skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
When half of your initiative involves reading the man pages for Amazon and Google's public cloud programs, I say it's pretty easy to call that a "launch." :-)

In seriousness, though, the program launched today, not the cloud computers. Government launches are much different than biz launches.
Amen. I don't use Ruby, but I find great use for this feature in C and Python.
Now he starts having ideas. I did not hear him make a peep when the largest and most problematic of these banks (Citigroup) was created and when they had to have a complete overhaul of the nations banking laws to create that particular bank. No, he actively supported the new laws intended to create citigroup and which also resulted in another bunch of oversized financial institutions including AIG.

And later he guaranteed bank profits by lowering interest rates whenever banks were in just a little bit of trouble. The inevitable result was an asset bubble and rates so low that when we had an actual crisis, the fed could not do anything.

But now, when he is out of power, he finally figures out that the existence of banks that are so large and powerful that they can get the government to ensure their profitability might not be good for the free market after all. Good job!
imo if they do major "waterfall" releases every two months, they are probably doing it right and getting most of the benefits of "agile" development

Unfortunately, "agile" has become religion for a lot of people and sometimes, it is also an excuse for poor planning. Similarly the "waterfall" approach is sometimes used as an excuse for not making any decisions.

Ultimately, what matters is basic good development principles. "Agile" development has a lot of good practices and the so-called "waterfall" approach also has its benefits and the right approach is to use the most appropriate methods for the team. Getting hung up in terminology isn't going to help
I'm sorry but that's fucking retarded.
Jonah Lehrer: Smart Mice
I know confusing 'my equity value' with 'my sized slice of the pie' is very common among business owners (obviously not as much clearer among VCs as I would have expected).

If you're new to business, it's important to understand the difference between wanting "a business (pie) worth $xM" and wanting "to own (slice) $xM of a business". Especially when it comes to external support or funding, a smaller slice of a bigger business pie often comes as a revelation to people who had previously only thought about the pie.

Also recommend pg's article on the equity equation - http://www.paulgraham.com/equity.html
I'm still waiting for same month delivery. Standard shipping takes 18-32 business days. How hard is it to ship all packages to the bigger European countries, and then use the national one-day postal service? Not enough volume?
The Wolfram Alpha API Has Arrived
This was very interesting news for us. Especially since we have had a 'lite' version of our app (comicstrips) in review for a month. Now only if we could change our paid app to free!
Translation: Our manufacturers are getting desperate, and are about to subsidize and/or give away a metric assload of phones to a lot of people who are too cheap to buy your apps.
Nielson: Average American spends 68 hours online
the weird part is that during the "roll out", if you haven't been granted the ability to make lists, then you cannot look at other people's lists.

I am kinda confused about this concept of a "roll out" for a web application?
I have a hypothesis about this change: that in-app purchases were not, in fact, being adopted as rapidly as Apple hoped, and this is their response.

Adding free apps opens up a lot of new uses for in-app purchases, and should drive more usage.
1970s Recovery, But Global; Entrepreneurship & Innovation
Google to open digital book store next year with up to 600K titles
Wal-Mart tries to grab some book business from Amazon.com
Merit-Based Pay Cuts for Academics?
They don't even have Terrance Tao in the Math & Science blog list?
Why Texas Will Resist the Call for a Unified Smart Grid
Right you are - I actually copy-pasted it directly from the article. I had to go look, but it's wrong through the whole article.
The Soviets Built a Doomsday Machine. It’s Still Working.
Can you tell if a man is dangerous by the shape of his face?
We really appreciate that you've taken all the time to give us this feedback - if there's any duplication it just tells us that you're not the only one who feels that way :D

We've started the process of fully redesigning the site based on this feedback and the other great feedback from this thread. Hopefully we'll have something up in the next few days to reflect some of the great design feedback we've gotten here.

I think down the road we will probably remove some of the event focus from the front-page; our focus isn't as much event discovery as it is what happens when the event actually starts.

Thank you for taking the time to give us such in-depth feedback, it really gives us a lot to consider.
Our Dogs May Get Cancer Drugs Before We Do
Um. Amazon already do same-day deliveries in London and Birmingham in the UK. Have done for some time now.
Space, time, mass and ... consciousness?
I ended up doing it my own way using external javascripts :) it's amazing how you approach things when you are completely isolated from what everyone else is doing!
Wow! Thank you for the great feedback. We'll take care of all this. As you said, we removed the bars and it already looks better ;)

Your profile doesn't list your email. If it is okay with you, please send us an email [support@eventgel.com]. We'd like to get it touch with you to get your comments once we've taken care the points you mentioned.
John MacKay, CEO of Whole Foods, on Conscious Capitalism
We need new legislation to provide for a quick route out of bankruptcy for these financial institutions. Regulators should be able to declare a bank insolvent then -- overnight -- wipe out shareholder equity, convert debt and top up tier 1 capital.

For these institutions, a bankruptcy plan should be required like a fire escape plan is required.
Um... what? More of a villain than Bertrand Russell himself? I liked the vignette where Cantor was thrilled that Russell had destroyed set theory, as it fit into his current mental illness nicely.
You are annoyed at the fact that some people still like actual physical books, and decided to swear and snark about it. Neither of those responses are particularly appreciated here, although exceptions are often made if there is an actual point hiding behind the snideness. Alas, however, your point is something roughly along the lines of "people who have different aesthetic preferences[1] than I do are luddites and are holding us back, and attempting to provide them a product or service in exchange for money is stupid". You then go on to provide approximately no justification for your assertions.

I didn't vote you down, incidentally, but I suspect that probably is a rough summary of why some people did.

[1] I'm speaking of the aesthetic preference for physical books over digital ones, here.
Companies Making Fuel From Algae Now
Google's profits were up 27% (as reported today) while Nokia was reporting a loss. I doubt anyone on this site finds this surprising.

Google is doing what Google does, which is to say it brings its services to users and users use them. And all of it is subsidized by advertising.

Google is playing a different game, and until someone starts challenging them they're going to continue to be adopted as the platform of choice for every market they're in. The only exception: Facebook.
Read it, highly recommended. Loved it.
Right... the reason XP has hung on so strongly is that it was finally a Microsoft OS that did what most people wanted without crashing or locking up all the time. When you have a stable OS that meets your needs, why change (especially if you are a business and you need to justify expenses with a bit more of a rationale than "ooh, that's pretty, I want it"
Cannot wait to get this feature. I've been using TweetDeck's groups and column sync to achieve this but the TweetDeck iPhone app is just so bad compared to something like Tweetie. If I can get TweetDeck on the desktop and Tweetie on the iPhone to share the same lists I'll be ecstatic.
You mean while it's recharging? ;)

My grandparents had this old rotary dial phone, it was black (available in one color!), metal and heavy, really built like a tank. The dial itself was metal and hard to move, and the finger holes weren't beveled so they were sharp and it actually hurt a little to dial the phone.

Eventually they ordered some new service and Bell (remember?) made them turn in the phone.
P41 Studios Redesigns
Force focusing users with animated gifs. Completely modular layout. We love you guys (the public).
Well, they released it to some more users, but I'm not sure you can say they "began the rollout". Atleast that's not how one of their dev puts it. http://twitter.com/nk/status/4900447414
A good marketer is just as hard to find as a good engineer. And it's more than just knowing some subject matter. There's almost an instinct about it. Marketing isn't just like learning another programming language, it's like learning another discipline. It would be like being asked to learn psychology. Sure, your engineer could probably get a basic proficiency in a few months, but real skill comes from years of practice.

The best team is probably one of each, as a good engineer and a good marketer will both have their own strengths and know when to defer to the other for their weaknesses.
I think such vehicles have tremendous military potential, particularly in urban environments, depending on how well one can meet the challenges of energy storage. I also think there's tremendous potential in police work and search and rescue.

Also, given the success of shows like Battlebots, I think there's some good potential for video media. The requirements for flying platforms to be lightweight versus the need to to be durable would make a flying robot combat show very interesting.
Thanks, I must be in a bad mood.

(I just caught swine flu and I am now a pariah)

Anyway, I love physical books, especially since I go through most books with two different colored pens. I know the value of having something physical.

But I see how random the rage must have been in this topic. I should probably hold myself back here and wait for a better context to explain my thoughts.

See you around.
I'd love to see AMQP support. It's listed as "SOON".

I'd like some way of having one hanging request talk to another. A crude way of doing "long polling" I suppose.

How would you implement two-player chess on Heroku for instance in its current form?
The profitable business of taking money from startups
"...You don’t create something new by getting a history lesson in a crowded room."
Charging developers to try out your API. Questionable. If anything, don't they want to do everything they possibly can to attract developers?
The only exception: Facebook.

let's wait for google wave to grow up.
Your right it is better to use a check. In the event of a fraudulent check you are liable for $0, if you report it within 30 days of your statement same time period for credit cards. More than thirty days latter you split the responsibility with the bank, for credit cards it is your problem. The bank that cashed the check is on the hook for the funds in the case of check fraud.
Time for a Real World Linux/Apache - IIS Comparison
Beware boring the smart kids
Nice, what is missing is a way to have vim (or a decent approximation) in every text area, embedded

This sounds like something OS X or another ambitious and slick operating system should provide: the ability to use the text editing engine of your choice in every textarea on your machine.
Refactoring as rewriting
How timely!

Just yesterday, an Illinois Department of Transportation crew discovered one of these tunnels was underneath I-90 (Kennedy Expressway), in the heart of the interchange downtown where everything converges.

In an preventative effort to keep that tunnel from collapsing they pumped concrete into the tunnel...and managed to buckle the pavement above, cripping the evening rush hour. The emergency repair is done...for now.
Secure Web Mashups - wheres the API?
I hope that this was done with a C compiler that can target Javascript!
I don't know why you'd want to do them, but isn't it awesome that you can?

I like that sentiment, especially if it's tempered with not actually doing any of them until you run into a legitimate use case.

But in the meantime, finding weird corner cases seems very hacker-ish to me. It may not make any sense to me, but someone else may look at the article and say to themselvs, "aha!" and they may discover a new way to do something.

I can't help but think that Symbol#to_proc probably looked just as weird the first time it was explained to someone: When the interpreter sees &, it sends the #to_proc method to its subject and converts the result to a block. So if we implement a #to_proc method for Symbol we can use &method_name instead of writing out a block...

All that being said, I have no idea what you've been reading lately, so maybe it really is the worst you've encountered. Under the circumstances, I won't actually disagree with you, just share my own perspective :-)
I would expect with all the revelations lately about Microsoft's behavior that a lot of the Windows Mobile licensees to take a look at coming out with an Android phone (since they cannot license Web OS or iPhone OS).
I paid AUS$9 this morning for a game, and I'm much happier to do that (pay upfront) than to keep being asked for $1 every few levels
> The only exception: Facebook.

To provide a little context, Googles revenue in the UK alone was $200 million more than Facebook's highest revenue reports ($500 million).

http://investor.google.com/releases/2009Q3_google_earnings.h...

On earnings calls, every quarter, the report on revenue growth is centered around various metrics with search advertising. Search advertising continues to be the most profitable form of advertising on the web. Facebook has impressive statistics, but I don't see them challenging Google in any one of Google's core businesses. When Facebook becomes a public company and matures more and has a solid way of generating revenue then they might be in a position to challenge Google.
At the cost of devastating the economy for possibly a decade or more, sure, that's a fine way to do things.

Something like a proper second depression, with a collapse in confidence in almost all banks resulting in massive hoarding, head up north of 20% unemployment. Perhaps we could throw in a world war too.
That is the first thing I noticed also. the pricing is non-trivial to. $60 for 1k/day requests? damn
Without support for Javascript, CSS, and HTML I don't see how this can be useful.
Normal and Inverse Network Effects for Linked Data
ActuallyHard, The Wave-Based Search Engine
Wow, Greenspan just won a bunch of points in my book.

> while “just really arbitrarily breaking down organizations into various different sizes” goes against his philosophical leanings, something must be done to solve the too-big-to-fail issue.

I have the same sentiments.

> “Failure is an integral part, a necessary part of a market system,”

I agree.

> “If you start focusing on those who should be shrinking, it undermines growing standards of living and can even bring them down.”

I think his proposal is one we should act on.
"'If you go to either of the other two grids you've got to get 20-something state utility commissions to agree on something,' B.J. Stanbery, the founder of the Austin-based solar manufacturer HelioVolt, says. 'In Texas, we've only got one to persuade. Now, that's a big benefit.' As a result, Texas has, in very short order, erected enough wind turbines to become the national leader in wind-energy production--by a wide margin."

It was surprising to learn this fact in the article about how the regulatory environment influences innovation in energy production. I expected a completely different spin from the article title.
Principles to make a website design look great
Ask HN: Do you have a yearly plan for your SaaS app?
Just curious about this one.

I ran a yearly plan test for a month. My findings were that this actually made for fewer conversions on the plans page, I assume because of the paradox of choice - people didn't know what to go for (the yearly plan was much better value than the monthly plan) and simply gave up trying to choose.

So I got rid of the yearly plan.

The irony of course is that the handful of customers who did choose the yearly plan actually contributed to one of my best months in terms of revenue.

Has anyone run tests like this? What were your findings?
> I would expect with all the revelations lately about Microsoft's behavior...

What, in particular, are you talking about?
For internal economic reasons, Texas may not want to export electricity. To do so would bring it under federal regulation, and additional taxes.

This reminds me of Andy Grove's article http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07.... Most thought-provoking was about foreign dependence: Electricity can be transported only over land. Consequently, it will stay in (or stick to) the continent where it is produced.
It seems to me that their plan was to build the product and than sell it, to someone big, to integrate with something else. It's like they don't care a lot about adding new features or things like that, like they don't care about modern or old techniques. Just build it.
I forgot to ask. When is that value "full-time" and what should happen before then?

While this whole line of disucssion has been about "code", I'm interested in how things might be different when for "not software" products.
The Air Force is also building similar aircrafts but ignoring the mechanics of flight and concentrating more now on detecting airborne things (smoke, chemicals, etc)
California already has an unemployment rate of around 25%- among 18-25 year olds.

In fact, if we still calculated unemployment like they did in the thirties - we're ahead of the Great Depression's schedule by about four years (we have the same - adjusted for rule changes enacted by jfk to make the nation's numbers look better - unemployment rate now, one year into the 'recession' As was had five years after the great crash that preceeded the Great Depression)

food for thought. (I'm mobile at the moment, or I'd provide sources)
And the truth of that statement is not bank-specific.

For example, it applies to financial regulators and even govts....
The GFW is implemented on the backbone Internet of China, you are suggesting taking down the whole country's network.

Also there are thousands 'cyberpolice' for each province and city lurking on public Internet every hour looking for possible crimes, it's hard to organize an effective attack.
Yet again I wonder who pays all these money for iPhone ads. That is something on the order of a $15 CPM for showing ads to whining anti-commercial (if fairly affluent) users.

Anyhow, I think you'll find that pathological users (i.e. ones who complain about ads) will not be improved by being told they have to pay money to play. They hate that notion, too, almost more than they hate your ads. If you switch to a free trial model, they'll hate that, too. They're unwilling to pay any price for your application.

This is one reason why I don't write software for these people.
The prices seem insanely high, and the most expensive plan also has a bizarre structure (http://products.wolframalpha.com/api/pricing.html). After you pass your initial 10 million request quota, the per request price is higher than during the quota! This means if you're doing 50 million requests, it's cheaper to buy 5 API keys w/10 million requests than to have one API key doing all 50 million. I would've expected that Wolfram encourage higher usage w/deeper discounts especially when you reach the top, not until you reach the top.

I also wonder if ~6 cents/request is supply and demand or maybe gree, or if the system is so complex and sophisticated that they actually need to charge that much to pay for the computational requirements.
Care to be more specific? What happens normally that failed to happen here & why.
The Incredible Shrinking Venture Industry
How long did you run the test for? The reason I ask is I pay monthly for backpack (37signals) and after 4 months I'm considering a yearly plan. 37signals offer a lump sum option which to me is an even better option.

tl;dr: New signups may like the yearly plan after a few months, and lump sum payments (maby with varied discounts) may be something to consider.
They have temporary free plans called Pioneer Grants but you have to "discuss your application" with a representative. Oh silly wolfram, wasn't it enough to see microsoft learn a lesson the hard way from google?
I don't understand why he had any need for this anyway. If he sold the shares along with the associated liabilities, why would he have any liabilities at all in Australian Style Investments?
Not necessarily their money (by which, yes, I mean their funds under management).

Not even necessarily any VC's money, since any money will do.

The problem is their model is close to the only game in town, though that's changing very slowly.
The Sauce labs guys assume you have already recorded the script. With go-test.it you have a firefox extension that does the recording and uploading of scripts. Jason Huggins doesn't have a good opinion about recorders/IDEs. Selenium is very developer focussed (As JH himself said at one of his talks),but most testers don't code. Go-test.it seems to be based on Selenium and focussed on the average tester. I know for a fact that there are large companies that are willing to pay for this kind of product.

Update #1: Saucelabs records the video of tests which go-test.it currently doesn't seem to do.
$60 for 1000 requests just for protyping and personal use? Do they actually want anybody to use their product?
Why doe the limited partnership pay the annual fee of $800
but not a general parnership?
awesome, cause the gov is really efficient </sarcasm >
In-App Purchase now available for free apps
They would be fools to say anything else. What platform owners trying to attract developers would ever say, 'Our prospects look grim'?

Not to say android won't continue to grow. Not to say they won't explode. Just to say, why would you put any stock in what Schmidt says? It's like asking Steve Jobs if his next product is going to be amazing, or a Goldman Sachs executive if he deserves his compensation.
He did apologize profusely and say that his beliefs had been proven irrevocably wrong. I'm willing to cut the guy some slack, even if he did fuck up on a level most people aren't allowed to fuck up on.
no leiter report?
No Russ Altman either.
I find it amusing that they actually seem to think $60 is the right price point for "students, hobbyists, individual developers". How out of touch with the community can you get.

Looking at their visitor stats (http://siteanalytics.compete.com/wolframalpha.com/) I'd guess they have unused capacity for at least 2MM queries a month if back in May each visitor was hitting it twice. I don't get the impression they are using an infrastructure that they only pay for on demand.

If they want anyone to use their API (or their service as a whole) they should give away at least 1000 queries a month to the first 2000 developers that sign up.
Ask HN: Top submissions by day/ week
Hi all, I remember a site which displayed popular top posts broken down by day and week. Is this still around?
Better to admit his mistakes than never to. Nearly all government officials make mistakes. What fraction admit them? Whatever minuscule n% do, he's in the (100-n)th percentile.
It is useful but crippled, as others said in the comments.
He sounds to me like a predatory, sociopathic parasite. Perfect for Wall Street! :)