skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The funny thing about the 5 star rating system is that it's completely the wrong model for many situations in which it's used. It originated from sites like slashdot where, because everyone had to read the same front page of content, it made sense to pick the content democratically using a five star system.

But, systems like netflix that use the five star rating system have it all backwards! Their goal should be to establish the niche genres that attract each user. This goal has nothing to do with brute popularity. Sure you want to assess how much someone likes a movie in order to steer them into the correct genre, but it doesn't make sense to attach an overall popularity rating to the movie.

Given a hugely diverse database such as the netflix movie library, it's ridiculous to assume that individuals will like things in proportion to the average popularity. That's not how taste works. And the weird thing is, there is no reason for these databases to constrain themselves to an averaged popularity index - they're just accustomed to the five star model is all. They should be using a micro-genre mapping scheme that steers you towards clusters of movies that have received attention from users with similar taste.

Meanwhile, by constraining your rating to a discrete number of stars (1,2,3,4, or 5) they are killing the quality of their sample. (See the jellybean guessing experiment in the link below..)

These algorithms should ditch their discrete-value database of how much users say they like something, and instead use some continuous measure of how much attention is spent on each item. Hell, some people love to watch crappy movies and write bad reviews for them. Anyway, for more on this rant, see the link below.. cheers-

http://www.thinksketchdesign.com/2008/05/03/design/algorithm...
I'm thinking this is going to be more for "batch compute" type operations where you'd probably have data replicated across multiple sites and the latency won't impact the job significantly.
In this case it says the bank offered to take all the shares off the investors hands for free to free them from the liability.
The boy has been found in his attic at home, alive.
I can't answer for him, but I can answer for me. IntelliJ has key mappings that just make more sense. IntelliJ is somewhat better at completion and refactoring.

I use Eclipse, because I know that having really learned it, I can use it where ever I want, no matter where I work.
Not to skew your point because indeed bees are attracted to honey but that image search has less meaning as many honeypots have bees on them while traditionaly bears are shown as being attracted to honey and therefore honeypots.
You're right. Something is off here. That seems like moving all the cash from one company to another and letting the first go bankrupt without the latter assuming liability.

What stops this happening more often?
Don't forget that many (most?) of the people that he bought those shared off originally were probably unaware of the liability associated with it when they bought it. There were other suits associated with that liability (many claimed they were never made aware of it when they invested), so the ethical situation is murky at best.
I disagree with

"8. Make flash cards of easy basic 'sight words' (the, go, like, can, we, went, etc.) and look for them in books."

in large part because word-attack skills ought to be generalizable to all words. It's not clear why those words are identified as "sight words," as the only common characteristic of those words is that they are high-frequency words, which means they will soon become familiar to children who read them a lot anyway.

I looked for scholarly articles first, but they are mostly behind pay walls. The Wikipedia article of closely related interest

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonics

is not too bad.
Balloon Boy
Balloon Boy Hacks Cable News Networks
How This Kid Made $170 Million in Two Years
I say buy this child a pony. That balloon of his, while not as awesome as th one those MIT kids who flew into the outer atmosphere, is a stunning hack for a six year old. I hope my kids are that cool.
Interesting. I am getting slammed in reviews for having ads in my game but I have 900K unique users since June and make $150/day net (for doing nothing).

Perhaps I could integrate in-app purchases and disable the annoying ads per user once they purchase anything. That could get users invested in the possible stream of purchases, would remove complaints about ads, and could be lucrative.
I surprised that Chinese hackers don't try to find some way to DDOS their own government. It'll probably be like a proletariat revolt. You can only mess with people's internet so long before they'll start striking back.

I think its interesting how TOR is trying to work on realtime bridge connections with IP address distributed through Twitter. Yet another great realtime application for Twitter.
Wolfram Alpha API to be released later today
Twitter CEO Ev William's New $2.4 Million Mini-Mansion
Twitter Begins Lists Rollout
That's the kind of stuff you can do once you reach break even point. If you concentrate on such things early on you work on the wrong stuff.
I'm not going to speak for ilyak, but some people (myself included, sometimes), want to see the results of a merge even when there are no conflicts, because we don't trust merges to always go right. There are occasions where subtle bugs can get introduced by botched merges.

Having said that, I'm way less disciplined than I used to be, so I've gotten so I just trust the merge. The mentors who taught me the ropes with version control systems would not be impressed.
One of the previous items in the thread also mentions customer development:

Useful, sure, but for those of use way before those steps, there was nothing about customer development.

http://groups.google.com/group/lean-startup-circle/tree/brow...
IMHO that's the exact description of a good CEO in a startup environment.
"For consumer applications, however, you can ask 1000 inidviduals and get a "No" while your product could still be helpful to 4 million others."

You are asking the wrong people then. CD just saved you a huge amount of heartache, by not trying to market to the wrong segment.
"Most non-technical PMs I know were former founders at startups of their own"

That's one way, another is to grow into it from a related role: programmer, designer, etc.
I would like to see a similar "Clojure's second year" review.
Can you actually charge customers in-app if the app is free?

I thought Jobs said that free apps would "stay free" and would only be relevant for paid apps.
"In most cases, if the person doing the PM role for you tells you he can't do anything else because the PM role takes too much time, you're probably getting rolled."

Ugh, I've experienced this and it's terrible. It's not just that they're a waste of resources, they often end up creating busywork for themselves that draws in others and wastes their time.

I'm not against PMs, I'm against having certain roles purely as a security blanket. It happens to designers like me too - just this week I tried talking a startup into offering a contract gig instead of a fulltime perm position because I'm still not sure if there's enough meat on the bone long term.
So you write your hashCode/equals/toString methods, and your getters and setters all manually instead of clicking three times?
Automatic generation of delegate methods is also a godsend.

What about refactoring? Eclipse's rename tool for one changes the way you write code as refactoring is so trivial you do it without thinking.

Eclipse's debugger is also top notch, far better than jdb.
I'm 23 and was just getting started in web development as frames where becoming unpopular. It was amazing to read about a point in time where animated gifs and frames where amazing new technologies that made his life easier.

It helps me to see that maybe the things I find as very important technology-wise, might be just as futile as an animated gif.
Sounds like a recipe for RSI.
Greenspan Says U.S. Should Consider Breaking Up Large Banks
Agreed. If it's too big to fail, it's to big to exist.
Why on EARTH do people do this for? Is it an automated bot script? I see this kind of replication with "tags" on blogs as well.

Someone please explain.
I am going to stop arguing against Apple, I am loosing all my karma ;)
Got it... like it
First criticism, concerns, then praise in no particular order. Apologies for duplicates feedback. And I may have gotten carried away...

Criticism:

* We'll start with the offcolor comment: the name EventGel sounds like something KY or Trojan Condoms would sell. This may or may not be a plus depending on your audience and market.

* I am not a fan of the timeline widget (third party?). It's difficult to use and not entirely intuitive. Click-and-drag is slow to respond and when I click on a location in the zoomed out timeline at the bottom it doesn't jump to that location in the main timeline. Why considerations made you choose a timeline widget instead of a calendar layout?

* The design seems clunky and boxy. Maybe if you removed the horizontal bars at the top. In firebug I made all of the top 3 bars the same color as the 3rd bar and it already seemed more "together".

* Blue text on black background is hard to read.
* It seems like the yellow help box should be at the top of the landing page, not the bottom. The description you currently have doesn't really pop out visually or promotionally.

* Consider a multi-column layout or a sidebar for things like the twitter feed. You have a lot of different information to present and presenting it in a list makes it hard to find the information I'm looking for.

* Your textareas do not resize when I resize the browser.

* I agree with the comments on the map being too small.

* On the front page, I click on an event and it doesn't tell me where it is. And the bubble that pops up says: "This is the schedule bar for your event." The purpose of the date range is obvious. This text is probably unnecessary or could at least be condensed.

* I agree with the comments about dates. No military time or seconds. Also, please add timezone abbreviations.

* Add the time of day to the activities list.

Concerns:

* Why should I be interested in the site, what is it this is providing that I can't get via a number of other tools like facebook or craigslist?

* How is this going to scale by location? I'm in Boston, why should I care about events anywhere else, unless they are virtual? Will you add an event filter?

* Do you have a plan to avoid spam? Already I see an activity for "Have sex"

* Like spam, how are you going to handle signal to noise ratio on the front page?

* You may want to consider having a proper logo.

* Can you add a description field for the events? What is the event about? What do I need to bring? Etc.

* You seem to have duplicated functionality between the discussion and twitter feed. What is the distinct purpose of each?

* Do you have any plans on helping people promote their events?

Praise:

* I like the twitter feed on the events. Seems like a good marketing tool.

* Big points for the easy signup.

* This is cool. I like the openness of the concept. I agree that this has a lot of potential. Any thoughts on monetization? I could see this being very useful for event planners and caterers and the like to get new business.

* You've covered the event details of when, where, who (but not what).

* The activity feature is helpful for planning events with a lot going on.
Math The Blows My Mind
I'm not so sure. It just read like a series of interesting tricks, akin to when someone dives into lisp and starts to realize the cool things you can do with such syntactic flexibility. Of course you'll have a few, "Wow, that's cool! I can't imagine it being useful, but wow" moments. And I'm glad that he's chosen to share it.
An honest and non-sensationalized story. It was a quick but pleasant read, and interesting to hear the story behind the blog.
This is how it used to work, and what the policy change is about.
Now you can. And Steve Jobs talks a lot. Most of what he says is true, but only for the moment. Nothing wrong with that, just good to know.
Well, sure. Who is going to take the time to write a review for something that is just "ok"
I would use it. I feel that your pricing is too expensive. I would pay $10 maybe $15 as a small company.
Mice run through VR, Princeton neuroscientists scan their brains
If that was Linus or Guido asking this on a job interview, I could have understood.

But when authors of proprietary, closed-source font-end to someone else's outsourced work (git) ask that question it sounds rather cynical: if you've made the decision of keeping your "X" to yourself, why shouldn't I?
I'm curious, too. Will free apps that allow you to upgrade to the "Pro" version only be listed as a "Free" app? I see that as a definite disadvantage.
The author, Steve Blank, will be speaking on Nov 19 in San Francisco. http://www.meetup.com/Lean-Startup-Circle/calendar/11393583/
I think you're doing something wrong if you need glyphs and punctuation for your code to be readable. I get dots and all that, but semicolons and friends are just noise.
Apple will have to justify why they're keeping Flash off the iPhone

I wouldn't be so sure of that. What is Flash really used for?

Video? The iPhone already plays back h.264, the format used for high-quality Flash streaming. Most of the major video sites either serve up iPhone-tailored versions which stream the video directly (e.g. http://iphone.dailymotion.com) or have native applications that do the same (e.g. the YouTube app that the iPhone has had from the start). The result is better performance, better battery life, better quality and better overall experience, all without using Flash.

Games? The iPhone has no shortage of games, and with Flash CS5, the same games can be deployed as native applications, where they will undoubtedly perform better. Many Flash games designed for desktops aren't very playable on a smartphone anyway.

Aside from those, the most commonly-encountered uses of Flash are obnoxious animations and sites built entirely in Flash, neither of which would seem to inspire demand. What's left?

This isn't to say that Flash adds nothing, only that it seem like such an obvious necessity as it does in a desktop browser.
I'm sorry, I don't even know what half of those subjects even involve. Perhaps a better list would be of links to /learn/ at least introductions to those different subjects. And Wikipedia doesn't count.
I doubt the part of accepting the money for publicity. I think they get plenty for just being on a nationally syndicated show. (Kudos to them on WSJ and Shark Tank) They might have even gotten better publicity for standing firm on their original offer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOSfMzwA5C0

They accepted an offer with a 6 month buy out clause so it is possible they never intended on keeping the money.

I just have major doubts about their numbers. The way the founders present them is very suave but thinking deeper in is really questionable.

Other highlights from the show are in:
They had 40% of University of Arizona (about 14k users) in 8th months.

30k revenue in 1 year.

Not exactly a smashing success, but a start. Just a few doubts when examining them deeper.
What is your iPhone app?
There's a similar problem with some API providers like Twitter throttling usage from App Engine and EC2 IP ranges:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=793939
Corporate law.
Not on the App Store they don't. Not when money is involved.
Makes me nostalgic and depressed at what we thought was cool at that time.
In 1996, I made a javascript image slide show hosted on geocities for pictures of me and my girlfriend.
She was really impressed at my thoughtfulness and effort. She showed it to so many of her friends...a modern day equivalent of that would be to post a youtube video with annotations on how beautiful she is and do status updates on facebook/twitter about that video 900 times. :)
They won with musical instrument shops that do have to pay a public performance license in case a customer plays a known tune while testing a new instrument
This however does not absolve Mr. Bolton from his conduct.
What Is Regulation?
Oh nice! That must have changed recently. Yay!
The web as a learning tool
Manuka Honey For the Treatment of Heartburn and Acid Reflux Disease
Google is going to release Google Dresser, and it will be absolutely free! It will keep your whole wardrobe on the server and provide a simple and intuitive user interface through which you can browse, create, and wear outfits.

Google is willing to give away these dressers for free because Google makes money through the dresser advertisements, so the more time you spend with your dresser, the more advertising opportunities they have. Thus Google wants to make a better dressing experience for you because ultimately it turns into more revenue for them.

Next up: Google Life, helping you do more and reducing your need to sleep.
You just wait for the day when the authentication servers are down. :-}
Great plugin.
Ok, if this article is correct then it's a big problem for Google. Because their entire revenue model is based on earning money from from advertising... I can't imagine enterprise level organisations allowing Google to Earn money via advertising.

I know that Google have made some efforts to make money by directly charging Enterprises but that represents a tiny part of their revenue to date.

In other words, is Wave a much smaller opportunity than they had hoped? And if so, it might just end up being a "side project"...
I have personal dislikes of Ramsay (I'm a fucking vegan) but, shit, he can do the business when it comes to shifting food. His advice always seems kind of obvious once you've heard him say it. He strips away your bullshit. Sell a few things, well defined, well executed and well presented. Choose a price point and live up to it. You've got 4 hours (7-11) to make your money. People don't like choice - show them one of starter then fish, meat & veg. No-one cares if you can present 100 different meals, they can only eat one at a time and at a maximum they will turn up once a week.

Know your customers and make their decisions for them, that's what they pay you for,
If you really want to get picky though, more web crawling from Google means more energy usage on the other end of the line (the crawled server).
has it been determined if purchase virtual currencies are allowed? the terms where a little confusing? have zynga, sgn etc reacted?
Dealscape: In Defense of Smart Bankers
Felix Salmon: The problem with smart bankers
Summers: Big Finance vs. The Middle Class
Unfortunately VCs seem to have the upper hand these situations. They have money, and you want their money...
It shouldn't be too much of an issue considering Iceland is going to eventually join the EU.
You are right. What he did was sell assets owned by corp A and put the proceeds of the sale in corp B. That seems definitely unethical. I do not know much about Aussie corp law but it may also be very illegal.

Also, he may have breached another rule by proposing an action that he obviously did not believe to be desirable when he had a large chunk of the corporation. Again I am not sure what the particular rules in this case are but usually large shareholders have fiduciary duties towards the corporation and small shareholders so they cannot do things that injure the corporation.

So I am not sure this guy should be admired. It seems that he just broke a bunch of rules betting that he would not get sued. And he is not getting sued, but that may have been due to luck rather than being right. I think what happened is that his ass was saved when a bank decided to buy out any shares that anybody wants to get rid of and make the necessary subscription payments. Thus the bank would buy Mr. Bolton's shares and make the payments, so the corporation would not have to sue Mr. Bolton for the payments.
I remember thinking frames were the best thing for navigation because you only needed to keep the one file updated, I didnt even know about server side includes back then :) css came a few years later too.
Virtual currencies are explicitly not allowed.
You are incorrectly assuming that pay is fair. I can easily believe that 100x number. Especially considering how when a mediocre programmer under-performs he is usually augmented by other mediocre programmers which tends reduce the efficiency even more.

Anyway, Paul Graham wrote a pretty convincing essay about this.
The evlan programming language
The Mathematics of Disease
Austria is in the EU, would you trust Jörg Haider with your gay rights mailing list?
Apparently there's no such thing as a reliable phone that's good at making calls

I have one. It's 50 years old and plugs into the wall. :)
Prime is REALLY worth it when it comes around to the holidays, and this just makes it better.

Less hastle. Better gifts. Easier to hide the gifts. And Prime's perks continue throughout the year.
The "Feedback" tabs.
Isn't it better to just let them fail next time instead. That would force the big banks to split up themselves.
I know! Right or wrong, Apple has got to love this, they have a cult following of "cool" people. I totally appreciate the sex appeal of the hardware.
The Terrible Adventures of Aeronauts
Sometimes I wonder if at some point there are diminishing returns in the prospect of censorship. Even if the chinese government puts vast amounts of resources behind censoring the 10-15 thousand users of the Tor network, they have a much larger population to worry about and those users are often technically competent enough to circumvent the attempts at censorship by the chinese government.
Can Wave Really Be The Big-Ticket Google Wants?
I'm with you, sounds like the same order of events for me. I am still embarrassed about my heavy abuse of the php include() function.
JavaScript for people who are in a hurry
Professors Who Blog
Ask HN: Detecting popularity stress
I've read today's post about ooc language ("Ooc - modern object oriented c"), I've started thinking about things that should be popular, but aren't... yet.. (think "This must already exist"). Like ooc or maybe someone's blog, which is obscure, but insightful.

There probably should exist an algorithm for detecting some "popularity stress"(tension), i.e. a discrepancy between actual popularity of something and the "should be" popularity. Think of Google Trends or Flu prediction, which is somewhat obvious.. but also think of the stock market - there probably exists an algorithm that can pick some signals about when some stock is going to become much-much more pricey (popular).

Well, Google Trends is obviously detecting post-factum popularity - if something is popular - it will find out that X queries today is much more than Y queries yesterday...

...but I'd like to talk about predictive algorithms.

How can we detect something (a website, a blog, a technology, programming language, scientific paper, direction in which humanity is going to be developing) that has the potential to be popular, but yet lacks the momentum , therefore is under "popularity stress" (maybe there's a better phrase for what I mean).

One signal that I can think of - is whether this "something" is going to make our life much easier, without requiring any/much effort/resources on our part. I.e. C is making our lives tough, but ooc makes it easier. But can we make computers find out what's going to make our life easier? Or maybe some crowd-sourcing effort about what makes people's life miserable and tough?

What differs something that is born dead from something that is going to be huge? (Aside from billions of $$$ in marketing?)

Do you have any ideas for detecting this kind of "discrepancy"? Algorithms? Signals?
Hey Buddy, Can I Sell You an NP Hard Problem?
The stock exchange can take plenty of actions against a stock and from a lay perspective it sounds like they should have.
Why hack a calculator? Why climb Mount Everest?
I find the Kano useful even pre-breakeven, but most (good) PMs probably have an intuitive sense of where their products/features without doing a formal assessment