skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
These are helpful insights. To the video point, as a film/video professional I'm keenly aware of the differences in the sort of information you can gather from a moving image versus text.

I'd be interested to ask you how much the addition of video closed the gap between your initial perceptions of a team based on the application versus when you met them in person.
An example of a GA using Clojure
I experienced this once. Someone contacted me about a domain I had no use for with a pretty good story about why they needed it. He even showed me his work as a small timer in the entertainment industry with an interesting sounding project he had in mind for it. He offered a small sum and I decided to just avoid the hassle and give it for free as I probably would of let it expire in a year. I even paid the small fee yahoo wanted to transfer it.

I was curious and went to the site a few months later. The fucker is a domain shark on the side and the sites a parked page with a forsale contact on it.

Moral of the story is to google their name and spend a few minutes before giving/selling domains.
To be fair to Google, they did nothing until ordered by a US court. Is there any more you can ask?
What a weird thing to say. You trust a regex engine more than you trust "split()"?
I use a simple metric:

How will my autobiography read?

If I'm improving the quality of my autobiography every day, then I'm probably doing something right. If I'd be too embarrassed to write down some aspect of my life, or if it would have too tenuous a connection to the rest of the story, then I probably need to change course.

This metric also makes it clear that success is in how you live your life rather than where you end up. Your life's final destination is only going to fill one page. The journey of your life needs to fill the book.
It's probably pretty good. (Sorry.)
I've grown frustrated with the process...

Then stop wasting time on it. You must have way more important things to do.

Here's a thought: Get a virgin domain name for $6 and market the shit out of it. You really didn't expect to skip the marketing step with a domain name that someone else thought was important, did you?
Microsoft wins $388 million verdict reversal; jury "lacked a grasp on issues"
> is it just me, or do us nerd types spend more than half our communication bandwidth arguing over terms and who is right?

This is a Good Thing. The alternative is not to argue over terms and consequently to waste time just talking past each other. (See: politics)
Scientists Decry "Horrifying" UK Border Test Plan
I think in a microcosm, 'username' is just shorthand for how active and aware you are in the startup community as a whole. It's the same as everything else, if other people in the industry remember you, whether from a mixer you attended, or an article you published or what have you, you are much more likely to have an 'in' with them. Is it a means to an end? No, but it is a useful and helpful artifact of being interested and active in the field you want to go into.
I don't think blogposts like these need all kinds of disclaimers. Of course relationships are about the actual relationship. It doesn't need to be stated explicitely.

What I got from the blogpost is that people shouldn't wait for somebody to bail them out financially. That's sound (but not very insightful) advice.

To reduce that to "being exclusively interested in money" is rubbish.
Rant @ HN: Big bully = big business ?
I am kind of stuck with a highly incompetent(borderline bully) ISP in northern MA /Southern NH and wondering what are my options ? Needless to say I am pissed !

Ccast: my current ISP and cable provider.
I find their net connections to be slow ( rarely get the promised upload and download speed).
besides they are constantly up to their no good tricks - bundling packages in the false pretense of cheap rates and then pulling the carpet.
They have no need to care for their internet customers as they have very little competition in the area.

Fairpoint: The former verizon Fios service is now nearly bankrupt. I am not sure if they would be around next month.

What are my options ? Looks like as a customer - I am screwed.Has any one else had this situation with big business ? Rant on .
a ruby dsl library should pop out any moment on github
They don't need to do anything to solve the fat people problem. Just remove all crop subsidies and the problem will eventually solve itself. It's more expensive to eat healthy because the crops used in making unhealthy foods are heavily subsidized.
At my local Kroger two red bell peppers cost more than a twelve pack of generic soda. A sprig of cilantro costs $.75 inside, but a soda can be bought from a vending machine in the front for $.50.
Amazon should be paying this guy for documenting their codebase for them.
I've been using R for 4 years to analyse microarrays and to do nonlinear time series analysis on signals.

I'm using nonstandard methods based on my own code, third party command line programs and extensions I wrote in 'C'. I chose R over Matlab or Octave because it has a more powerful programming language and a nice time series datastructure.

Despite doing very little statistics for the last 2 years I'm still very happy with R. People I know who use Matlab tell me they only do it for the available libraries.
news.hn
I trust a generated parser more than a hand-written one. Any parsing algorithm that involves the use of split() is almost certain to be weakly thought-out and have ill-defined behavior for unexpected input. A well-written parser will never read past the first unexpected character, or at least token.
Project site: http://www.evogrid.org/index.php/Main_Page They're looking for volunteer developers, don't seem to have anything running as yet.
If you just want to get to the nougat-filled center:

http://github.com/yogthos/Clojure-Genetic-Algorithm-Example/...
Interesting concept, but way too complex. Take three paragraphs and condense it into 3 sentences. You'll be more focused, leaner, and more targeted.
GM, eBay End Online Sales Effort
I think the key metric is that useful grammatical suggestions are ones that make the communication more clear. At the end of the day, clarity should be the focus. It bothers me when people make silly grammatical errors, but many of them end up in the final text because our minds auto-correct for them and as such they rarely pose much of a problem in terms of actual clarity.
That's not true. Decisions about who to interview depend on three equal votes-- mine, Robert's, and Trevor's-- and Robert and Trevor don't read HN enough to know who's who. At best, making thoughtful comments on HN will give you an edge in borderline cases.

The best thing you can do is what Scott said to do in the application: get to work. Then you'll sound in your application like you know what you're talking about, because you will.
Zipcar iPhone App Released
You were supposed to double-click to follow hypertext links. This meant you could single-click them to select them and perform other actions.

Apparently Mosaic messed up this system and everyone else followed.

At least I think I recall reading that somewhere. Googling for web, double-click, link etc. gives you nothing of any use.
would like to try it out as well

http://mailhide.recaptcha.net/d?k=01lqUyiZpoF8jIem_yUPMc7Q==...
I honestly got distracted by the format and gave up before I got too far into the content.

The article is a veritable cornucopia of formatting.
Just, wow.
I like that one too.

edit: though some thing in an autobiography might not be things that make you happy but might increase its interest for the reader.
http://mailhide.recaptcha.net/d?k=01hr_eNJaIcrijj1JY2UqLGA==...

Help me out!
DSL is about your only other option in this area.

You could do something like Pipeline wireless, but it's going to be several hundred/mo.

For $60/mo you can get a Verizon EVDO wireless broadband account. If you're in a 3G area the speeds are pretty decent. As long as you only do "normal" online stuff you won't go over the limits, if you're doing a lot of file chugging, it's not a good approach to the problem.
You actually can, check out spidermonkey.
Funny how all the content on their official Honduran website is scraped straight from an old version of the CIA World Factbook entry for their country.
I really don't get where squatter prices come from. It's one thing if a domain is in use, has a history of high traffic, and has high potential through name length and/or brand potential. But a regular old squatting site that barely gets hit except by crawlers and link farms?

I think the problem stems from an unregulated marketplace. Don't get me wrong, I'm not asking for domain reselling to be regulated, I'm just saying the consequences of the reality of the situation is that somewhere along the way it became okay to pay tens of thousands of dollars for a $10/year commodity. Because of that, everyone thinks they can strike it rich by being greedy.

Personally I think a new model is needed for a majority of domain reselling. I've been working on a model that prices regular domains at cost to the owner times a premium factor. For instance, if you had a domain for ten years at $10/year, and multiplied it by a premium factor of not less than 1.5 and not greater than 3, the domain would sell for between $150 and $300. Not bad for a $100 investment. The premium factor would be calculated based on traditional characteristics (length, traffic, etc).

Don't get me wrong, I've been asked by buyers for domains I own and I'm not doing anything with and I see the dollar signs. But at the end of the day, I'd actually sell a domain using the above formula. And when I'm buying domains, it doesn't take that much effort to find an alternative to a taken domain... just use some imagination.
I could care less about this topic. [but the mental energy required to change my emotional response to your flame would be more than the subject is worth]
I think what's troubling is really a combination of two independent circumstances.

First, one company has access to tons of my personal data. I trust this company, they seem well intentioned and they have a very reasonable privacy policy. It's also extremely useful to me to have all of my data (email, personal contacts, calendar) in one place and accessible via a web-interface.

However, when you throw in the second variable, namely, the mixed-bag which is the US judicial system it can all be torpedoed with the flick of a wrist.

I really would have preferred to have seen the judge tell the bank "tough shit" and have someone (either the email recipient or EFF) put up more of a legal resistance to this court order.
New Royalty-Based Venture Investment Model Emerges in Seattle
Yeah - that's a pretty hard case to argue. I can imagine content-controlling situations where you might think of that as a feature, but there are other situations (most use cases, IMHO) where text selection is an expected paradigm.

EDIT: that said, I do think this is a neat and worthy project.
Please, thank you!
http://mailhide.recaptcha.net/d?k=01vWX0VyWrSiMRctF_1vs1XQ==...
-->Maybe using a good project management tool might help?
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/11/13/15-useful-project...

-->Another way is make sure you are away from distractions. Here is PG's essay on: Disconnecting Distraction http://www.paulgraham.com/distraction.html

Hope this helps a bit.
I do just the opposite of this: I click links from the bottom up on the front page, and often only look at the comments.
The files are in the computer! -- Zoolander
A Look at the Drupal Features Module
DNS should really start supporting the ! character. Maybe as an alternative for .
If this is a real problem, perhaps browser makers should just ignore the second click?
Prevented coypasta without links. Of course you are more likely to get no links at all since most people like to quote one paragraph and link. Which might be why he isn't actually using it on his page. Though now that he's drawn attention to it, his headings do look ugly.
Openshot : The magic has arrived
That's really sad, hopefully he felt some remorse that he duped you so effectively and didn't just go and brag about it on namepros and dnforum.
I've found that what concepts people understand or don't is greatly effected by personality and the way there own minds are organized.

On that note, it would be fascinating to see if there is a way to use a some sort of psychological profile and a standardized approach that would allow for programs to be customized for each individual. Yes, this is pretty pie-in-the-sky but Someday it would be a really interesting development.
Dell Latitude Z: Macbook for Windows
Well, it's worth a shot. I remember signing up early so if I get any invites, I'll also share. Here's my email just in case:

http://mailhide.recaptcha.net/d?k=010kmQWkKGsgy5SBuVEvHsqg==...
And also:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id4WTJkg_Ag&feature=relat...
thanks, yet this is why we are looking for structured training.
Yahoo Search - new features, faster performance
I said "not nearly no dramatic", not that things aren't better now.

A quick search suggests that the 1959 Bel Air had power brakes and that power steering was at least optional. I'm not sure power steering is standard on all low-end cars at this point. It wasn't a few years ago.

ABS and traction control are effective in some situations for mitigating the effects of driver error, but often get in the way of the corrections a skill driver is attempting to make. Additionally, they don't actually create any more traction, so they don't actually raise the limits of what the car can handle. Sure, the average car is better off with them, but getting the weight balance, suspension tuning and brake balance right matters more. A limited-slip differential is another big improvement that's been well-known for a long time, but is still rare on popular cars.
That's inane. If you know enough about computers to say "Where's my computer? All I can find is the monitor," then you know enough to look behind it, see no cables leading to a computer, and figure out the answer.
PLEASE :) I will be very glad too! Thank you :)

http://mailhide.recaptcha.net/d?k=01665fwunCxxJaNUx1LNc8fQ==...
Google Wave: There Will Be Backlash
I take happiness, and the pursuit thereof, as a constant. Happiness is something that you find within your circumstances -- it comes from within yourself. When we talk about success we are referring to a sort of deeper satisfaction with your life. We're talking about mission and purpose, about an interesting life and a life well-lived. The idea of a good autobiography encapsulates exactly those things.
I installed this. I have two comments:

The first time I launch Firefox after installing, the interfaces asks if I want to import my history or "cancel." I'd like to recommend changing the wording to "Do not import" or something. Did I just cancel out of a larger startup process? I assume not, but I don't think "cancel" is the logical opposite of "import history."

For the screencast, this is my recommendation:
1) write your script
2) record the video portion
3) narrate the video as a separate stage

I've made a few videos this way, and this is the best way I've found to make it fast and error-free. It's hard to multitask, and performing a task while vocalizing it at the same time is really hard.

Anyway, I'm really interested in this project...
@markbao where are you on this one!?
I was going to point out that the demo image is misleading because the Mac's rendering would look better than Photoshop even without subpixel anti-aliasing (which is plain stupid for the web, minimal gain with possibility of looking much worse in certain circumstances) but I don't have to:

"Even when subpixel antialiasing is turned off (Appearance panel in System Preferences), the rendered text still looks better than that from Photoshop, Flash and JavaScript." -- the author, in comments

This would allow transparent backgrounds too, which seems to be the number one request. I'm guessing it would be fairly easy to replicate this cross platform using the standard linux text rendering stack. Mac text rendering isn't really about better technology, they just make different decsions.

Decisions that those used to Windows text rendering hate. I on the other hand love it and set my Ubuntu boxes up the same way. I think this should be the default on Ubuntu but people get really attached to the text rendering they are used to.
Nah, that's not how it works. I rarely go to supermarkets any more but when I do I always see the same thing: fat mothers, fat kids, trolley full of processed food and then to the cigarette kiosk to load up on fags, gossip and TV magazines, and lottery tickets. You can feed a family of four healthy food bought from the market for a day for the cost of 20 smokes - Indian and Italian food in particular is incredibly cheap to make from scratch. The problem is not one of affordability. Anyone who says it is has a political agenda.
ICANN signs new deal on domain allocation
http://mailhide.recaptcha.net/d?k=01wqp4nKoOn6pk9kHd2tGNlA==...

Thanks for this.
Thank-you please :)

http://mailhide.recaptcha.net/d?k=01p4SgU02Mf0atX0ctLUlNsw==...
It is great to see Weebly entering the education space. I am tired of blackboard. Education and health care space are notoriously difficult for startups to enter for various reasons. I wonder what is Weekly's strategy for dealing with issues that make so many previous Learning management system startups fail.
More long winded than most, but it's normal "physics" writing. Very clear. I recommend the preface whether or not you intend to read the whole thing.
True, the court system is rather unpredictable in this new territory. To me it seems reasonably fair though - as the owner of the account was unreachable, and many other people's private data was at stake. I would say that Google followed the rules properly, even if the bank didn't.

I found the Liskula Cohen blogger case much more troublesome, and the ongoing TCI Journal case is especially disturbing.
There are headlines in which I'm only interested in the comments (usually because I've seen the article or already know a lot about the subject and don't expect to learn anything from the article), but on headlines where I am interested in both, I usually open both the comments and the article in different tabs, and read each while the other is open, but in an order that depends strongly on the day and the content.

If, for example, I find something surprising or incredible in the article, I'll often switch to the comments to see if it was mentioned or debunked, before continuing.
From .NET to OpenSource
I want to live where there are no power disruptions for 5 years.
Please:
http://mailhide.recaptcha.net/d?k=01RWwNL5aEL7_mcnOjVmfeaQ==...

Thanks for your generosity.
In my opinion, if you aren't ready to balance school/work and your startup until your startup is self-sufficient, you aren't serious enough about your startup.
Long URL Please: URL "unshortener" extension for Firefox
Related to #8 but not directly to what you said:

> Making the problem worse is that fact that most consumer PCs are sold with the bare minimum of RAM.

Is this true still? I thought it was clever marketing to sell your laptop with 4 gigs and a 32 bit OS. Not only can the OS not address all that RAM, but it wont use all of it. To the uninformed consumer, which this article is about, they think 'Wow! 4 gigs?! This other one only has (n, where n < 4) gigs, so this 4 gig computer must be a better deal!"
I'm sure dagw would not agree with your description of cable news as analysis. I think he/she is trying to say that newspaper analysis by respectable papers is worth a lot, and it won't lose it's value overnight. People still value NYT because it is respectable and offers great analysis.
Incidentally, the social engineering aspects of tax law are the reason we will never see a flat tax. Tax is as much about behavior modification as it is about revenue.
It is important to write correctly. If you allow "I could care less" to congeal on top of "I couldn't care less" in one big idiomatic mess, you more or less lose the ability to express "I could care less".

A more extreme example that also bothers me to no end is "begs the question." Its now quite impossible to use this phrase to call out the logic error to which it originally referred as it is now used interchangeably with "raises the question". When I want to call the error, I have to do a mini exposition on circular reasoning. I feel cheated out of this fine piece of language.

There's a difference between nazism and simply insisting on correctness. I also commend.
What happens, then, when you can get all of this information and analysis online for free (from those same respectable newspapers and magazines)?
Would appreciate it as well.
http://mailhide.recaptcha.net/d?k=01PcAIHT83q-syMkln3UChFA==...
From the article:

UPDATE – Chumby is reporting that the Chumby One is much different from the Chumby shown here. The plot thickens.
I've found that people don't understand and can't do many things if they see no personal gain in understanding or doing.

Contrary to my findings I like your idea very much.

Maybe the proliferation of webapps is the first steep in this direction? Gathering massive amounts of data about using application by individual users plus tools used for behavioral analysis - maybe?
If you're bothered by HN commenters who use URL shortening services, then this is the extension for you. Disclaimer: I didn't write this; I'm just sharing it to ease the pain.
Good idea. Or if it is somehow impossible to remove subsidies at least subsidize all crops equally. They must also pass true labeling laws for all restaurants, that actually cover things that are bad for you (transfats!).

If you do not cook for yourself, there is no way to know how healthy your food is.
Kind of. Having lived for the past two years now on the low end of the income spectrum, eating well is definitely more expensive than eating for the least possible. White bread is cheaper than Whole Wheat. Low fat meats are always more expensive than the fattier meats.

Mind you, either way it is cheaper or it breaks even at worst when compared to buying pre-processed foods, but the point is: you can save some money by eating a little worse.
Will the US handing over to ICANN be only positive?
A slightly easier read can be found @ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/30/icann_us/

Otherwise you can read in far more detail @ ICANN
http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-30sep09-en.htm

Either way, i'm curious to understand/read what others might seem are potential positive and negatives for the move away of "ownership" and control from the US Government to a Non profit organisation "ICANN".

Does it even matter considering the amount of information which is routed thru the US?

Who funds ICANN? So many questions, even if you just post links for me and others to do some reading, that would be great.
True, however, as jgc points out, anyone can run a wave server. A wave server per botnet node would make sending spam waves trivially easy.
Check out this URL unshortener extension for Firefox:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9549

Also posted to HN here (upvote if you want others to know about it):

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=853586
Yes, money. :(

I guess perhaps I'm mystified why they did the tests in the first place if they weren't going to do anything about them.
Some great tips (especially 14.) many of which we already use when hiring.

I would add 'Introduce the interviewee to the team and try to emulate their future working environment'.

Talk to the interviewee like you talk to the existing members of your team, ask them questions that presume they're of the same calibre and attitude. If someone doesn't seem comfortable with your workspace, communication methods, and discussing high level technical concepts during an interview that's typically a sign of a poor fit to your company's culture.