skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The general theme on the comments so far is that the homepage is not descriptive enough to entice anyone here to sign-up. It seems to be a consensus so far, so we will definitely go back to drawing board with the homepage design. I'm glad, however, that people feel that at least the general design is nice. I would definitely appreciate the same level of incisive feedback on the product itself, as opposed to just the homepage design, but I guess I can't get there until the homepage is redone.

Just to give everyone a datapoint, to-date we have about 30,000 registered users, so the current survey style homepage has been somewhat effective at piquing people's curiosity. We actually modeled our homepage off of hunch.com, a company that we really respect.
"engineer". Otherwise, very nicely put together, I feel.
How could this be done online. What approaches/forms could this take on Myspace, facebook, ect?

I love this comment. Yes, I wonder how we could find some way to share music, for free, on the Internet.
Oh, and don't forget RubyInline. This guy posted a nice article on his blog: http://coreyhoffstein.com/2009/06/16/sorting-with-ruby-rubyi...
So you didn't like number portability very much then? Or shared access to DSL lines?
We used route-me, since with mapkit we wouldn't have been able to draw tracks or download tiles for offline use.
"The greatest human being who ever lived" has died
As far as where the title reference comes from - Norman Borlaug on Penn and Teller: BS - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIvNopv9Pa8
Agreed.

It's not clear of the OP knows what "anthropomorphic" means. It's not the same as "anthropic".

The anthropic principle is actually an explanation for the irrational amazement he's complaining about.
You're exactly right (though I'm no expert). SLRs use contrast detection focusing. I have no idea how you could detect a CCD at any point in space all around you for the tiny fraction (1/1000 wouldn't be uncommon outdoors on a sunny day) of a second that it's exposed, _and_ react to it in that same time span. Sounds to me like someone just scammed a rich idiot out of a bunch of money.
>> "at they can now comfortably browse the Internet while sitting on the john"

That's what a netbooks for, and better than a tablet, you can put it on your lap and have 2 hands free to operate it.

I use my Macbook on the toilet, in bed, on the sofa etc all the time and have never thought "hey I wish this didn't have a keyboard, and I wish I had to hold the screen with one hand and try to type one handed on the other on the screen"
Hey CGH,

Thanks for your comments. I've thought about each of these issues:

1 & 2) We want to market the app to anyone who wants to take a track. It being for hikers is a nice bonus, but in our experience, the market isn't big enough. We have a fairly successful app called TrailBehind just for hikers, but we hope people use this for cars, road-biking, etc.

Note that we did have art for this app that was for hikers - just like www.trailbehind.com - but we changed it for a broader appeal.

3. We are better than Motion X for the following reasons:

- we have MyTopo maps

- we have far more complete waypoint search

- I would argue our GUI is simpler

- on things like track accuracy and batter consumption, we are equal if not better
I modified the title to Anthropic on the post and here.
I heard that as well from a couple profs of mine, doesn't mean it's true but it sounds reasonable.
I meant anthropic, and have changed the post and link title.
I see this thread is still quite active. I was just at the behavorial genetics journal club meeting at the University of Minnesota

http://www.psych.umn.edu/courses/fall09/mcguem/psy8935/defau...

today, and I had occasion there to hear Tom Bouchard, indisputably one of the leading experts on human behavioral genetics research, say that the number-one thing to tell members of the general public who read about this research is "correlation does not imply causation." The simple blunder of assuming that phenomena with some kind of positive correlation are in a cause-effect relationship is one of the most enduring cognitive biases in human thinking, and the bias doesn't appear to be any less frequent in high-IQ persons, nor does it appear to go away even after student receive statistical education.
I thought this was going to be a post about people who over-use "Information wants to be free/anthropomporphized." That would have been worth reading, perhaps.

Clearly NHN
Does anyone know what the top right logo is based on?
No, it can't. I am doing research on medical robotics/robotic analogs for surgical practice. Psychologically you can't create the same feelings when the people know it is fake.
This has been a personal bugbear of mine for a while. The anthropic principle is science's equivalent of the "God did it" card and is invoked anytime people test the limits of existing models.

Take for example this extract from the wiki article(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle)

Roger Penrose explained the weak form as follows:

"The argument can be used to explain why the conditions happen to be just right for the existence of (intelligent) life on the earth at the present time.
For if they were not just right, then we should not have found ourselves to be here now, but somewhere else, at some other appropriate time.
This principle was used very effectively by Brandon Carter and Robert Dicke to resolve an issue that had puzzled physicists for a good many years.
The issue concerned various striking numerical relations that are observed to hold between the physical constants (the gravitational constant, the mass of the proton, the age of the universe, etc.).
A puzzling aspect of this was that some of the relations hold only at the present epoch in the earth's history, so we appear, coincidentally, to be living at a very special time (give or take a few million years!).
This was later explained, by Carter and Dicke, by the fact that this epoch coincided with the lifetime of what are called main-sequence stars, such as the sun.
At any other epoch, so the argument ran, there would be no intelligent life around in order to measure the physical constants in question-so the coincidence had to hold, simply because there would be intelligent life around only at the particular time that the coincidence did hold!"
The Emperor's New Mind, Chapter 10

Rather than create a model of how this coincidence occurs, it is simply ignored as "well it had to occur or we couldn't talk about it". For example, this coincidence may occur because we somehow derive our relational understandings and measurements from universal constants in the first place.

You can certainly derive something from the fact that we (life) exist but when you explain away observations with a simple "well we couldnt be here to talk about it otherwise" you are implying one of the following:

1. There is a design to the universe

2. The universe as it is is inevitable

3. Every possible combination of variables has existed or does exist and we are simply the result of the law of large numbers.

Either way there is some burden of proof.
Any universe in which I win powerball 10 times in a row will be suited to me winning powerball 10 times in a row.

I can't claim "isn't it suprising that I won powerball 10 times in a row" because anyone who can say it, can say it :)
You can't trust a tortured brain: Neuroscience discredits coercive interrogation
Yes, the weak anthropic principle as originally formulated by Carter is just this:

"We must be prepared to take account of the fact that our location in the universe is necessarily privileged to the extent of being compatible with our existence as observers."

This is obviously true - we don't inhabit a random location in the universe, which is mostly empty space. We inhabit a rather unusual location, planet Earth. There's nothing particularly mysterious about this.

What I take from the WAP is that it's possible there are vast swathes of reality that we can't possibly observe, because observers can't exist there.
Indeed. I think the ML languages have a lot of ideas that should see more widespread use, but the community (with exceptions, naturally) seems to be more motivated by reputation within academia than on blogs and other open discussions. That's their prerogative, I guess, but it does mean that little activity around ML is visible outside certain circles.

I'm curious about writing interpreters / compilers in Prolog (another language that seems particularly suited to prototyping them), as well, but I've already got plenty of projects.
See, I read that to make sure I wasn't crazy, and I just didn't see the distinction.

I want to be clear: you're saying it's totally safe to get an MRI or a full body scan or whatever else as a totally elective procedure?
Facebook’s Farmville set to become most popular application
While I've used exotic names before, I prefer descriptive names, like web1, web2, db1, dev. etc..

When I'm ready to reboot a machine or drop a table, I like to see 'DEV' on the hostname and not 'DB1'...
GIS on Rails
I get checkup MR scans every 6 months. I ask for copies for my images on CD. I have never had a place reject but some charge you an out of pocket 10-20$
Can't help thinking that killer drones will get quite affordable soon.
Ok, but when it's real and people tell you that they're beyond their limit, in some fields, pushing further is a bad idea. Piloting, mountaineering and surgery come to mind immediately.
(0 unread) Yahoo Mail, akinyoakinpelu
What country does better?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=835559
I use my macbook in bed all the time, or on the kitchen table, with no problems at all
What about Summer of Code? http://code.google.com/soc/

"Since its inception in 2005, the program has brought together nearly 2500 successful student participants and 2500 mentors from 98 countries worldwide"

What about http://code.google.com for free project hosting?

What about "Google has released well over a million lines of code and over 100 projects"? (from http://code.google.com/opensource/)

What about Chrome, Android and Andrew Morton?
The king went through a village and was amazed to see shooting targets painted everywhere - fences, walls, trees. Exactly in the middle of each target was an arrow.

"Wow, the greatest archer in the whole kingdom must live here" thought the King to himself. Soon he spotted a man carrying a bow and some arrows. Pointing to the targets and arrows the King asked the man "Have you shot all of them?". "Yes" replied the man. "How did you manage to do that?" "Simple" replied the man "It's not that hard if you shoot before painting the target."
> I think there should be some sort of requirement on those uploading to assert that they have the right to do so, and there should then be a means of pursuing those who upload material to which they have no rights.

Scribd actually does do this:

[] By checking this box, I agree that I understand the
Scribd Terms of Service and Copyright Policy and that
my uploading of this material complies with those
policies and does not violate anyone's rights.
Except that the argument is used as part of science not just religious discussions.
Here's a fun article from Calvin Trillin about an upset in the 2008 barbecue rankings that placed the best to the east of Austin:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/11/24/081124fa_fact_...
MySpace Becomes a Massive Twitter App
My little startup uses Starfleet ship names. There are a shocking number of names available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Starfleet_starships_ord...

A lot of the names tend to sound good as computer names. It's hard to talk about machines named Bart or Spock or Frodo without getting a little embarrassed (IMO). But a computer named 'reliant' or 'intrepid' is pretty sweet.
Ruby, DSLs and the learning curve that custom languages create
I think there is a valid argument that Scribd are simply hiding behind a legal loophole there.

I like the fact I can scrape things into Scribd from the web because it is a nice interface etc. And I think it's perfectly justified to ad-support that service. At that point they are an enabler, providing a service to view content similar to Adobe or Foxit browser plugins (i.e. a web version of such a plugin)

Where I think, personally, they crossed the line is in the fact that they scrape and store the document - what reason would they have, really, for doing that! And then they give you an API so sites can just set up the scrape for them automagically at the click of a URL - no need to ever go near the original source.

That's not just toying with copyright laws (however right or wrong they are) that just feels (to me) plain rude to anyone publishing a PDF of their content on the web :)

When I realised that I personally refuse to use/support Scribd.
The Illusions of Entrepreneurship (book)
I read this a couple months back, it's a good data-based discussion of entrepreneurship. Not all of it is applicable but there are enough useful parts for it to be worth a read (in particular ch. 7 "What Makes Some Entrepreneurs More Successful Than Others?").<p>Links:<p>http://books.google.com/books?id=MyNmK9lcvugC&printsec=frontcover<p>http://www.amazon.com/dp/0300113315/
Wait I think I misinterpreted both of or you just switched sides.

samh is now for the anthropic principle (things are the way they are because they are).

while gort is now against the anthropic principle (you can't assume existence is necessary, so explain why we are here).
Yeah I agree with you, I think I misunderstood you. See my other comments in this thread.
Yes, that seems to be the case for military use:

"The JD-3 laser dazzler is mounted on the Chinese Type 98 main battle tank. It is coupled with a laser radiation detector, and automatically aims for the enemy's illuminating laser designator, attempting to overwhelm its optical systems or blind the operator. The ZM-87 Portable Laser Disturber is a Chinese electro-optic countermeasure laser device. It can blind enemy troops at up to 2 to 3 km range and temporarily blind them at up to 10 km range."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzler_%28weapon%29

Though there was also a bizarre spy incident with Russian "merchant" ship blinding US & Canadian helicopter-surveillance operators where it's not clear if they used laser range-finding:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strait_of_Juan_de_Fuca_laser_in...
We started using names of cheeses. I think the length of this list was the reason: http://www.cheese.com/all.asp
No. I Don’t Design Logos – Typographic Poster for Free Download
For internal servers we name them after hot girls: kaila, tila, evelyn, jenna, etc. You can always be assured a steady stream of hot women in the world.

For production: db1, web1, balancer1, etc.
Ancestry is objective. Race is subjective. There is a many-to-many relationship between the two. If people say you're black, then you're black. Different groups may come to different conclusions on what your race is depending on varying social norms. If you disagree with this, then you're not using "race" in the same way that the rest of country is.
De facto or de jure?

De facto, tons of countries won't notice if you live and work in the country while on a tourist visa. You just need to take a trip out of the country every 90 days and get a new tourist visa to come back.
That sounds like years of litigation nightmare waiting to happen.
Agreed, this description makes no sense. If you're talking about a point & shoot camera, or any camera with a live preview where the CCD is continually exposed, then it might work. But a plain old SLR is going to expose its CCD for maybe 1/1000 of a second on a sunny day.

I have seen a system like this that worked by detecting flash photography, and firing a flash back at the source of the original flash. If you react quickly enough to a flash, you can blind the CCD while it's still exposed, ruining the image. Can't find the link right now. But if you don't use a flash, then that system doesn't work.
> I know the 37 Signals guys are anti-VC, but it is a real, lucrative, and demonstrable way to create wealth.

I think their point is exactly that it isn't. DHH gave a talk at Startup School 08 (http://www.omnisio.com/startupschool08/david-heinemeier-hans...) wherein he likened that kind of big exit to winning the lottery.

I think this is the point they're trying to make: you're much better off trying to build a business than to try to win the lottery.
Sony changes advert after complaints from Nigerian government | My Complaint
Do you know how unlikely you are to win 10 times in a row?
The odds of you winning 10 times in a row are exactly the same as the odds demonstrated by the results of the last 10 times powerball was run.

Do you find the results of last 10 powerball runs surprising?
Open Ph.D.: An Experiment in Higher Learning
WidgetPad - browser-based dev environment for html+js smartphone apps
My problem with Scribd is that anyone can violate copyright on Scribd, but only the victim (the copyright owner) has standing to report it. On their copyright page, you can submit a DMCA takedown request, but the sample notice starts with "I am the exclusive rights holder/duly authorized representative of the exclusive rights holder". What if I'm neither, but I am a random web surfer who knows that Scribd certainly shouldn't be publishing a PDF of a recent NYT bestselling book?

If any Joe has the ability to use Scribd to violate copyright, then any Jane should be able to have it taken down if she has compelling evidence it's a violation.
IQ has a heritability coefficient of between .5 and .8.

Kindly explain why that is at all relevant to the issue at hand. (Since you have been carrying on a conversation with another participant here as the thread has deepened, it might be a good idea to make clear just what point of his you were responding to with that point.)
Mitigate this by keeping redundant copies on multiple servers, avoiding having similar servers with largely the same set of chunks.
I don't think he was talking about living (or not living) somewhere based on HN but was looking for a more london focused online startup community.
i'm sure many startups rely on open-source projects that they don't bother mentioning. while i wouldn't call it nothing, libpurple is just a c library for abstracting IM protocols. there's still a lot of other work to be done to turn that into a fully scaled web service.
And 3/4 tongue in cheek. No need to get upset!
At a former workplace the theme was sci-fi authors. At one point I noticed that all the Windows and Linux boxen were named after men and the Macs after women, which seemed vaguely appropriate, so that became a further informal convention. Mostly the names were chosen arbitrarily, but we had a G4 iMac which was called 'shelley' for presumably non-arbitrary reasons.

For my personal machines I decided to implement the same male/female scheme but for a theme I am using 'people somehow associated with Pink Floyd' e.g. vera, torry, storm, mallet, emily. I used to joke that if Apple ever came out with an x86 Mac I would have to call it 'layne', but they did, and I realized that PF (to my knowledge) only ever did one song about a transvestite, so that would not be a sustainable convention. :)
It is? Why? What did I miss?
Like Phil says, there are plenty of places that will let you show up and start working immediately, off the books. One of those places is the United States, particularly in California.

If you're talking about legal immigration for purposes of work, however, I can't name a single place that would let you just show up and start working. The places with the easiest application process would likely be countries looking for English teachers from abroad (Japan, Korea, China), or places looking for cheap labor (formerly Dubai, Saudi Arabia, etc. getting Filipino, Pakistani and Indian laborers, or Cayman Islands seeking Jamaican workers).
The screwdriver is not "hampered by" its poor nail-driving capabilities.
IQ is a very good predictor of academic success and future income (.7 to .8 correlation).

I'm joining the call of another participant here for references to back up that statement.

There just isn't that much left to predict

This seems to be mistaking a statement about what is currently observed with a statement about what might be possible under experimental interventions. No one has shown what the maximum possible influence of other independent variables might be.

I'm going to bet that whatever he [Keith Stanovich] has defined as "critical reasoning" actually has a high correlation with IQ when measured.

You will lose the bet. He and other authors on cognitive psychology and behavioral economics have already repeatedly replicated the result that many forms of rationality have meager or no correlation with IQ. He cites the references in his book.
Can I ask you what particularly about the design you like? What part exactly is intriguing you? Clarity would be great so we can focus in on those areas. Thanks!
GREAT!!! now I can see how you dod that thing.
Unfortunately I can't carry a RMI machine every time I need, so I'll keep killing people.
Further, he's right that with a broken system, adding one more Rube Goldberg attachment won't help.
Rwanda braces itself for Broadband Internet
Im planning to move back to Bangalore to my roots. Anyone have an idea what the tech scene in Bangalore is ?
NetFlix Everywhere: Sorry Cable, You're History
That's true, you can. How many adults of 100 years ago have a legacy today without considering their kids? A few million? How many of 1000 years ago? Thousands, at most? Kids are more reliable than making the history books or being involved in building or monument that happens to stand for a while.
Many of the things on my list are actually indisputable facts. That they are true doesn't make them any less worthless to hear for the 100th time. This post actually says as much about me as it does about the conference itself. After four or five years of going to the same conference they tend to just run out of content.
Yeah, but I think his point is that the amount of money in your bank account is a direct result of your own choices and actions. And the fact that you have a kid is a result of your choices.

If you have a kid to feed and that’s constraining your ability to focus on a startup as you would like, maybe you shouldn’t have chosen to have a kid.
Thanks for getting back on my questions. Hope to see your app in the top 20.
That's a very interesting Freakonomics-ish experiment!
I've worked in a company where they left a fruit basket for people to pay whatever they wanted - the outcome of the fruit lady, in that case, was pretty good (people overpaid a lot).

In another company, the cleaning lady used to bring cookies. Until she stopped since people were not paying (and taking all the cookies)

Wonder if that's because people tend to pay for non-processed/industrialized goods (like eggs or fruits) but would rather steal processed goods (such as cookies)? Nah, disregard my theory... :-)
<blockquote>But if an upstart wanted to offer "free" broadband subsidized by sponsoring sites -- for example, a service offering 6Mbps to paying sponsor websites, 128Kbps to everyone else -- that'd be unfair discrimination, until sufficient lobbying/donations occur to get a favorable FCC ruling.</blockquote>

<p>Maybe we are missing out on that. But we're preventing Comcast from throttling the bandwidth on Youtube because they'd rather you buy the cable package. And given how few ISPs there are in this country, and how many businesses they're in, that's a pretty big danger already.</p>

<blockquote>each such new rule on broadband providers brings closer the day the FCC adds content-censorship rules to internet communications</blockquote>

<p>Does it really? It sounds more like the FCC is saying to the ISPs "what people do with their internet connections is none of your business." With the exception of the bit about copyright enforcement, of course. Which is a pretty big exception.</p>