skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Thanks for posting this, Daniel. I am going through something somewhat similar, although my problem, as it were, is entirely in my head I think:

I absolutely despise my job, although I don't know why entirely... the best I can come up with that would change the situation for me is if my company paid engineers overtime. I am feeling somewhat guilty of "lacking a sense of urgency", as I was told; I think my problem is not being able to care, or fake caring, in situations where I am told to do something I consider stupid and/or futile.

Like you, I started "running away" by declaring I will work only forty hours a week, which has started the inexorable path towards my being fired.

However, I do not see what I can do to tell my superior about my problems or fill out forms: any suggestions there?
Because the plan wouldn't have any profit motive — and wouldn't have to waste money on executive bonuses and corporate marketing — it would automatically cost less than private insurance.

So everything is "automatically" cheaper when provided by the government rather than by a company? That is a very strange conception of how businesses work.
Should be: "Help us invalidate an idea." You're always going to think your ideas are awesome, so look for weaknesses, not strengths :)
Since Taleb started thinking through this stuff he's been able to cash out on two big crashes- just in the last 10 years. The second (current) one came after the black swan was published. It's almost erie reading it now. In any case, he's not advocating that everyone use that as a trading strategy. What he's advocating is that people be aware of the nature of the underlying system and stop fooling ourselves into thinking that it's "gaussian + weird things that are obvious in retrospect."
As a native Russian speaker and someone who reads printed Russian without a problem, I still struggle to read Russian cursive reliably. It's something that takes practice and occasionally even the ability to infer what the word ought to be.

If I had to work with and encounter Russian handwriting on a more regular basis I'm sure I'd be better at it, but as is, with me only needing to try to decipher things once a month, I find myself struggling. If I were just learning the language I would hate to be subjected to that.
Mock Objects: A Brief History of Mock Objects
There are two basic responses to the inconsistent/volatile issue that you bring up.

The first is mitigation of risk. We generally A/B test versions that are similar enough that we'd be comfortable rolling out the winner to the whole site without warning. As a result they tend to be fairly small changes, which goes a long way to solving the inconsistent/volatile issue. Furthermore you associate users with an A/B test slice so while different users get different experiences, a single user's experience should be consistent across their experience with the site. As a result of these two factors the impact of A/B testing is very small.

The second is magnitude of reward. Most websites that do not currently do A/B testing can find site improvements which will give business improvements of 20% or more. That's a pretty clear financial incentive to put up with unhappy users. But in fact many of those improvements made your users happier. So the "construction in progress" is far, far outweighed by the rewards.

This is why companies like Microsoft, Google and Amazon use and strongly advocate A/B testing. Google has created free tools to help people A/B test websites. I know that Microsoft has an internal version of that, and suspect that they intend to open access at some point as well.

If you want to learn more about how to build an A/B testing framework you could do worse than to go through my OSCON tutorial I did last year. My slides are at http://elem.com/~btilly/effective-ab-testing/. Or you can go to http://www.google.co/websiteoptimizer and use theirs. Theirs has some drawbacks over building your own. Their approach can't A/B test email programs, and is somewhat tricky to do with dynamic content. (Not impossible, but you have to rewrite pages in JavaScript.) When I last looked at it they also don't allow you to track multiple statistics in an A/B test, and can't let you analyze combinations of tests after the fact. OTOH theirs is already built and is easy to use. :-)
Thanks for confusing the Web with the Internet.
Announcing ABTests.com
Find something that is pathetic and make a good version of it.

Find something that you feel should be done and do it.

I recall reading somewhere that the best way to find problems is to act like a brat and complain about everything, write down your complaints and start working on the first one you feel needs to be done.
YO Startups: Can Haz Split Testing?
Here's another offline Wikipedia solution: http://aarddict.org
I'm not sure why my question here is being voted down; the fact that wordpress is famously insecure is hardly controversial.

Can some downvoters please explain?
I've seen no such quirks myself, although when moving from Tiger to Leopard I was one of the people seeing blue screens at boot, and was very angry. Ultimately, you should never expect all your applications to work on day one; if you have things that "must" keep working, wait awhile before upgrading the OS.

For one thing, not all developers have advance access to the OS (like me; I only find out if my code works when I buy the retail copy of the OS). Even if a developer does have advance copies, it is possible that a tiny change between the beta and GM will have unexpected consequences.

Fortunately in my case, I had to change nothing to support Snow Leopard (and I still support 10.3.9!). But not all apps will be so lucky.
Ask HN: A question about historical stock data.
Hi,

I have an interesting idea for a web app geared towards investors. However, the web app would require an immense amount of historical financial data. Does anyone know the common way to go about requesting historical stock data?

The web app would also require historical financial data (read: operating metrics) for nearly every public company on the planet. Is there a company that aggregates this data, or would I need to find and parse it myself?

Thanks for the help!
Well, I think Apple is going to start a car company, because they already have deals with some car companies to do iPod integration, and all car companies really do is design cars, build them, and put stereo systems in them.

I'm sorry, but this seems like the dumbest idea ever. Apple is a technology product company, not a marketing and touring services company. This would be completely outside their area of expertise, and I don't even really see the justification that it would worth the financial risk. iTunes is making money as the distribution arm for the entire industry...what do they gain by trying to pick up the less profitable parts of the value chain?

In addition, while the author of the post mentions that labels "book tours", he doesn't really delve into how much of a big deal this is. Nor does he cover how labels help setup and finance production.

This is ridiculous.
Solar Roadways Awarded DOT Contract to Pave Roads with Solar Cells
Why? In order for that to be the case, all the other functions that labels provide need to be:

1. More profitable than what iTunes already does
2. Something that Apple has the expertise to be able to do
3. Worth the risk of labels ditching iTunes

#3 is fairly important...I wouldn't put it above the labels to get together and pull out of iTunes en masse.
He argues that packaging is the most important part of a product. Somehow this relates to this other HN story about the esthetics of web applications. http://www.readwriteweb.com/readwritestart/2009/09/design-fo... I agree packaging is important. If so we should be able to design a better package and outsell him. I might as well do this. Can anyone suggest interesting ideas to package NYC garbage? How about putting small spotlights inside the box to illuminate the garbage? Or using empty bottles as the box?
Saddle Up for the U.S. Army's Robotics Rodeo
NASA's future manned spaceflight forecast: Bleak
Hacking SWF – Everything You Never Wanted To Know About Shapes In Flash
That's the problem. Some indie artits may do this, but not nearly enough, due to Apple's approval process. Most actually are refused as you mentioned, and this is why itunes is not a viable option for unsigned musicians, as many sites are not. The industry is catered to major label musicians, and FCC regulation stricken. It does not meet the needs of the unsigned musician. Checkout Pandora's plight.

http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/the-tech-observer/2008/...

http://blog.pandora.com/pandora/archives/2009/07/important_u...

http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/07/14/pandora-teams-up-with-r...
Perl: No Applications for Normal Users
Pyntch - Python type checker / source code analyzer
You can buy datasets, or you can go for free stuff, for instance:

http://biz.swcp.com/stocks/
Ask HN: what do you use to calcluate sales tax? 
hey, so I'm thinking about going retail and selling high-ram servers. this means I've gotta screw with sales tax, a irritating job because sales tax often varies by county. amazon claims they will do it for 2.2% for my expected volume.<p>experiences with the amazon payments system? other ideas?
Monopoly City Streets
Eval() Isn't Quite Pure Evil
I have a feeling that I ran into Randall on the train in Tokyo last week. There was a guy that was wearing a shirt that said "XKCD" and I said "I like your shirt."

He just said thanks, and something about his expression made me wonder if it was him. It didn't dawn on me until after he stepped off.

I could be wrong (obviously wrong if he wasn't in Japan last week :-) ) but it sure did look like him.
Countdown app challenge for DevDays
I'd bet there's something like that in the Facets lib already.
I chose Linode because they offer 32-bit kernels. This means that Rails processes use up less memory. Their documentation isn't as good as Slicehost's and they currently don't have a backup service.
sysadmin duties is not always a full-time job. I have a single server in production (4 cores, 8GB, RAID-1). I own it and pay a reasonably-low monthly fee to run it at a good data center through a small provider that has solid skills to back me up if I run into something out of my league.

I spent some time installing and configuring it. I documented my install very well. I rarely touch it now. Backups are automated. It runs smooth. If I do have trouble, I have my docs to go back to. Most likely any trouble will be hardware failure. That's the biggest risk of running your own server and only having one. So far, its been 4 years in operation and has more than paid for itself. I have horsepower, memory, and disk space to spare.

At this point, if I had a hardware failure expensive enough that caused me to want to toss the server and start over, I could be back up on something new in a day thanks to my trusty docs. So far, 4 years, zero downtime!! The last year, I spend about 2 hours a month doing sysadmin stuff.
Learning. Even when building, I'm mostly inspired by the possibility of learning. Because usually the first time you built it kind of crooked. The next time it'll be a little straighter. The next time perhaps there will even be a touch of elegance in one miniscule part.

I find programming very much like practicing an instrument. There's the dim hope that one day you'll master it. But trying your best and learning is more than satisfying/inspiring for me anyway.
My only complaint about the iPhone alarm is that I really, really wish it had a setting for how many minutes ’snooze’ is. When I hit snooze I always want to sleep for another half hour, not nine minutes.
The same statement can be flame-bait or a spark for thoughtful discussion, depending on the presentation and participants.

Stated without nationalistic puffery, "According to a respected economic measure (purchasing-power parity), Mississippi produces more, per-capita, than almost any country in Europe", among the right audience, is a very interesting thing to talk about.

Let's choose to see it as an invitation to subtle discussion among respectful participants, rather than patriotic pissing.
I think the novelty of the concept plays a large part in his success too though. It's like the million dollar home page - some ideas only work once because it's the story that is being sold. Second servings won't get as much attention. I would love to be proved wrong though. Maybe that could be your angle.
Transmission hangs on close for me, and I'm running 10.5.
It sounds like you are whining about Wordpress, rather than just commenting on the article.

Microsoft Research did a lot of work on Haskell. Does the multitude of Windows viruses make you not want to use Haskell? Probably not. It just doesn't matter.
uh, there's some perl CPAN modules that do that. a long time ago I wrote a little thingr to simulate 'if my program had been buying/selling stocks in this manner from date x to date y, at commission z, how much would I make/lose?' - I used the CPAN modules which pulled from yahoo, I think. it was pretty simple stuff.

ah yes, here:

Finance::QuoteHist

http://search.cpan.org/~msisk/Finance-QuoteHist-1.12/lib/Fin...

check it out. if you don't like perl, I'm sure you can pull it apart and figure out where it gets the data.
I was fond of tradition is not a business model. Newspapers have all the advantages but use none of them.You don't think Gannett couldn't crush Craig's List in their home markets? They're so afraid of losing their classifed business they won't do it - even though it's already 80% gone.
What I meant (and said) is that many users will not use the site because it requires registration.
Filled it out 3 times for the 3-ish different scm+teams I work with.
IBM tool eases JavaScript development
MF Bliki: FeatureBranch
If it's true than it's pretty hilarious. Karma might just have bitten back. I wonder how much they went for?

Also why wouldn't Intellectual ventures have just inherited of them? Seems like they would be perfect people to do the evil deed.
I guess that any seasoned programmer would be well-aware of the printf notation (%.2f) and would immediately guess that % must be a printf operator in this language.

I love using printf all the time in my programs and it is one of my litmus tests for a new language - does it have easy quick access to sprintf? (Java failed this test)
Just past Chestnut Hill, actually.
Psychology of Human Mating lecture on Economics of Love
50 Cent Shares His Attitude Toward Investing
You probably win because your patent has broad claims covering all 40 hour batteries. It does not matter that I know how to make them and you don't.
Another good one, keep on trucking Andrew!
The only thing missing from eval() is a keyboard shock to the programmer who tries to put a GOTO inside of it.
That's more motivation or responsibility than inspiration. But I use that technique too and it does work in many cases.
Beware: You will probably lose your Visual Voicemail.

But that's okay: Try using PhoneGap instead. Works well for me; it sends transcribed voicemail messages to your e-mail.
Well, conference slides and large-scale applications are two different things. The advantage of the MOP manipulation is that it's composable. If you want to add another function to the module, you just call a method. If you want to make the process configurable, you take a callback as an argument and call it as you are building the module. It's just programming.

eval, on the other hand, is limited to whatever string the programmer types in. This may be shorter for a conference slide, but probably more painful in Real Software.
The packaging isn't the most important part - it's just his value-add. The packaging makes that stuff viable as a collectable, but the real draw is the nostalgia value. For example he's selling "Opening Day at New Yankee Stadium" garbage, which could potentially mean a lot to a baseball fan.
Unfortunately, I suspect that there is too much incentive to "make observation fit one's expectations" in these fields. Conversely, what purpose does non-scientific quantum physics serve? Beyond weaseling more research money, pretty much nothing. But making economics and sociology say things that aren't held up by observation can, and most often does, lead to vast political and social change.
Is it just me or does the closure version read more clearly?
Why doesn't HN use markdown?
inspiration? or motivation?

I find that inspiration mostly makes me daydream of all the wonderful things I'm "going to do".

I find I usually need motivation to get them done. I find that precursors to motivation, for me, are be happy and get a good nights sleep.

[EDIT] let me add more to the "be happy" issue. It doesn't well describe things. Software is never "finished". One technique I have learned to coupe with this un-motivating feel of something never being done is to find simple things that give me pleasure that have a fixed ending. For dinner tonight I made a tasty hand crafted sandwich. It took 10 minutes to make and 10 to eat. I enjoyed it and felt satisfaction for a job well done. Then I went back upstairs and was productive. Some people find jogging or other exercise a great method. It has a clear ending and you feel good.
I agree with only some of the points in this essay. I think that the assumption of efficiency is overstretched. I think that the demonstration that wealth is created is overstretched.

The reaction between these imperfections (people who have become very rich by participating in imperfect markets) creates a hole. It is this hole that people react to. Even if markets were perfect, wealth creation is not often dependant to factor that people can control. A factory worker in Japan is more productive then one in Burma for reasons completely outside his sphere of influence. Similarly a 8th century peasant's wealth was generated by him from the land. But, the great variations in wealth of peasants probably had more to do with how much & how good the land was then how hard or how skilfully they worked. Wealth generation does not mean a meritocracy.

On the other hand, wealth is something that is created. That is something not enough people grasp. This essay actually got me thinking at the very start in the comment about children.

Likewise, it doesn't occur to most kids that wealth is something that has to be generated. It seems to be something that flows from parents.

That is something that many parents would react to. "Children need to be taught the value of money. They need to learn that money must be earned." They then set up chores or encourage kids to work and earn money. This is to set them straight. That is a fundamental mistake. It leaves out wealth generation. It encourage them to think that they are entitled to their share if...
I'm sorry, I mistated, the author forgat to specify what he meant by 'Lisp' before writting a page and a half on it. He did get around to it near the end of the article when all of the laypeople left confused about Lisp.
> What wasn't okay was that you ignored his entire point for the sake of stating your beliefs.

I replied to his iPhone related points first. Both of them.

> not the original post, mind you, but the follow-up.

When I posted the follow-up the original was at -4 votes in less than an hour on the first post. The vote-down to view ratio must have been off the charts. I was responding to the down voters. I know it is uncool and all to do this but I guess it must have had an effect.

The analogy here is this (in fifties southern US)

- Somebody makes a causally racist comment.

- I mention in my response that I disagree.

- Others express strong but inarticulate disapproval for my comment.

- I respond directly and unambiguously why I think racism is wrong.

- People seem a little less sure of themselves Re the first comment but they are really pissed at me.

- Our hero comes along and chides me for causing such a fuss in a rambling speech.

- The crowd erupts into applause. They didn't understand most of the speech or really care about what was said. But there brief encounter with the morality of their lives is over for now. And the person who has caused them discomfort has been put in their place without them (the crowd) having to articulate their own prejudices.
I've considered becoming a patent lawyer for precisely this trend. It is a type of investment vehicle that will get much more notice in the future and subsequently make a few billionaires along the way.
There's nothing there...this feels like spam.
If they have a better spell checker, why tie it to a particular editor/web site?
Very surreal. I don't know if anyone here knows, but Curtis Jackson started out in life as a drug dealer.
Without knowing how much MS sold them for, there's another possibility.

"We don't want to sue Linux, but we want to make them pay...Hmmm, what if we 'auction' these patents, knowing they're of most value to OIN etc so a related organisation will pay top dollar."

It's probably not as much money as a massive lawsuit, but it's much cleaner, and doesn't tarnish the reputation or line lawyer pockets.
Sigh. Him again.

Yes, he's unfortunately worth reading, for the drama and stimulation and calling attention to things that are known but not always fully appreciated. But I wish he wasn't worth reading.

His hero Mandelbrot on the other hand? A real scholar with radical ideas, not a provocateur.

The important ideas in his book are well known by thinkers, if not all practitioners, in the fields he criticizes. But, oh, the insults! And so much of what he says is "Such and such models have flaws! Throw them away and do nothing at all until you have perfect models!" That's not terribly useful if you are, say, running an insurance firm. Or doing science.

Anyway, here's the issue of American Statistician duly taking him to task on the technicalities, though unfortunately without the bombast and mud-slinging.

http://pubs.amstat.org/toc/tas/61/3

Also could somebody explain to me why hacker types like to name-check Popper but never Kuhn? Is it because the Star Trek TNG episode with the Binars actually got it right?
I didn't get that at all -- perhaps because I'm a young guy, I saw it as a cautionary tale for me.

"Cautionary tale" is not "whiner." It's not "bad crap happened to me" at all; in fact, that was the whole point of his story (don't just "let" things collapse around you in order to return some kind of predictability and order to a situation you're too weak to handle).

I saw it as a "learn from my mistake" post. Those are invaluable; I'd rather learn from his mistake than my own.

I understand you when you say "It's unimportant what you overcame in the past." Fair enough.

To extend it, though, and say "What happened in the past is unimportant" is to say "I'll cheerfully repeat the mistakes I and others have made," which is hardly a recipe for success.

Learn from history so as not to repeat it. All win, no lose.

He told his story, described his (unwise, etc) decisions us to learn from, and did it with helicopters and forward recon to boot.
Here's how I gain respect as a programmer. I complete my work on time, I do brilliant work, I don't abide cheesehead managers wanting to set unrealistic schedules, and I maintain a certain level of deliberate eccentricity to keep everyone guessing. Now, nobody wants to piss me off because they're too afraid I'll quit and leave everyone in a lurch. How you are perceived in your career is entirely up to you.
I've added a note at the top disambiguating the term too. Thanks for the feedback. :-)