skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is a typical ideologically charged topic - so I will present a few facts that that I think may put some of the debate in perspective:

1. There are now more obese people than starving people in the world. The diseases that are killing those overweight people are largely nutritional in origin (heart disease, diabetes, at least some cancers).

2. The EU (and I assume the US/Canada as well) are destroying agricultural products en masse, due to subsidized overproduction.

3. Population growth is rapidly decelerating - the largest countries in the world have or are rapidly approaching "first world" birth rates. Western Europe is shrinking.

Borlaug did phenomenal work for his historical period, however, looking at it in a historical timeframe, we should remain aware that the parameters of our world are constantly changing, and thus it's not that simple.

Personally, I think it requires a careful look at the political and economic production and distribution systems around the agriculture and food industries. The whole "granola hippie" versus "libertarian corporatist" debate is simply a huge distraction that misses the point.
It's an interesting mix of UI. Looks like an image gallery with oversized captions, but two photos on each gallery page.

I enjoyed the read and was not disturbed by banner ads, I'd be hard pressed to name any of their advertisers...
I would like to see the interactive Read Eval Print Loops of one of these languages finish closing the gap and become good shell replacements. I find I can get close to that sometimes with interactive programming environments, but not quite.
This happened to me yesterday. When I went to an NYT story, I was redirected to this "virus scan" page.
Well, there's scsh (http://www.scsh.net/), but it's not under active development any more.
Yes some evidence please. The most recent paper that supposedly 'debunked' the differences in nutrients actually did show some differences but the authors chose to describe them as negligible. The study certainly did not seem comprehensive enough to be definitive.
As a unix-nerd I actually find the barebones, technical look very appealing. It's almost googlesque.

I certainly like it better than the glossy competitors with their sneaky marketing-speak and buzzword bingo.
realized later that they were sub-menu items

Aha, that explains it. I did the menus this way because I (a) wanted to avoid javascript, and (b) thought it looked good -- but if it's confusing people I'd better see if I can find a different way of presenting the menu structure.

I looked on the Download page and expected to be told that I could also find it in sysutils/tarsnap.

Good point. Yeah, I should look at revising this page to point people at OS-specific instructions first, with the full install-from-autoconfed-source instructions only as a fallback for systems where I don't have special instructions.

Thanks for the feedback!
It's only ever mentioned for a month, and it was called "Techcrunch 40" in 2007, which was its first year.
Moviegoers often blink in unison, researchers find.
Have you ever grown a traditional garden, vs. an organic one? Try it on any kind of scale over 100 square feet, then tell me about the work involved, and tell me whether 'boutique' fits organic or not :D
Sorry for being off topic, but the title really reminds me of a mad scientists' version of Hemmingway's short story : "For sale: baby shoes, Never worn." =) carry on.
There are now more obese people than starving people in the world.: "Obese" and "starving" are not parallel: you only call someone "starving" if their lack of food is putting them at considerable risk of imminent death, whereas being "obese" -- while it does indeed increase your risk of various nasty things -- isn't nearly so dangerous. (It depends a bit on how you define "obese". I'll guess that to make it true that "there are more obese people than starving people" you need to define it quite broadly.)

[Edited about 1m after posting, for clarity only.]
What would make the site look more professional? More text? Less text? A logo? A picture of a house burning down along with a smiling man saying "I don't care if my house burns down, because I know all my data is safely stored with tarsnap"?

Ok, that last one is facetious -- but in all seriousness, I'd love to hear something more specific than "unprofessional".
Assessing the Internet: Great Creator or Destroyer?
I think it's a pretty perfect upgrade. It's still bare-metal minimalist and that's a nice association with something like tarsnap.

The only thing place I think might need improvement is that first 5 minutes while someone internalizes what exactly tarsnap is. I can't judge it myself since I already got over that hump, but something as simple as a transcript of a backup session with a hint toward the strong security features would go nicely on the front page.
That is true. Oil production doesn't even need to drop off very fast to produce drastic effects. The reason peak oil is taken so seriously is because of inelastic demand. Regardless of the cost of oil, we consume it in roughly equal amounts. This means that a small drop off in the production of oil could lead to incredibly high prices.

The reason that is bad is the same reason that demand for oil is inelastic. The cost of not consuming oil is very high.
When your entire world becomes immersed in startup life, these types of events grow to paramount importance in the minds of entrepreneurs, often to unrealistic levels. It's the same reason an entrepreneur broke into Arrington's house to get a story, spat in his face, etc. Furthrmore, making yourself deceptively important allows you to charge ~$2k/company, which Arrington is particularly good at.

To be fair, several companies that have launched at TC40/50 are rapidly growing. Mint is the first example that comes to mind, and I think DropBox and Xobni as well.

For all the companies whose TC press has helped them, I would approximate that more than 99% of successful companies have not relied on TC for press. That's the danger of living in a bubble and I believe why this particular author hypes it up.
I actually find the barebones, technical look very appealing. It's almost googlesque.

Thanks! The google-like "clean" style is very much what I was aiming for.
Yea... the search feature was being flaky for me... nice job.
You don't have to believe that GMO companies are do-gooders. Just take a look at the agricultural efficiency charts over the last century, global population, and rates of starvation. Seriously, the data is on wikipedia. Check it out. As a planet, we need GMO food. Its not up for debate, if the data means anything whatsoever.

As to your last comment: Why would labeling GMO foods as such create a food class system, and why is this wrong? (not something you claimed btw, just part of my rant :) Because only people rich like you will be able to choose the non-GMO variety, because you are undermining the development of safe GMO foods with that label, and because without GMO foods large numbers of poor people will starve. To me, thats a pretty clear connection. As to why class matters? Because North America has more food wealth than the rest of the world, maybe combined? As to racism: you put that in there, I said nothing about race.
I dig the retro minimalist style of it!

Only problem I have is with the floating boxes. I'd rather have one box than two columns. Makes for easier read.
"Even before the Howland case, Cape Cod was a battleground in the windmill debate: a proposal to build the nation’s first offshore wind farm has met with stiff opposition from those who say the project would spoil the natural beauty of Nantucket Sound."

This is a bigger problem. Most housing developments don't have lots with enough space for this sort of thing, but it's silly that in Massachusetts they would be opposed to a windfarm. There must be some deal that could be struck that would leave the local town, city, or suburb with ownership of the farm after an allotted time or profit.

I'm not sure she has enough space, but really a town should consult with the neighbors, and if it's safe be done with it.
I'd say that the sustainability of the practices is _the_ issue. Depleting groundwater, eroding topsoil, reducing crop genetic diversity, and changing the climate may all be reducing the long-term carrying capacity.
One of the problems in Canada (at least Ontario -- because healthcare is run by the province not the federal government) is people using the emergency room as a doctor's office. This is because regular practice doctor's are regulated on the number of patients they can see (this is an attempt to prevent doctors from seriously overbooking themselves with patients in an attempt act like a 'health factory' where patients are just pushed down an assembly-line) so people have a hard time getting an actual physician.

There are a couple of solutions to this, but no one really talks about them. (1) There are plenty of people that are qualified to be doctors, but because they did their medical school in India or China before immigrating to Canada, they aren't allowed to be certified as doctors. (2) Lots of doctors 'jump ship' to more profitable countries like the USA because they can just charge insurance and they aren't regulated from creating a 'factory practice' where no patient ever gets more than 5 minutes of the doctor's time.
Eye Contact - The Invisible Grip
No kidding. I've scheduled stuff at 2am before. Sometimes it's just "fetch laundry from dryer before bed" but once or twice it's been a phone call with people traveling on the other side of the world. "Intelligence" would be at best unhelpful and at worst disastrous.
I was on the same route as you (in arts) however, recently I switched to Computer Science and math and took arts as extracurricular instead. If you really want to be good at programming it is probably best to take programming classes because it forces you to focus and learn faster. Hacking by yourself might be fun with no pressure, but you will need to fill a lot of gaps all by yourself (unless you have been hacking for a long time, you probably don't even need a cs degree). Then again, since you want to do web application, it doesn't need a lot of the theory that a cs degree demands. So you might want to see if your school offers programming intensive classes and try those. The reason I switched is because my school restrict arts students from taking math and cs courses (plus I didn't enjoy arts courses very much). If your school has no such restriction you can probably consider taking lots of programming classes.
The guy in the picture forgot to take off the hat before wearing the earphones.
Plenty of studies suggest that organic can be as or more productive than chemical intensive. A quick google produces the following from the University of Michigan: http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=5936
That doesn't make sense. If we use fission, why bother with the oil?

The real point here is not when we run out of oil, but rather when it becomes too inconvenient -- too costly in other words. Even with new finds, oil is becoming a more and more inconvenient source of energy. The reason it remains attractive is because of the infrastructure surrounding it's production, transport and use.
Paul Buchheit: Left brain, Right brain, and the other half of the story
I thought the total lack of a blip in 2007 was odd--thanks for clearing that up.

edit: http://www.google.com/trends?q=%22techcrunch+50%22%2C+%22tec...
This reminds me of my Japanese classes in high school, my/our teacher had made his own litterature for the class and we constantly played our scenarios/theater/sketches. Trained Japanese "thinking", grammar, writing, talking, interacting.. all at the same time. Landed me at "little of everything".. I wish I paid more attention now!
Borlaug takes the stance that even if having 6 billion people on earth is 'unsustainable,' that we should still feed them all. At the root of all the 'sustainability' counter-arguments is the idea that we shouldn't feed everyone no matter what it takes, that people SHOULD be starving... just never the person making the argument. This is why Greenpeace does things like run a successful campaign to ban nitrogen fertilizer exports from Western Europe to Africa - its environment over people. Better for the people to starve than the environment suffer the fertilizer load, and the problem of increased populations when people stop starving.

Which is what I call environmental extremism - the non-extreme variety has people first, and seeks sustainability for our entire, well fed population.
Sweet Talking to Get What You Want
Seems like it was a 'hot spot' because people used it often. Sure she says that other people were injured, but how badly? It's possible that her injury was the worse injury anyone has ever sustained from jumping there. If that's the case, and parents still encourage/let their children jump from that bridge, I would say it's a problem. (Not that I would ever let my kids jump from a 50' bridge, at least not until they're old enough to make decisions on their own -- I'm not advocating 'babying' your children after they've left the nest.)
"If I tell one text editor widget about "Smalltalk," there's no reason why all of them across the system shouldn't know about it."

It is on OS X. (Leaving aside software that implements its own spellchecking, of course.)
Oregon State University launched a balloon to commemorate 100 million downloads of Firefox. They used a disposable camera with a simple timer wired to it. They didn't include a GPS unit though because it was "too expensive", the camera has yet to be found. The cannon would take better pictures, just pointing out that its not the cheapest route.

http://lug.oregonstate.edu/events/firefox/sky
Pretty cool. I've used SoundDogs up until this point for SFX for various projects, this might be a good replacement.
A computer is an inanimate object. It is the software developer who makes it do anything.
Yea. I can see people on both sides saying crap about this.

Pro: This wouldn't happen with government healthcare because there would be standards in place (i.e. the 'mobility test' would be standard everywhere not just in 'cutting edge' facilities)

Con: In government-run healthcare, she would have been forced to stay in that hospital so as to minimize the costs of treating her (i.e. no expensive transport from PA to Boston). The government would be taking away her individual rights to take ownership of her situation.

The healthcare debate is a lot more nuanced than the 'Arg! Socialism!' or 'Arg! Health insurance is evil!' crowds make it out to be.
Oil demand is extremely inelastic. Sure, if oil goes to $300 a barrel and stays there, we'll figure out other ways of getting from A to B. But the next day and the next year, we will be trying to consume the same amount of oil regardless of price. That's why it is not unimaginable for oil to go to such a high price suddenly.
A program is created by a human being, a software developer, a programmer. So it is the programmer trying to be smart and clever.
Right now I'm relaxing with some HN and listening to the sounds of crickets and the occasional car passing by.

I swear, if a neighbor installs one of these things, and I can hear it (whooshing noises, or it develops a noise from just normal wear and tear), one way or another, its coming down.

People have so little respect for others around them concerning noise pollution. Leaf blowers, lawn mowers, noisy air conditioners, motorcycles, etc
I'd rather have one box than two columns. Makes for easier read.

On most pages I use just a single box -- I ended up going with multiple boxes in two columns on the front page because I figured that (a) there wasn't a huge amount of text to read, and (b) separating 'what is tarsnap', 'start using tarsnap', 'tarsnap pricing', and 'tarsnap news' into individual boxes some much-needed organization.

Is your comment about prefering a single box a general comment (in which case I think you'll find that most of the site does what you want) or do you also think that the front page would benefit from that?
I wonder if TC50 is struggling this year.

I also heard that you can now just buy your way into the DemoPit which used to be for overflow of companies that didn't quite make the cut (in theory startups 51-150).
The examples of companies that have benefited helped explain the hype for me, thanks.

I hope I don't sound critical of startups getting excited about a chance to shine--my grumpiness has much more to do with the greasiness of advertising than the oddities of human nature.
Nitrogen fixing for fertilizer production seems about the only sane and rational use of natural gas that there is, long term.
It's not necessarily about money though. To my knowledge, most people have problems with their wisdom teeth coming in wrong and screwing up their other teeth. If this is the majority case, then going on the offensive and taking care of them early can make sense rather than waiting to have issues.

Sometimes these cases end up sounding to me like the people who try to decry the state laws requiring you to wear a seatbelt by pointing out the relatively few cases where not wearing a seatbelt did save (or could have saved) someone's life. They completely ignore the overwhelming number of cases where seatbelts do save people's lives. It's just a case of people trying to make the facts fit a conclusion that they've already come to and don't want to change.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jul/29/organic-fo...
The authors said they were statistically insignificant - which means they have not been demonstrated as being present. Some studies showed organic had inferior quality. Vegetables have incredible amounts of variance.
because it's easier to power a car with gas than with electricity. Like you said, the infrastructure is in place.
The only thing place I think might need improvement is that first 5 minutes while someone internalizes what exactly tarsnap is.

Yeah, that's always the hardest part -- my hope was that the words "Online backups for the truly paranoid", the pricing in picodollars, and the clean web design would at least start people off with the right idea...

... something as simple as a transcript of a backup session with a hint toward the strong security features...

That would be fantastic... but I'm not sure how to do that. The security of tarsnap is built deep into its core -- there really isn't anything people can see while they use tarsnap which shows them how secure tarsnap is. (I suppose I COULD add some random "AAA blocks encrypted with SHA-256, BBB bytes authenticated with HMAC-SHA256, CCC RSA-2048 private-key operations performed" messages -- but that would run directly counter to the philosophy of cleanliness and minimalism.)
‘Too Big to Fail’ Is Dangerous, in Finance and Health Care
Is the "millionaire" as in "People will treat you like a millionaire for 'only' 20 bucks"?
I get pretty depressed when I hear about agricultural NGO programs in the developing world. They invariably sell themselves as dealing in "sustainable agricultural methods that don't degrade the land" or something similar. There is nothing wrong with that of course, but the number one reason for these initiatives should be growing more produce, not appeasing some armchair agriculturalist with a firm beliefe that organic is the right way to go.
hm. My impression, and this could be wrong, is that there are a lot of people making so little money that if commuting costs more than doubled, it would no longer make economic sense to drive to work.

where I live, If I am willing to double commute time, I can use public transit. If you only make $10/hr, it doesn't take much of a price increase before taking the bus starts making sense.
Haiku Project Announces Availability of Haiku R1/Alpha 1
As a start, I would say yes, get a logo -- even if it is just the exact same as your current non-logo run through Photoshop/GIMP's anti-aliasing.
Interesting - how? Isn't the means of production also much higher for mechanized farming? I'm hardly an expert so I'd love an explanation if I'm wrong, but I figured that the extra services involved in the larger-scale operations would also require extra transport of goods before and during harvest.

Also, regarding the lack of efficiency in transportation - where can I learn more? Of course high-volume shipping is more efficient per unit, but does this include incidental transit overhead for those people managing this process? I guess what I'm trying to say is that what matters is the total environmental costs incurred by the entire production/distribution "ecosystem", not the per unit shipment cost reported an invoice somewhere in the process.
What is the virtue of running a Django application on Tornado over Apache or lighttpd?
I gave it a shot and wrote down some criticism. I run a small design/interaction/software agency. Sorry that these things always sound so negative, I hope it will help you.

I see what you're going for and it might work well for a very specific audience. But I think it will be hard to reach people beyond those that "get" where this bare bones design stands for.

One thing that could be better in my opinion is answering some very obvious questions directly on the homepage like

- How does it exactly differ from other backup services out there?

- Who would use this and who wouldn't?

- A nice example of cost breakdown for a common setup

- Is there any one successfully using this?

- It feels like a one-guy shop. Should I trust that for my backups?

Then, some random opinionated observations about your design choices:

- It will most likely only attract a very specific audience, is that the goal?

- All the information is very subdivided into lots of pages, lists and blocks. Some people may like it, from what I found out simpler one-page overviews work better. An example could be our versionsapp.com site, which obviously has a very different style going on.

- It looks like an open source project page. I wouldn't expect to have to pay for something at a page like this.

- The whole no-logo thing is a pretty bold statement, but could work against you.

- The small serif font in the menu could be hard to read on some screens. I would make it bigger and/or non serif.

- The design is very timeless, and therefore it's hard to see if this is something recent or not.

Koen
Clickable Links: http://newwww.tarsnap.com/ http://www.tarsnap.com/

I like it. It instills confidence. It's spartan, which to me communicates that you value performance over style (think road bikes vs. fixies). Very fitting for your target market.

I wish google understood your units so you could provide a link to the calculation. Perhaps you could provide your own calculator?
Yeah, I noticed. I thought my gf had been on my computer again, so I checked with my work laptop. Nope, it was the NYT.
I can't stand noise as well, but I've always taken it for granted that it is my job to stop noise from entering my home. I am always surprised by people who also hate noise, but don't seem to think a lot about sound proofing, they are more like defenseless victims of noise form the outside world.
There's rush: "rush is a replacement for the unix shell (bash, zsh, etc) which uses pure Ruby syntax" from http://rush.heroku.com

I haven't used it though, I actually switched from bash to fish about 6 months ago
That is about the time Techcrunch started writing about Hacker News.
OK, I'm trying to understand your perspective. I mean, Penn Gillette did literally (the real literally, not the literally that means not-literally) play Borlaug as a rhetorical playing card on his show, but I don't see why it was distasteful. It certainly wasn't before his death.

Borlaug was practically unheard of and Penn held him up as the greatest human being that ever lived. What's the problem? It sounds more like you just don't like Penn because he's Penn, so everything he does is distasteful, whether you agree with him or not.