skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think this illustrates why fluffy press-release-transcribing journalism is so prevalent these days better than a whole collection of BusinessWeek ever could:

http://twitpic.com/ds64u
Coding Horror: The State of Solid State Hard Drives
Ted Dziuba - Hey Lets Bitch About SEO Again
Manchester airport trials naked-image security scans
Behind the Scenes at WhatDoTheyKnow
5 phenomenal Twitter application you'll surely love
The View from HadoopWorld
It is amusing to think of the distinction as being one of those places where the stated reality (Hacking is somehow nobler than breaking into computer systems) is at odds with actual reality (breaking into systems is hacking).

The irony, then, is that understanding the actual reality would then be a precursor to hacking hacking.
What apps are integrated? Do they use an open API so alternate providers can be used?
To [mis]quote the Heart Sutra, "form is emptiness and emptiness is form." I've played with this a huge deal, and as far as I can tell the "true" reality really has no rules (and I've searched a lot). What we're really hacking is our own, and other people's minds. So the "perceived" rules are how everyone thinks everyone else's mind thinks, and the "real" rules is how everyone else's mind actually thinks.

What is wealth generation, but hacking people's minds to perceive something as valuable? Do Facebook, or Oracle, or even the internal combustion engine really have any "intrinsic" value?

There is no objective reality, I don't think. Just the inter-subjective. I still haven't figured out how to apply this knowledge to gain anything I perceive to be valuable, though...
You get a folder ~/Ubuntu One/ ; save any / all config files in there, keypassX, tomboy, shared files and sync it across machines. nifty.
absolutely.. [Greets + Kudos, btw]

But then so many 'web pages' now are really js apps, that google must effectively do screen scraping anyway... Perhaps we should just admit that we always need an alternate feed to provide semantic meaning [aka tags] to web crawlers/readers, and be done with it.

Maybe a system where each widget can be queried for its textual content, via a standard simple API would mean all apps made with say Cappucino would be able to emit text to a crawler, without [too much] special code being written - the framework could do it?

Running a JS program on the browser to generate the page should be a legit technique, even for pages that remain static thereafter.

Have you had a look at RaphaelJS? [normalized SVG support via JS : allows JS to do flash-style animations with an open standard behind it].
See also: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=879684
I've wondered about that soup-can artist... Campbells wouldn't have complained about it, because it was free publicity (and much clearer than Hormel's spam dilemma). The original designer would no longer have copyright in the design (Campbells, his/her hirer, would own it), and would have no say.

But how would he/she feel? Privileged to have their obviously commercial work elevated to Art? Shamed, because of same? Or simple bemusement, like so many others?

Regardless, I don't think a portrait is in the same category as a can of soup.
I'm just jealous. I think I need a holiday: A week alone on a desert island sounds like paradise right now.
Dynamic Infrastructure Makes Static Connection Limits Obsolete
I love it! Brilliant idea! We need to make this happen. Come oooon people, donate!! ...and maybe stockpile weapons and food, too.
Eventually you'll learn that the worst that can happen is very likely a stern look or a snap comment back.

I'm shy. It's not a logical consideration - I often have no problems in social scenarios; I used to do some Am-Dram have given lecture-style talks, etc.. I find it's the anticipation of a situation that works as a sort of potential barrier that builds over time. If I tunnel through immediately then I'm usually fine. If the situation is further in the future then I can have weeks of torment but ultimately one just has to do the thing.

Phone calls have been a particular problem for me. I think this was due to being chastised as a child for not taking good messages. I can procrastinate for a week to make a call, but once I do it - though I get nervous and sweat and have a wobbly voice - I can just do it.

Personally I think my understanding of social situations and repercussions is above average. I don't find people boring. I work in a public facing role often leading groups of 10-20 people (adults and/or children).
I went to a party after leaving high-school for Uni, it was our first party back together as a school group. Everyone was talking about roads (which route they took, what motorway goes to where they are). I said something along the lines of "come on guys is this all we have to talk about, fricking road numbers". It didn't win me any friends!
New clojure book in development
At some point you need to "sell" your product, even if it's only to the sales team you're appointing or to a VC. If you can't then I warrant you'll not get the best deal for yourself and probably not enthuse others to help you produce the best product (for some value of best!) that you could.
Ask HN:  Python (turtle on a USB flash drive)
I'm helping with a 5th grade class and demonstrated Python Turtle a couple of weeks ago.

At this point I would like to set up a small flash drive to run Python and the turtle module (school's computers are locked down). Ideally I could set this up to run on windows, macs and linux although most likely the former are all that the students will have access to.

Am I using the wrong search terms? I've not located information on this. I know that I can set linux to boot off a flash drive. But is it possible to run Python from a flash drive?

Thanks in advance,

John
I think Scott (and you) are confusing average with boring. It's true that you can't be better without being different. But you can be different (and even be better) without being (at least overtly) innovative. You might just, for example, provide better customer service than the competition. Or lower prices. Or greater selection. My point is that to succeed, all you have to be is better. Being cool is not a requirement. (And being too focused on being cool can therefore actually be detrimental to success.)
Sorry to be so harsh, but, erm, this is pretty stupid. Belongs on digg more than here, imho.
"Introverted simply means you are more comfortable by yourself or with one other person."

"An introvert is often very good at relationship selling. Success in business is not always about being a visible leader - many F1000 CEOs are introverts."

Yes! This gives me hope as an introvert myself.

Personally I think shy people can change, they just need more social interaction. I was pretty shy when I was younger, so I threw myself into a people facing jobs like bar work and retail. Things changed for the better.
Essential Code Creation: from desktop to web
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=881032
When I when from 7.2k RPM to 10k RPM the performance increase was very noticeable.

It'll be the next upgrade I do to my laptop when it starts feeling a bit sluggish.
True, but he assumes that anthropologists don't read newspapers.
Free Online OCR service - convert PDF documents to Word, JPG to Word
A spelling checker for HN headlines.
Warhol was a commercial illustrator - he reproduced a commercial image in facsimile, that is plagiarism. I'm sure one can understand why Campbell's didn't object.

I'd agree that his reason for producing the images and the context in which they were displayed added an extra depth to said images. However, he claims the reason he made them was variously (paraphrasing) "because I like soup" and "because my mom used to use soup cans and there were a lot around"; hardly the basis of a great artistic statement.

The artistic impact then must be in our interpretation of why we feel the artist created the images "he's make a great statement about commercialism in art using a screen printed image mirroring the industrial design techniques of this epoch" (or whatever) rather than "hmm, he likes soup".
A business that makes money off B2B newsletters
Bring it on, Jason. An open forum that brings together (A) people/companies in need of angel funding; and (B) angels. Oh, and so you can tell the "serious" angels from all the others, charge a fee to the ANGELS. I actually think this is what Seedcamp (London) does.
You never know ;-), but the main problem I have with this is that when camping or when you have some sort of outdoor activity there is one precept : "Leave no trace behind". More details : http://wikitravel.org/en/Leave-no-trace_camping

I don't think he has done much damage to these crabs, it's insignificant, but he's ruining the beauty that nature has to offer him. He's also ruining it for others and that's more annoying.

I'm sure he was pleased to discover this untouched place, he's gesture in my opinion is selfish because he is depriving others from the experience he had, he's even saying at some point :

I thought I was watching a large graceful bird in flight, like a red-tailed hawk [...] I was watching a large manta ray, spotted and absolutely beautiful.

Now I'm not sure this mantra would have seem so beautiful to him if someone had written his name on it for example.

Agreed the Sharpie might disapear in a few days, I'm more concerned about the behaviour : he was bored so he wrote on crabs.
Linus' recommendation to buy the Intel X25-M still stands, because they have the fastest small-block random I/O performance.

Why would you buy an SSD only to do large sequential transfers with it? Just use a 1.5TB HDD to store your media files.
Would you mind linking the song?
I agree, I wish more people would have the same sentiment towards "some" of the rubbish from techcrunch posted here on a regular basis.

ie, "Twitter farted" by MG Siegler
Perhaps there is blind value, in other words, "value" that drives a particular system in a direction which would be "considered" "positive" by the system if the system could postulate/predict/had awareness.

I would argue that is why humans have such a strong sense of good/bad (value judgements): because we postulate, predict, assess, think into the future.
Artificial Black Hole Created in Chinese Lab
Electronic spam is gets its name from the Monty Python sketch (Python is named for Monty Python also)
Announcement on http://fogcreek.com/:

"Fog Creek Software announces the beta for Kiln: Hosted Mercurial source control with code review and tight FogBugz integration."
It shouldn't be too difficult to simply set up your own email and then forward it to the app email.
The Internet is about to die?
Or rather they did not - they just re-defined what a black hole is and then created that.

I just made a black hole (subject to definition) in my office with a felt tip pen - works for me...
The same "normal" users that are using dropbox in mass? Doubt it.
Well, I would have preferred to upmod and comment on a better-written post that expressed that sentiment, but this works.

I mean, I agree with some of his specific critiques and I certainly agree with the feeling -- that new startups should focus more on things that create wealth, and not just the short-term "people will invest in this" kind that can vanish overnight. (Let's leave aside, for the moment, that this was in reaction to an article about the "Best" Entrepreneurs, not the companies with the brightest futures).

But, obviously, it takes a lot of foresight and a deep knowledge of the company in question to know whether or not it's doing that.

You mentioned Google. I'd use his own example, to illustrate A) the grandpa factor, and B) the foresight problem.

He uses the example of Bill Gates. "At 20, Bill Gates had started his own company and written ... A BASIC INTERPRETER."

Grandpa factor: lots of us write interpreters; some of us even mess around with interpreters written in asm on old-timey hardware; it wasn't even rare at the time. There were TONS of nerds who wrote and write interpreters, and I'd be very surprised if a majority of the companies he mentions didn't have someone on staff who'd climbed that particular molehill. So, Grandpa Factor -- the things that a lot of these startups are doing are probably as impressive as anything Gates started out doing. And I don't think even Gates would argue that it was easier to set your sights on "BASIC Interpreter" than "carbon nanotubes in my dorm room."

Second, foresight. Given that all startups look like crap in their early stage (and we're now shining the light of journalism into startups at TREMENDOUSLY early stages, 'just another hobbyist implementing a standard basic interpreter'), etc, how do you know which crap will turn out to be valuable?

Anyone could probably have told, from his education and personality, that Gates was an ambitious, intelligent young man. Okay. That's a long way from "The umpteenth young gun writing an interpreter for frikkin BASIC is going to take over the world of personal computing."

This article is noise. You need to know why Twitter is valuable before you could honestly critique Tumblr or any number of these other social/real-time media services. You need to know just how bad Gates, Google et al all seemed at first before you can have credibility when you trash a wide swath of early-stage companies as a total waste of time.

( I have reservations that are similar in nature to his own, actually -- but I know enough not to confidently assert that, say, Tumblr will leave no trace on the tech landscape. And, of course, this is a Best Young Entrepreneurs article, not at all a Best Companies Started By Young Entrepreneurs -- you can argue that there shouldn't be a difference, but then you're arguing that Business Week should have better taste, and who cares?)
I think it's an abomination that the original creator of the image is not credited. That said the printer, Cano, probably just bought reproduction rights from the journal? Maybe not, perhaps the journal won't sue as they don't want to restrict their ability to display photos of others work (even though they are reporting news, ie it is fair use, and he is not).
This actually looked like something the HN community might appreciate, applying 'hacking' to everything from cooking to making friends. Posing a donation drive as a zombie fund is societal hacking if I've ever seen it. I can definitely see people pitching in a few £ for Amnesty International for the novelty factor.
Affordable Health Care
Affordable health care means quality health care at an affordable price. It means insurance coverage that provides protection for your family and not breaking the bank.
Regardless of whatever motive or manipulation the artist has done to the WSJ image, it remains a derivative work and is still covered by copyright:

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

"A typical example of a derivative work received for registration in the Copyright Office is one that is primarily a new work but incorporates some previously published material. This previously published material makes the work a derivative work under the copyright law. To be copyrightable, a derivative work must be different enough from the original to be regarded as a "new work" or must contain a substantial amount of new material. Making minor changes or additions of little substance to a preexisting work will not qualify the work as a new version for copyright purposes. The new material must be original and copyrightable in itself. Titles, short phrases, and format, for example, are not copyrightable."
me too - and even though I now know that it's Fund, I'm still reading "Found". Something tells me they know that our brains tend to interpolate in this way :-)
Yup absolutely!

http://www.portablepython.com/
Timely - I bought an X-25 80GB on Sunday. Can't wait for it to arrive
Jeff Atwood is wrong on the internet... again! Tell me you're surprised. There are too many mistakes in the post to bother correcting. Just read the anandtech.com article if you want accurate info.

For accurate price info you should know that the second generation 160 GB X-25Ms originally listed for $450 but shot up in price due to excessive demand. It's only in stock at stores that price gouge and MIA everywhere else. Amazon, not price-gouging, has the 80 GB for $260 and the kit version of the 160 GB for $500.
That's not something you draw from memory. She should feel honored.
example- zappos.com sells shoes- nothing revolutionary about that! Still grew to a great business
Yes, looks like the .com turned off Whois privacy, and Dropbox does own it now (most Whois services still point to Domains by Proxy, including when I checked). But since Dropbox didn't have a comment for TechCrunch on why the domain pointed to the real site while it was still privacy-protected, the headline of the article didn't make sense.
Ask HN: How do I find a marketing person for my startup?
I'm on the verge of releasing the second version of an iPhone app as well as deploying several new features to Bouldr, however, I realize that the features themselves are not going to turn my site into a success.

My question is: Should I get a dedicated marketing persion on board, and if so, how should I go about finding and selecting them?

EDIT (in reponse to revorad)

A little more detail:

Bouldr (http://bouldr.net) is a worldwide guidebook for rock climbers and boulderers.

I'm in the process of building an iPhone application, and have released the first version already this year. From that, I drew on feedback, and have made numberous improvements and changes. The next version is just about ready, and once the last bug is smashed into the ground, I'll be submitting it for review.

I'll be building a free version of the app too - I'm building the paid version first so that I can get feedback from people that are genuinly interested in having Bouldr on their iPhone.

Ideally, I need to get lots more people adding and updating the site, and in order to do so, I think I need help from someone with the experience necessary to carry through.

I have a facebook fan page (http://facebook.com/bouldr), with ~14k fans, so I think I'm doing something right, but I also suspect that the message I'm sending is confused or at least not consise enough to stick.
If you thought it's easy to get to Google, think again. In our current round of usability research, only 76% of users who expressed a desire to run a Google search were successful.
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/designer-user-differences.html
TVA Publishes Open Source Stream Processing Engine
EBay auction management tools
AuctionSplash's advanced eBay tools specifically designed to buy and sell easy eBay. Also offers FREE eBay image hosting, FREE auction templates and desktop convenience. Free to download and use.
Designing help to support low levels of domain knowledge
Well, HRW seems to be more trustworthy than Amnesty, these days.

Well, as long as there is some high quality independent human rights organization.
EFF warns Texas Instruments to stop harassing calculator hobbyists
Your post is flawed because it assumes that this is some sort of an authoritative list that took into account all entrepreneurs across America. Untrue.

May be you should attack the magazine that created the list instead of the entrepreneurs? Better yet, create your anti-list of guys you think should be there but never will be because they are too busy doing too many important stuff. Simply cherry picking flaws in a bunch of businesses is very easy--even if I agree with many of your assessments about individual ones.
Awesome. This makes a lot of sense. An e-book reader should always have lots of surface area (since you don't want to read on a tiny screen) and requires very little power. I'm almost surprised e-book readers weren't built this way in the first place.
I love the Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z ...

But I get my zombie fix from other places, not HN.

What do you think that reddit.com/r/zombies is for?
I agree, but just flag it and move on. No need to compare to Digg, Reddit, whatever - it can succeed or fail on its own merits here.
I sort of agree, but the title doesn't really indicate that that's why the submitter submitted it.
It is somewhat misleading to call Windows a "choice." Most Windows users are probably completely unaware of what an OS is in the first place. They probably know that a Mac is different, but likely couldn't tell you how. Windows to most users is as fundamental a part of their computer as the screen.
The real question is why they care. Won't this just make people who might not have before want to buy a TI calculator?
Is there any estimated self-life comparison of SSD vs HDD for "average" computer usage? I wanted to migrate to SSD earlier this year - but I did some research the information wasn't very convincing. There seems to be a compromise in self-life and performance decrease (over time) for overall speed gain.
He forgot a few:

1. A guy who threw daddy's money at the ridiculous idea that people would buy books without seeing or touching them first.

2. Two college nerds who thought people would use a TV screen instead of the yellow pages.

3. Two more college nerds who thought people would come to their web-site solely for the purpose of going to someone else's website.

4. Another college nerd who thought people could be friends without actually being together.

5. Some people who thought other people wouldn't mind storing their electronic mail on someone else's computer.

6. Some guy pussy-whipped by his girlfriend to trade her beanie babies on the interwebs.

7. Some guys who thought people would be willing to send money over the internet.

8. A guy who built a place for people to give away their published writings for free.

9. A guy who thought people could meet their next SO on the computer in his apartment.

10. A guy who thought people could actually communicate something in only 140 characters.
Sweden: routine maintenance broke every single .se address.
I remember evaluating this with dropbox when I was after a backup solution. Ubuntu one was the same price for 10GB as dropbox was for 50. Since I had well over 10 in photos, I didn't go any further in research. Seems ubuntuone has the same price for the 50 GB plan now, but now I'm a very happy dropbox user.

To bad. I might still evaluate them again next year when my dropbox expires, but with all my stuff already in there, it might be hard.
Does anyone use SCCS anymore?
This is indeed a comparison of how book promotion works now versus then, told in magazine-friendly fictional story format. While the use of awkward phrasing could be pinned on the lack of proper terminology, much of it is obviously conceived out of thin air in order to underscore the rapid pace of technology change, as well as make it a more fun, more accessible read.
You are probably much better off for now with an outsourced shop instead of a full-time person on-board.

You could also look at some of the companies like HubSpot that basically train you to do marketing and provide tools to measure effectiveness.
Presumably someone paid by the Wall Street Journal for his work, and thus falling in the Work for Hire category.
I'm using one of the 120GB Samsung SSDs that Apple ships stock in the MacBook Pro. It's definitely faster for things like program startup, etc. (many things start in less than one dock "bounce"), but otherwise not so clear.

Sure wish Apple would ship the Intel drives. Perhaps they can't get a low enough price on them.

Or, alternately, that Samsung would get with the program and do the kind of controller work required to make these things go faster. (Whatever Intel's doing--see the anandtech.com massive article.)

Or, perhaps both Apple and Samsung could get together and implement the critical TRIM command (see http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3631&p=8).