skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I set up this website yesterday. Obviously I'm quite pleased with the TechCrunch and HN coverage, though if anyone knows anyone from the target audience (or anyone from the UK startup community in general) please pass this link on to them. Hacker News is a great resource but it'd be cool to get a similar community for British students buildings startups.

I'm actually involved with a group to build a new startup hub for the West Midlands centred around Warwick. It sounds kinda crazy ambitious, but we're already starting to bring together various entrepreneurs and investors and potential founders. There's something in the air, I think.
Sure, it could have been a typo, or some other minor mistake.

But he's also correct that it's hilariously wrong. Is it really asking too much that something published in the New York Times either have sufficient editing and proofreading to not make an embarrassing typo, or refrain from using terms they don't understand the meaning of, whichever the case may be?

Even if it's only an editorial, it undermines confidence in the paper as a whole. How often do they make similarly silly mistakes on things where I don't know better?
Besides several of the reasons mentioned in the original article (cultural differences of color and symbols, left to right / top to bottom writing systems, etc.)

In many non-Roman scripts the letters change form drastically based on if they are at the beginning, middle, or end. In some, the letters literally switch positions with other letters visually. Current operating system font support, Unicode standards, and fonts simply don't exist to support all of this.

Graphite (http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&...) is one great initiative to get the ball moving here and is gaining some support (being included as part of OpenOffice 3), however there are HUGE steps that have not yet been taken before applications can even think about scaling to 3000 languages. Unicode is great, but it's not a simple solution/answer/cure-all.

Hopefully we'll be able to scale that large one day, but luckily for now we only need to target < 1% of the world's languages.
Feels like I just tried getting beta 1 working yesterday. Oh yeah, that was yesterday. This would be a lot easier to do if LLVM decided to play nice. Update: Just installed,and worked like a charm! Kudos, guys!
There always are situations where you need to squeeze out performance and there always will be.
A. as mentioned above there are devices that have very limited performance.
B. There is always software or parts of software where every last drop of performance needs to be squeezed out, regardless of how fast your computer is. For example, the scheduler for your OS. Or doing certain graphics calculations. If you have to repeat a certain type of code for every pixel over a million pixels, you do not want to be running a VM.

So this argument is a dead end. There will always be certain type of tasks where it pays to be as fast as possible. Even as computers get more powerful, software gets more complex and more abstracted which means there is always something on the bottom of all the abstractions that needs to run super fast and if it doesn't it will slow everything else to a crawl.
Video game publishers also chicken out and add a difficulty level selector at the beginning of the game, rather than dynamically adjusting the level.
Btw, I highly recommend the author's (Jonah Lehrer) book "How We Decide". It's well written and informative.
I heard an interview with the author on Fresh Air last night. Based on that I'm buying the book.

The fact that prominent private equity companies wouldn't want to be quoted doesn't surprise me. He's been reporting on the industry for around 15 years, and I'm sure they know who their critics are. I'll settle for the facts, figures, interviews with people who sold companies to them, etc.
You are assuming here that every single potential customer reads the critics, and that the critics will not return to try you again.

A restaurant that keeps its doors closed for the first two months had better have some great food to reclaim all those overheads when it finally opens. How can you be sure that the food is ever ready if you don't bring in at least a few customers?
If you're contacting people about this (and you should), try to do some reading beforehand. In particular this bit:

I've always wanted to work with new biological technologies, for example figuring out what genes do, or how proteins fold, or anything cool like that where I can increase the world's knowledge.

What about Bioinformatics interests you? More specifically: exactly what part of the world's knowledge would you like to increase and why?

I think a good, detailed answer to that question (and decent coding skills) is the most useful thing for you right now.

Maybe this is useful?

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and-Compute...

And here are links to courses (and therefore course notes) at Stanford:

http://www-helix.stanford.edu/people/altman/bioinformatics.h...
How To Flip A Niche Wordpress Blog Online Is Easier Then You Think
Flipping a WordPress blog is similar to flipping a website but a WordPress blog can become more than just a content website. Many website owners are now using WordPress to feature their products or services for sale.
Isn't RSS itself a push? Or you're just changing protocols?

Sorry for being such a n00b...
if you started a restaurant and you opened it before you were able to make good food, then your initial reviews would be bad so you'd crash and burn

At least one restaurant opened in your city last week. Of the set of restaurants which opened in your city last week, one of them is last in the alphabet. Without checking either what restaurants opened last week or what the reviews say about them, what did the reviews say about that restaurant?

You should be so lucky as to have everyone know how bad you are.
Some years back, I had the epiphany that I wanted to "do something in the built environment" career-wise. I went through some college catalogs, made a list of all the majors related to the built environment and read what was required to complete a degree in them. I eliminated Architecture off the bat because you basically start from scratch with a degree in Architecture. None of my existing credits would have meant squat. I eliminated civil engineering because I had dropped out of calculus when I was 18 and they required lots of calculus. I don't remember all the other degrees I considered. Ultimately, I concluded I wanted a bachelor's in environmental resource management and a master's in urban planning. Life got in the way, so I haven't finished my bachelor's (though I did manage to work in a nifty certificate in GIS) but perhaps the thought process I went through will help you.

Good luck with this.
"You are assuming here that every single potential customer reads the critics, and that the critics will not return to try you again."

I'm only saying this is sometimes the case.
This has just as much substance as someone posting "What should I go into in college? I'm good at math."

It's hard to choose, but careers aren't like funnels where everyone who would enjoy software development would be a great architect!
How Microsoft Blew It With Windows Mobile
Chargify only supports Authorize.net, whereas Spreedly and Recurly support a few more options.

I think Spreedly has by-far the most reasonable and economical pricing structure for lean startups.
"You should be so lucky as to have everyone know how bad you are."

I don't know any of the restaurants that opened last week, because I get my information about restaurants from restaurant early adopters and reviewers. This is how most people get their information about restaurants. That's why it makes sense for restaurants to follow Geoffrey Moore's advice of using the "bowling alley strategy" from Crossing the Chasm.

If you open a restaurant, you know in advance that you need to have a strategy to get restaurant early adopters in the door. And you also know that restaurant early adopters are the kind of people, by definition, who don't go back to the same place twice if it isn't very good.

Basically, it's only luck if you're successful without knowing this and having a plan to deal with it. And counting on this happening is a poor backup plan at best.
Reality check: The median regular poster on HN is probably in the 95th percentile or better for intelligence, knowledge, and general cluefulness. Hell, the median poster on slashdot is probably well above average.

The bloggers on ScienceBlogs are, in general, competent, intelligent, and well-educated. A faux-folksy disdain for competence plays well for the masses, but politically correct or not there is such thing as actual expertise and I don't know why you're insulting someone for pointing out that a large majority of people are completely unequipped to discuss anything involving even very basic statistics (or any other practical math).
Oh, yes. The 3% was in reference to Recurly.
Google Talk: Obama Campaign Analytics and Website Optimization
The google tech talk on CouchDB talks about this problem :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESDBM9-U804

54:14 in, someone asks a similar question
This is head and shoulders above Fiddler 2 for giving you a complete picture of what's going on.
Dilbert on news aggregators
Makes me wonder what the potential legal repercussions are for developing an app to help folks do something illegal like cross the border.
It's a version 1 for sure, in terms of features, but there are definitely enough features for most, as well as a universal profile that can be used across the growing network of TypePad motion powered websites, TypePad Connect'd blogs, etc. It is significant though since it is the first time that TypePad, the largest paid blog service, has offered a free blog.
"Virals are getting trickier to figure out"

The basic formula is still the same: every viral video has to be either funny or urgent. It's just that executing is harder because there is more noise. So while it's getting harder to predict which videos will go viral, you can still do a pretty good job of predicting which videos have the potential to do so.
Some tools I use

Network
WireShark (Cross Platform)
Fiddler 2 (Win32)
(Inject into SSL Requests)
Browers Instrumenting
Firebug (Firefox)
FireQuery
FireRainbow
Html Validator (FireFox)
Selenium IDE (FireFox)
LeetKey (FireFox, mucking with URLEncoding/Base64 etc)
Internet Explore Developer Tools (IE of course)
Chrome's built in tools
Safari's built in tools
Which viral are you talking about here?
Accurately capturing keystrokes in different browsers
Trying to wash the stink off, by teaming up with the most honest man (not) on Wall Street, and throwing money at the "problem."
Drain Cleaners - Drain and Sewer Cleaning Equipment | JM McKinney Co, Inc
This is a good idea. I wonder if this has been implemented in America.
I am a lawyer and I have read enough of the West annotations over the years to know that one must still read the full text of decisions, brief them personally, and THINK about what they mean, as the West annotations are often flat wrong. To begin with, most of the time they fail to distinguish dicta and holdings.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_difference_between_hol...

West certainly provided added value in the beginning, but that kind of service needs relentless quality control of a kind that West hasn't served up for a long time.
Fairly one-sided article (and book). Don't get me wrong - there are many negatives about private equity. There are a large number of big corporations that are under severe financial stress right now (Harrah's, Clear Channel, etc.) because the debt they were saddled with by PE. But painting the whole industry with such a broad stroke isn't right.

Private equity offers the opportunity for management to make unpopular management moves and away from the quarter-by-quarter mentality of Wall Street. This is often exploited by firms. But some add real value:

How One Private Equity Firm Beat the Odds
http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/nov2009/pi20091...

How Texas Pacific Cleaned Up at J. Crew:The private equity firm reaped many times its investment by giving the preppy retailer the freedom that few public companies enjoy
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/feb2007/...
There's a danger to having a dynamic difficulty.

Case with coin op games: Games around the year 2000 was frustrating to play. A skilled player would run into impossible to resolve situation and lose a "life". There was no way to play for more then about 1 minute without losing and no way to complete a game on a single credit. From the players perspective, the game was cheating and playing too skillfully was a demerit.

Recent coin op games seem to have moved away from this. It's possible to complete a level with one credit. The game board remains the same and the difficulty is selected by the board type or player specs.

I think in general that games shouldn't change difficulty mid board. To the player, it becomes a disincentive to play too well. Let the player decide what challenges they want to face. It should at least be an option to toggle.
The commenter you responded to wasn't being amused by the author's time management skills (or lack thereof). He was amused by the author's emotional state.

So, no, they aren't being hypocritical about it.
Write A Web App In Nine Lines Of Code (Ruby + Sinatra)
It made me laugh, but it's too broad of a generalization.

Some news aggregators really add value. They drive traffic and stimulate interesting discussion. They make it easier to get opposing viewpoints on the same topic.

I wonder if Scott Adams has a chip on his shoulder because of the effect aggregators have on old media, his bread-and-butter. I find it hard to imagine XKCD labeling all news aggregators as parasites.
Another star for TechStars in my book, I've been pretty impressed by their program and it continues to out do itself.

Cool to see the Vanilla forum guys on the list because I've used their forum software for quite some time. They had a big reputation in the design world when they launched around 05/06 for offering a comparable forum that wasn't obnoxious bloat like vB. Congrats on the persistence and hard work, looking forward to seeing you guys grow.
Hmm.. I never saw it before. Sorry.
A 25-Year Battery (nuclear batteries powered by hydrogen isotopes)
1% of google would put you in the top 500 of websites, you certainly will find advertisers.
Some interesting statistics from the article:

- Private-equity owned companies employ 10% of the private sector work force

- 9 of the 10 biggest PE buyouts ever occurred between 2006 and 2008

- University of Chicago study showed that, for the years 1980 to 2001, the PE firms' investors got returns that fell short of the broad market average, after fees.
Chrome OS to be revealed Thursday
http://talkdigital.equancy.com/2009/09/14/danish-government-...
What you're describing is the life I left to start my latest co. I worked at a big research university having not had bio since college .. years ago. The key is to find ways you can help, find someone who needs what you have to offer, and work like crazy to get them to like you. Not that I did this, I kinda fell into it, but I watched others do it with much success. That said, as others have mentioned, statistics, statistics, and then when you need break, some more statistics. Learn Python and bioPython, learn NCBI Blast, and WU BLAST inside and out (read the papers), know some bio basics, and prepare to take a pay cut.

Also, if you find a group you're interested in, who's work you like and can get to interview, or at least a meeting / talk with anyone, read every paper to come out of their lab since the dawn of time. These papers can be hard to grok, and down right painful to read. Read them, and read them again. Show interest in their work and they will like you. It's ok to not get it all. It's ok, to not truly understand what they're trying to do. Trust me, some reviewers don't seem to read the entire papers either ...

If you have any further q's, you can derive my email quite easily from my profile. Ping me. Also, where do you live? If you're in the Boston area, we can talk in person. I know a LOT of people in this space and we were always looking for great software engineers who had a thirst for biology.
Bad debt needs to be unwound but without indication that debt was chasing bad assets like real estate there's no evidence that a massive failure is likely. It's possible (and probable) that companies financed too much and overspent for any assets they bought because of the larger asset bubble we were in since 1998 or 2002 at the latest. Real estate is particularly troubling because over the over investment in one sector, the clustering of errors by so many people, and the pyramiding of debt that fractional reserve banking allows. I'm not sure without specifics you can say anything is coming from that sector of the economy. The specifics listed don't seem to imply any systemic concerns.

I'd expect that the commercial real estate bust that we're in right now is far more dangerous than anything described in this article. I'm expecting that the government is going to have to inflate like crazy to keep that from blowing up. So far I've seen little evidence that any firms that don't have massive political connections are going to be saved so any bankruptcies that you see will be dealt with like any others that happen every day in a normal, healthy economy. Liquidation is not the end of the world after all-it's part of life.
As a teenager, I had an almost exactly similar conversation to this with a line editor of the GED (after looking at a "sample question" on the official GED website). I exchanged a couple of emails and I'm pretty sure she flatly did not understand the concept of a percentile.

Yes, I'm sure that she was the problem and not me. I ran it past my father, a Ph.D. physicist, and he couldn't figure out how to attach a sane interpretation to her remarks either.
Source: http://www.viceland.com/int/v16n11/htdocs/follow-the-gps-225...

An interesting interview on the more traditional 'grey hat' aspects of hacking.
Do you know how many of these have been awarded in the last six months - especially with the stimulus package? Seriously, this is intractable. Find folks who are doing work that interests you, and then try and find their grants and their papers.
Couldn't be more than the repercussions of being a "Border Angel" leaving water out there to help those who are going to do it anyway. The app developer can just use their slogan: "Saving People's Lives" (yes, they put it in quotes too).
Well at least the developer has an escape route planned out ;-)
This is above-average for Git how-to blog posts. It covers a bunch of atomic little points, so you can just skip over the ones you already know. I gleaned a couple new tricks from it.

Speaking of which, if you're using Emacs and doing this:

editing the file, removing the <<<<, ====, >>>> markers and the keeping the code you want to store

... consider using SMerge minor mode. I've developed a strong bias against merge GUIs over the years, but this one is very minimal -- which turns out to be a good thing -- and doesn't mess me up.
http://www.dilbert.com/fast/2009-11-17/

A link to the minimal version of the site (no flash etc.)
How much you wanna bet this app will be used to track those folks down by The Law?
For the most part you need to have purchased the right kind of tools to create Flash software, or acquired a license to the Flash server technology.

As well, to the best of my knowledge, no one besides Adobe can change the underlying Flash spec, so I would completely disagree with your assertion.
The program will contribute $200 million to local community colleges, universities and other institutions to provide small- business owners with practical business education. Goldman Sachs will invest $300 million through a combination of lending and philanthropic support to community development financial institutions.

I wonder how this will affect businesses? As a business owner, I could put to work a check much better than a subsidized community college class. Could $300M even put a dent in nationwide SB lending?

I am sure GS is far better than the gov't at allocating stimulus money, but will this really do anything - or is it just a PR move to shake off its $10B TARP funds, 12.9B from a should-have-been-bankrupt AIG, and the access to the FED discount window when it was allowed to turn into a bank holding company and get money at a ridiculous 0.50% interest rate.
digression re: automatically-refreshing kindles

what about a kindloid computer? (say a regular tablet pc but with a kindle monitor) If Murdoch is on target, this would really be the death of journalism.
Hmm. Half of all students in middle- to high-income families now have below-average test scores.

Clearly there must be no correlation between income and intelligence!
How is that going to work, unless they are putting out locate data? GPS is passive reception.
That's a good point. It could very well be just as easily used to rat these people out.
How does Bob get Google Voice accounts? Is it open to all users now? and can users get more than one account?
Ask HN:  What's the best first business book for a programmer?
I'm a programmer and I don't know much about business but I'd like to start my own venture. What are some good resources (books, websites, etc.) for learning the basics of business?
I wonder how this gets such detailed information about network and DOM events without injecting debug signals into the browser binaries?
Nothing bad against TechCrunch, but not mentioning that they're actively developing such a tablet is kind of selective. Although so are many other companies, and there is much buzz about tablet computing finally gaining traction in 2010.

(OK, we've heard that before but the same was true of pocket computers, so never say never.)
Wouldn't it be lovely to have Zope-like templates in Django? BTW, are the licenses compatible?
That would be a very helpful post! For some of us the whole ecommerce side is unknown and a bit scary.
it is related to 24.5 days = 2^31 milliseconds. however it's not an overflow, it's a bug with sign extension when casting from uint32 -> int32 -> int64 -> uint64, instead of directly uint32 -> uint64.

those operations are equivalent whenever the most significant bit of the uint32 is a 0, but orders of magnitude different when the most significant bit is a 1. so that explains why the bug turns off after 24.5 days and then turns back on after another 24.5 days.

if this doesn't make any sense to you, check out this wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sign_extension

the lesson is, be very careful when casting between signed and unsigned ints.
Managing PHP Exceptions with Google Spreadsheets
I couldn't agree more—I've stopped trying to find a connection between writing poetry and coding; rejecting the notion of a need for continuity/connection in all of my interests has made me a happier person.
The article made it sound to me like they are altering the browser's code.
Facebook: A tool for cops and robbers
Anyone have any tips for memory profiling tools, other than the one mentioned in the article comments? (http://www.softwareverify.com/javascript/memory/feature.html, Windows-only, Firefox-only, non-free)
then they just won't believe you.
I wish J were used as an embedded language for solving mathematical problems within a larger, simpler to read language for input/output etc. Like the way we embed SQL within Python, or whatever.
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