a Wiki page, an individual's name might return 100+ different results.

I would have to say I am in the inclusionists camp though. If someone took the time to create an article for some obscure topic, then they find it worthy enough to share meaning that most likely someone else out there would also be interested in the topic.
If there's no reliable sources, what happens when somebody adds lies (whether intentionally or not)?
Early developer preview: Retweeting API
What an interesting problem. Unfortunately, the problem is not the anti-virus software, but a general lack of technological knowledge, which is expected for a developing country.

Moving to a "more secure" OS (i.e. Linux) would be a good solution. This will result in computing legitimacy (less pirating) and viruses. I doubt the normal student or government worker (or anyone, really) need that super-advanced feature on Microsoft Word.

Yet unfortunately, once again, there are bigger problems in Africa than lack of technology. Fix the government corruption problem first, and things will start falling into place.
Yes, for "protothreads", see: http://www.sics.se/~adam/pt/
This place is beautiful, I love people who aren't afraid to be practical, even when it isn't popular. The view overlooking the trees must be breath taking. I'd love to visit the place.
I was intentionally vague; I had mostly your first point in mind but was also curious to hear of things that are uneconomical to buy/sell online. I asked the question more out of idle curiosity than anything else, maybe something here sparks conversation or inspires someone :)
Cypherpunk went corporate a while back.
Rock star and ninjas are very common terms used by startup companies when hiring.

I personally am a bit turned off when I see that.
Well you see paper is expensive and shelf space is even more expensive. How does this matter to wikipedia you ask? Well imagine a website trying very hard to be like a book, I don't mean the ideas therein, I mean the physical limitations - Wikipedia!
The Swine Before Perl [2001]
I think what the article is saying is that if Linux or Mac OS X becomes more used, then you will begin to see viruses pop up on those platforms. Of course, I would argue that it's harder to find/write/distribute exploits for a unix system than windows.
Well, Wikipedia determines this by setting their notability guidelines.

At the end of the day, it's up to each individual community to determine what is and is not appropriate. It wouldn't hurt you if somebody started posting celebrity gossip articles on HN, but HN would probably downvote them into oblivion because it has decided those types of articles are not relevant to this community. I can say with a high degree of certainty that you would not object to this practice. With Wikipedia it's the same principle.
Google Calendar Common Problem - Stops Sending Reminders
higher quality regurgitation. i see smashing magazine as a quality filtering aggregation subscription with occasionally good original content, and i see things like a list apart and alertbox as consistent high quality original content.

thing is, some good stuff makes it to the places that can't be relied on to perpetually produce high quality content, and places like smashing help point out where it is.

for me, hacker news is another filter subscription for the internet which also occasionally has great original content right here. i remember seeing some posts here earlier in the week saying this was a social site....maybe for some, but for me it's a high quality subscription to the internet in general, which replaced previous lower quality filters like reddit.
Create an Eye-Catching Resume in Illustrator
> That strikes me as a very questionable assertion. Health problems always get worse with time, becoming more complex and expensive to fix the longer you leave them. How could prevention possibly not reduce costs?

(1) Folks who live longer consume more medical resources, not less. (Dying is always expensive but living also has costs, so shorter lived people cost less.)
(2) Preventative care doesn't always work. In fact, it usually doesn't. If it's cheap enough, that can be okay, but if it isn't....
(3) Saving someone from one or even a couple of causes of death is rarely enough. (That's why it often makes sense to ignore prostate cancer. Yes, it may get worse if left untreated, but old men die of lots of things.)

The numbers always matter. Health care is hellishly complicated.
I think it could be replaced by a page building upon wikipedia. For example - same core-articles, but instead of just article+history versions +discussion page it would have more alternative versions of the same article. Maybe with some voting-system. And yeah - it would have to be inclusive - the amount of discussions and trouble caused by deletionists is just not worth it in a time of ever-increasing diskspace. Every single time I stumble upon a page recommended for deletion something in me dies a little.

And why must all the articles be central anyway? Only thing that needs to be central seems to be the index. And some common layout, semantic information and the ability to allow everyone to change pages.

Has anyone already tried building a de-central wikipedia which works by voting?
> There are a great many issues where it's not easy to say "this comes from religion" vs. "this comes from our social order".

The world is certainly a complex place.

State-sponsored teaching that evolution is bunk, and that the koran/bible/FSM is literal truth, though, is probably crossing the boundary, and that's what we were discussing, not monogamy.
The page doesn't really go into detail as to what this talk is about, but it's a look at what makes Scheme (specifically PLT-Scheme) great.
A good deal of the value you can bring to hiring has to do with your personal network as well. You could be a mad scientist working on cold fusion, but if you don't know anyone, and a VC hasn't validated it, does that make whatever you are working on any less interesting? Absolutely not.

The point of the post was that there is this tendency to believe in the myth of the rock star, and that only the rock stars can make something amazing. A couple of the engineers from my old founding team are in YC now, and they are meeting with many VCs early. Why? Because they made those contacts on the first go round. Did they need rock stars to make that happen? No. Are they "rock stars?" No. Not in personality type anyway. I do look forward to working with them again though. They made for a great team.
The sad thing is that the Inclusionist / Deletionist war does not need to be fought at the data level - they could coexist at the view level.

There could easily be two views into the db:

* en.more.wikipedia.org

* en.less.wikipedia.org

Let the deletionists tag articles with a "less" bit all the want. Each article thus tagged is invisible from en.more.wikipedia.org.

People are still fighting as if it's the 19th century and space is physical and rival.
so when some new technique comes out down the road that your input filtering didn't catch, are you going to update everything in your database? and what about data that gets in from other sources?

i don't see the benefit in filtering input; html and alert()'s inside a database don't affect anything until they come back out.
That's the point. Can we develop a program that is more efficient and effective than the present point and click programs? I know this wont change the fact that programming technically is going on. The point of the original question is, can we accomplish this without code? Not without programming. Think bigger. Can you program without code? Or atleast without code on the front end (i.e. Dreamweaver). But in a much better, more effective and dynamic way. Think about it. Programming was originally done on a black screen with green typing, and no mouse. We've improved the technology greatly. Why can't it be improved upon even more, or increase productivity, and ease of use? Check out http://www.yola.com, http://www.wix.com, http://www.weebly.com, or the new http://flooha.com/. They all have the right idea, just need to take it to new heights. Automate the code on the backend, for many to be able to focus on being creative on the front end as they see fit to their site liking and their own vision.
Why?

I'm aware of several parked domains that I'd sort of like. If they expire because their current owner decides to save the domain fees, I'll think about picking them up and using them.

Why should I have to wait a year?

That's just a longer "tasting" period.
I got to hear Les Paul at the Iridium when I was in New York in April. So glad I got hear him live at least once. Thanks for the music and the inventions. Play on!
Because experts are the type of people who can hang out all day voting?
> "why study finite-dimensional vector spaces in the abstract if they are all isomorphic to R^n?"

Uh, C^2?
My team and I are exploring that possibility right now.

We have come across a few interesting tidbits considering the model:

A concern is that without a way to direct your crowd sourcing (centralized articles) people will be all over the place and the knowledgebase suffers. (kind of along the lines of http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/technology/internet/19unbo...)

A clear plus would be ability to include more view points. A less subtle plus (but a big one) would be that with a voting system, it would elevate some credibility concerns.

Edit: In answering your question directly, there is Knol.google.com which is very similar to what you are suggesting.
Why not sleep a variable amount of time, so all calls take the same amount of time?
The problem wasn't "tasting", the problem was that too many domains are being held. Now the situation might be even worse...
I know there is at least one reader here that works in Red Gate's offices... maybe he can shed some light on how it is.

(I don't want to name names in case he's not interested in talking about it.)
I think your point is reasonable but you are not doing it a service by conflating economics and politics. Economics is only political in the sense that anything can have a political implication - is the discussion of the LHC political because of its enormous cost?
Just do it - on the side - and then sell it.
It's about mindshare. It may or may not be physical, but it certainly is rival.
I guess this would make it easy for TweetMeme and other services track Retweets. It would likely make Retweeting for prevalent since it's easier.
The writing is by experts but not for experts. So each reader is actually qualified to vote. And I think it would help experts to write better for their target audience.
All 14(!) pages together:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.02/crypto.rebels_pr.htm...
I had an experience like this in college. A friend of mine worked as an administrative assistant and his job was to take a PDF that was several hundred pages long, and go through page by page and save it into several hundred individual pdfs based on one or two variables.

I wrote a python script to do this for him, wrapped a gui around it, and compiled it into an exe (this is how I taught myself python by the way). We sold it for $200 a piece to a couple of the departments at our school. When we went to the oracle rep to talk to her about automatically integrating this into the system's workflow, she told us that this feature already existed. Maybe it did, but apparently nobody knew about it or how to use it. We probably could have pursued it further, but then I graduated and moved across the country.
Bio's of people have always been contentious on Wikipedia - especially in the realms of what is or is not notable.

I think the current accepted theory is that you ask the question: if I googled their name could I get all of the information I want from one pre-existing (non WP) link. If the answer is yes then in most cases there is no need for the article.
A true "smart" contract effectively "tells a story" and is customized for the deal at hand. A mechanized contract can save costs but will never be anything other than a set of boilerplate clauses that have been pre-determined to fit given recurring situations. There is a major difference between the two.
both sides want to declare "regular" wikipedia their lawn though.
How to Use Keywords to Improve Search Traffic | TechJaws
not as long as demand for attractive women far outpaces supply.
Mention in the profile page that "email" field is not visible to the public and that the users have to type it in the "about" section if they want to publish it.
What’s Your Mission? Wait… You Have One Right?
If your goal is to get things done in the real world, Python is a great first choice. Learn C/C++ next.

Don't listen to these scheme/functional wackos. It's great -- and once you've been programming for a few years you should definitely learn it, it will improve your programming and allow you to think more elegantly about problems. But starting with scheme is like tying sandbags to your ankles and then training for the hurdles -- in theory you'll be able to jump like superman when you take the sandbags off in a few years, but realistically it's just going to make a challenging task even harder.

Just my 2c, of course. I started with BASIC, then 6502ASM, them Pascal, then C/C++, then a bit of APL and lisp variants, then Python (which was like a dream), then some more scheme, and now I pretty much stick to Python/C++, with a bit of Javascript on the side.
Whoops! Correction: Yodlee does support non-US banks, including some in Canada, UK, Australia, and some Asian countries.

No idea why Mint doesn't do it. I had always assumed it was because they were share-cropping on Yodlee's architecture.

(Full disclosure: I work for Wesabe, but my snooty attitude is my own. ;)

(And yeah, ⌘⌥T is your friend when it comes to the appropriate typography.)
Why Seed Investors Don’t Like Convertible Notes
demonizing the productive rich along with the hereditary wealth parasites is a fatal mistake for a civilization IMO.
Yipes.

Even as an SysAdmin I never had that kind of pull to get a user booted out for something like that.

The most hardcore lockdown I ever did involved reghacking out USB ports on the terminal in the lunchroom.
I don't think the inclusionists care that much - they just want the information to be out there.

The deletionists, though - yes, they do seem to care about the "right" version.

IMO.
> There isn't a whole lot of risk spreading in car insurance.

Actually, there is. It just isn't simple. If you charge each person a bit more than their expected loss and you get that right, you'll have spread the risk and made a bit of money.

The problem comes when you don't charge each person appropriately.
Well, if you are a very large company with say 40,000 seats and you have many internally developed applications that target IE6, there is a legacy that is justifiably expensive to replace.

So it is also dependent on their very large customers.
PLT Scheme is FAR AND AWAY the best system to start with Scheme. It is also ONE of the best to take you as far as you like with Scheme as well.

It is possible a different Scheme a particular niche advanced need.

For a traditional Lisp-like REPL with incremental compilation Scheme Larceny and/or Ikarus.
I think I've read about some uber-hip fashion designers who have no Web sites and the only way to buy their wares is to line up at 5AM at their store (which has no sign, natch) located in a run-down side street in Brooklyn. Or maybe that was a William Gibson novel...
Whenever I read an article like this, I add a google news alert for the company and forget about it.
That's always been one of the most ironic things about Apple. They go after leaks without mercy but they clearly leak information themselves when it suits them.

The best example of this I can remember is the leak that Apple would be using Intel processors. Word got leaked the Friday before Jobs' Monday keynote and it almost certainly came from Apple. It's a very basic PR strategy: leak shocking news up front so people get the shock and anger out of their system and are then somewhat open minded when you make the announcement.
Agreed, and quite expensive to rewrite.
medical reform isn't political in the sense that what we currently have is obviously bullshit and what the politicians propose is obviously bullshit. if we're talking about a non-bullshit solution we're in the realm of fantasy, not politics.
I am amused that the architect called townspeople out for being Republicans, because in a "democracy" people are free to do whatever they want.

In fact, the more powerful the demos (the people) the less individual freedom we each have. When folks get to vote on zoning laws, sumptuary laws, paint colors, etc., then individual freedom shrinks.

Democracy merely means "people vote". It says nothing about freedom.

These are, at best, orthogonal.
This is potentially very useful to schools who wish to collaborate with other schools. But students need to be 'contained' within one Google Wave with a defined 'team' working on for example a citizenship project on fair trade etc, rather than be free to start new Waves on the subject of say Zak Effron or start messaging their friends... can you have an owner defined Wave ie by the teacher and partipants ie students permissioned to access only that one Wave.
This was clearly true of windows pre-vista. Post-vista windows, it may not be so much. The vista security model is a very different beast (assuming the same quality of user).
This part is wonderfully hypocritical:

-----

Anne and Vincent LiMauro moved into the southernmost apartment, which they bought for $225,000. As successive units were sold and inhabited, and their residents began to embellish their spaces, Mrs. LiMauro and Brennan, the floral designer who sold her apartment to Ms. Preneta and Mr. Sispoidis, designated themselves the aesthetics police.

“We dressed all in black and became night marauders and Ninja warriors,” said Brennan, sneaking out late at night to remove wreathes on front doors, as well as doormats and dog beds, or anything else that marred the purity of the place, in their estimation, “cleaning it up and cleaning it up until the essence of the building came back.”

Didn’t anyone complain?

“I think they just got tired of replacing their stuff,” she said.

-----

So a bunch of artists and aesthetes complain about the hide-bound aesthetic fascists who almost don't let individual expression happen ... and then some of those very same artists and aesthetes shit all over the individual expression of anyone who doesn't kow-tow to their favored aesthetic.

Stealing dog beds because they "mar the purity"?

Authoritarian bastards.
It's not that, it's that people aren't using Facebook for real time communication. "Real time" is incidental to the Facebook Experience (tm) whereas it's one of the biggest parts about Twitter. Nobody is texting to Facebook's short number to update thier status; they're all installing apps to import their Twitter feeds. The difference is significant.
you can't even buy something that will run your carefully-unmaintained business software

If only making the argument was that easy; sadly, IE6 will survive as long as Microsoft still supports XP. I foresee IT departments blowing away Win7 installs left and right to install their prebuilt system images with XP / IE6. Unfortunately, support really is the deciding factor.
How good are the new Dune books?
For more data and less journalistic hype, don't miss the ASC's own blog:

http://asc-parc.blogspot.com/
Sony to open up e-reader format in direct challenge to Amazon
United actually has an option that uses FedEx for "door-to-door" service (https://store.united.com/traveloptions/control/product?produ...). Granted it's not free. But then again very little is these days when it comes to airlines.
“The concern is that we send out 1000 infringement notices, and then someone says, `The way to stall this is let’s all go to arbitration’, and a year later we could still be going through that same process,” Eaton said.

“Do we get to the point where we have 1000 cases to be heard by the Copyright Tribunal? If everyone brings their lawyer, we will only do five in a day,” he added.

Sadly, that is a good point. The proposed system is fair traditionally, but when everyone argues that copyright law is severely outdated, perhaps this system needs other review as well.
Cuban is well known for speaking his mind, and he lived up to his reputation in this interview. Thats what we are all out here to do. And thats what this country is built on. Entrepreneurship. Creating something from nothing, and making the process better, more efficient, and productive each time.

Mark Cuban said that we need to make a boatload of money, but does not say how exactly to do that. At this point, you cant go by the Mark Cuban book. Dont try to duplicate what he did. Aside from the rare occassion of the German based ebay copycats whom later became reviered VCs, The European Founders (http://www.europeanfounders.com/index.html), you have to create your own path. What do you enjoy? Where is there a void in the market? Etc.

But, hopefully, you are not trying to "Get Rich Quick". Create your entrepreneurial venture off of passion and a genuine interest in what you are creating. Dont need it to blow up and produce millions over night, because you have to pay your electric bill. Thats not the way.
Assume all data entered by users is malicious and encode it properly on display. That's really all there is to it.
I'm holding out for the 50" iPhone that can play Hulu.
I don't use office software much. However, Word is much, much nicer than OpenOffice. Even for basic editing. If people are doing almost anything more complicated than the basic text document, they can use the well-researched UI.

Whether that is worth the price tag is up to them.
Hover no bother for flapping 'nano' aircraft