skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
What I'm saying is that people judge the value of the program on just that -- it's value to them. The quality of construction can certainly affect perceived value but a perfectly-constructed program which provides no value is useless. No, it's worse than useless, because it's an example of craftsmanship-over-function.

All the quality in the world isn't going to make a pointless program worth anything. But a crappily-written program that provides lots of value is a great thing no matter how horribly it was hacked together.
SSH is also mutually authenticated in the common case (virtually all cases, in fact), but client-side authentication is rarely used in SSL. There's no "anonymous" stage in the lifecycle of an SSH connection where you can send app data.
Right. That's exactly how it was with me when I first encountered closures. Explaining something that would be guessed anyway just makes it seem more complicated than it is.
Fair enough. I thought you referred to marketing in general and not in the context of Hacker News.

I was fine with the submission, because it let me get six applications for free. That's a good alert to send out.

As for anonymity: I consider everybody I don't have a personal relationship with to be anonymous. Knowing who you are doesn't make you any less of an Internet Person to me.
We are more regulated now than we've ever been before. All this talk about deregulation, though real in some cases, often just meant a decline in the rate of new regulation.

When there are less regulations people take interest and make sure things work correctly. For instance, when opening a bank account most people don't do much research because they're all FDIC insured -- who cares what the bank does with your money. Without that insurance you would care.

If we removed financial regulations, the markets would radically reform and lots of small individual investors would get out -- either into mutual funds or some other managed investment.
Does cell phone design still matter? Or is software the only game now?
So they probably analyze a lot of different video frames before finding an accurate one.

The main camera app does this too.
One of the key arguments in this thread is that, perhaps, you won't need 100+ developers unless the technology you are using requires 100+ developers to meet your deadlines.

I have been using non-C++-ish languages for about two-and-half decades now and I never met a BFEA that demanded such a huge team. In fact, I regard huge projects like this as very risky and always advise smaller projects that can bring more to the bottom line and that can be implemented in steps.

What the hell are you doing that needs such a huge team?
"The problem with efficiency is that it has nothing to do with whether or not what you are currently doing is the right thing to do."

http://blogrium.wordpress.com/2009/11/05/why-efficiency-is-n...

Hacking together a solution may be more efficient in the short term, but it may also distract you from discovering an effective solution.
Diving into a solution before understanding the problem is often a recipe for wasted time.
Regardless of whether your solution is a hack or a gem, you're committed to seeing it through.
Take time to frame the problem before you commit to taking a stab at it.

Measure twice, cut once. Teak or balsa.
Build and maintain your website. No SQL. CouchDB, Werkzeug, Couchdbkit
From the articles: "Front running is the illegal practice of a stock broker executing orders on a security for its own account while taking advantage of advance knowledge of pending orders from its customers."

"Flash trading is [when] certain customers are allowed to see incoming orders [30 milliseconds earlier] than general market participants, ... in exchange for a fee. ... Traders ... can conduct rapid statistical analysis of the changing market state and trade ahead of the public market."

So this is not front running, there are no brokers involved for one, and the trades in question already occurred. However if NYSE takes X milliseconds to execute a trade and BATS can fill my order in Y < X - statistical analysis lag time I can get my order filled before the NYSE guy. As far as I know doing the above is not front running or illegal but it is not necessarily full of fairness. So unless NYSE only gives flash traders a peek at completed orders rather than initiated orders the above could occur. It doesn't appear that this is the case:

"Automatic programs began issuing and canceling tiny orders within milliseconds to determine how much the slower traders were willing to pay."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/business/24trading.html
http://www.meetup.com/balisp/ meets from time to time.
In most enterprises, 29 tables and a 3-month development cycle ARE quick hacks.
I wrote the bridge between the Google Calendar, Planet Lisp, and Twitter in Lisp. Does that count?
Retail experts: Microsoft store strategy smart, not shameful
Nice little insight.
I'd love to have a copy of this spider if you ever decide to open source it. I've built WATIR-based robots to drive a browser to do useful stuff before, but have not yet tinkered with Selenium.
"Two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth" is just a "rule ... economists made up" too. And a totally arbitrary (albeit seductively simple) one at that. The NBER look at when the economy actually starts slowing down, not when some arbitrary amount of time has passed after the sign on national GDP growth flipped over. It is more complicated, yes, but also more sophisticated and rigorous than the old rule of thumb.

When it comes to indicators, the fact is that the definition of 'recession' is pretty irrelevant. Your rule of thumb is backward-looking and thus pretty much useless for figuring out how the economy is going to move anyway. You can't know the economy is in trouble until it's already been there for two quarters, eh?

Likewise with unemployment, if you ignore the other indicators you won't know something is going wrong until you're already deep into it (and it starts getting reflected in unemployment data). Whereas if you pay attention to leading indicators like productivity, you'll be able to better predict what unemployment is going to do.
You're very first point is completely wrong. It is very easy for people to lose wealth and no one receive it.

1. Factory Burns Down -- Lost wealth
2. Factory no longer competitive - Lost Wealth
3. Built too many houses/widgets/etc - Lost Wealth

You lose wealth when jobs that a skilled worker had disappear, not because of technology but because it's not needed anymore. Say for instance you trained 1000 people to run a specialized machine that was used to mine gold in a certain region. As soon as that gold runs out all the investments made in that specific region that are not transferable are lost.
I don't know how the iPhone apps like this work, but the Barcode Scanner for Android doesn't take a picture. You just hover your camera over the barcode and it figures it out from the preview.

I suppose it's technically taking a picture, but you could argue that you're not pressing the camera button, so you're not really taking a picture.
What you're failing to see is the meaning of the phrase "looks like it was written by a poor programmer". That's a comment on the code only, given that it's possible for a fantastic programmer to write code like that. It's not, however, the same as "calling someone a poor programmer".

Likewise, someone looking at an abstract painting might say "that looks like it was painted by a 5 year old", which doesn't mean they're calling the actual painter a 5 year old. It's commentary on the work.
How Do You Find A Job? Ask The Algorithm
Leaders Balance Urgency And Patience
You made me google for Django core team just to make sure I remember all of their names http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/internals/committers/#t...
I though it was quite obvious captialism provides only incentive to increase profits, and that it does not necessarily correspond with an incentive to make better profits.

Consider communism, ideally no one will worry about financial gain and everyone focuses on self actualization and innovation (because there's no monetary incentive, so only the truly altruistic thrive). However there's yet to be an implementation this ideal.

It's probably impossible to achieve a perfect system, so I think the answer lies in a more perfect balance of capitalism and communism.
Their video shows people scanning bags of chips and jars of food and plastic containers. Wouldn't it have made more sense to scan more expensive items, electronics perhaps?
The “no self-defeating object” argument
The parts of the ACTA that were leaked terrify me to no end. I work from home, and therefore I absolutely rely on my internet connection for my well-being. So what happens if the RIAA makes a mistake and tells my ISP that my internet needs to be cut off? Since such proceedings would not work through the legal system, what recourse would I have?

When I saw the headline for this article, I was really hopeful that maybe the leaked ACTA documents had been discounted, or maybe misinterpreted, and therefore I could stop panicking. However, the headline was an absolute lie; especially for those of us in the US that still have a few freedoms left.
The best team money could buy
The thing is the US isn't purely capitalist.
Law Dimension
You are right that it does not look like what is usually called "tail call", ie. call to 'fact' is not the last evaluated expression. However, this doesn't mean that the compiler can't optimize it, provided that the last expression is simple enough. GCC can probably optimize arithmetic expressions. I have read somewhere (can't find it though) that Erlang bytecode compiler also optimizes prepending to a list and some other primitive operations.
This means that in these cases you don't have to explicitly use accumulator variable because the compiler will create it for you.
Interesting that Scout isn't actually a freemium app by a strict definition though.

At least, I can't see any free plans, only a 30-day trial.

I'm also intrigued by the difference in subscriber rates between freemium webapps and freemium webgames.

http://lsvp.wordpress.com/2008/06/09/successful-mmogs-can-se...

The numbers from there vary from about 5% to 15%.

What can freemium webapps learn from freemium games?
I think his point is that, traditionally lending was a very local matter with local banks and local capital issues. If Norwegian pension funds want to fund a mortgage for a home in Paducah, KY, without some kind of securitization they're stuck earnings treasury rates and the home loan is charging the interest rate demanded by Paducah capitalists whether its higher than the Norwegian's rate are not.

The point is, there are gains from trade to be had from securitizing mortgages, the trick is to design them so that the information asymmetry costs don't outweigh the benefits. Maybe that's impossible and mortgage derivatives will always be value destroying but I doubt it.
Why should we treat the action of the government differently from the same actions of citizens? Wouldn't it be wrong for a government to murder people with no provocation? Wouldn't it be wrong for a government to kidnap people and hold them captive in a secret location? Why then is it fine for the government to debase the currency, and therefore destroy the value of any accounts held in that currency?

This is the current global strategy to the debt crisis: inflate it away. If we (we being the government and central banks as a colluding entity) inflate the dollar 100:1, then the "toxic" debts are only 1% as bad as they were before. And we get to keep the houses we evicted everyone from, and sell it back for the new, inflated valuation.
Failblog pics and a wordpress-cluttered template?
This community college surge is what might pop the higher education bubble.

Let me explain, first I don't think pop is the right word, stock bubbles pop, real-estate bubbles deflate much more slowly and this will take a looooong time.

Also, I do not believe there is a higher education bubble in the "you don't need college" sense. I believe there is a bubble in how much many colleges are charging for a 4 year degree.

And I think that as lower tier schools gain respectability, this will create downward price pressure.

Obviously some places will remain ridiculously expensive and exclusive, because that is the very point of their existence. But hopefully future generations will be able to get a respectable degree without having to literally mortgage their future.
I'm confused how a text box with no indication of what you should type in it qualifies as a simple and intuitive interface. It gets (somewhat) better after that, but the landing page is extremely confusing and off-putting.

I do like the concept though.
> The origin of this system was not created through free-market-capitalist methods.

Is that relevant?

> But the men and women who take on risk to pay them are rewarded.

Yes, but that's the interesting part. The actual exceptional people are, almost invariably, the scientists and doctors, and engineers who possess unique backgrounds, education, and frequently unique cognitive abilities. Many people have invested large sums of money to gain the unique education that allows them to purse. And then suddenly any speculator is considered to have "taken risk" by funding these people? And they get the lion's share of the reward, while it may take years just for the actual inventor to pay back the loans. Meanwhile the funder could be "anyone with money" and now they simply have more money.

Sometimes people who like capitalism talk about a Meritocracy, but that word is deceptive in this case because it's a meritocracy of products, not a meritocracy of people.
You have to have character :D
Humans aren't angels. Just as we need laws to protect us from killing each other or stealing we need laws to protect us from ourselves in the economy.

Whatever system we have, however much it naturally encourages innovation, someone will try to manipulate it.
Pressure on Google over blocked calls
Wasn't it jsdalton that pointed out you should have a link to your product? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=924830
How many of these are widely used in production? Merb was close. But now its part of Rails. Leaving these 2 there aren't any in the Ruby world. I see Sinatra blinking somewhere. But its far far away.
Sure, but that doesn't change the fact that he's implicitly equating an accounting technique with the Theory of Relativity, the invention of the Internet, etc.

This worldview seems shocking to me. It's hard to imagine that someone can equate a vaccine for polio and a statistical method as equally beneficial to society, especially when one caused such woe and the other eradicated a crippling disease.
Android 2.0 ships with the V8 JavaScript engine and ARM JIT
And then there's that hack where you get two similar frames and interpolate and generate a higher resolution image.
Improve Your Site’s Usability
Not exactly, as I read it. In the Nielsen studies about the fold, I thought the takeaway was that users didn't realize they could/should scroll, and that this is no longer a problem.

That doesn't mean that what content appears above the fold has no effect on the bounce rate or user experience. If all I see above the fold are ads, I'm moving on. Of course, this is Google, so they can get away with significantly more than most.
Heh, I was just arguing with a friend who claimed that the Yankees winning was one of the few "successes" of capitalism this year. I quickly pointed out how inefficient they are as a team (using payroll/championships as the metric) and what they accomplished can hardly be considered a success.
That's not the flaw of capitalism.

It is a hopefully temporary result of a world wide obsession with financial speculation.

Part of that is specific government policy resulting in financial speculation being more profitable then brick and mortar and bits and bytes businesses. I'm not just talking about the fed, and printing money, but also about trade policy.

The other part is lack of supply. When people can charge 2 and 20 and the 2 even if they suck, that means either there are a lot of people deliberately looking to lose money, or there is a shortage of hedge funds. And while those have exploded in number in recent years, that is not enough.

The government, through Ph.D. programs encourages education, some say this supply side intervention has the uninteded consequence of depressing wages for Ph.Ds.
But what if the government strongly encouraged everyone to go into wall street? Politically it would be crazy to try and explain why we're paying for people to become bankers or fund managers. But a flood of talent is perhaps exactly what we need, to even out supply and demand.
Two years seems pretty easy to me.

The things phones do 'ok' now, they will do 'well'. (video, 3d gaming, low-light photo)
The things they do 'poorly' now, they'll start doing 'ok'. (augmented reality, pico projection)

And things they don't do will have to break into 'poorly' pretty soon, if they're going to have any chance of being counted as actual features in 2 years. (vs maybe being hypothetical capabilities backed by a few buggy proofs-of-concept)

And massive changes to the ergonomics of the device won't happen. Projected keyboards? nope. Folding screens? Not a chance in hell. Auto-peering mesh networks? Not outside of trade shows.
A porn site
Such as the Theory of Relativity, or inventing the Internet, right?

Too bad reality doesn't reflect your sentiment. Even solving a massive problem may not result in becoming rich. Especially with the way network economics has turned the whole scarcity model upside-down for modern internet-based startups.
Yes. It's included in the post.

"A link to your product. Believe it or not, we had made this mistake( BIG thanks to tptacek from Hacker news for pointing it out). Users will wonder how can I get their product or how can I get them to offer me their services. Provide a link to your product and a brief description of what you’re offering in the sidebar. Make it easy for people to access your service/product."
@trekfon
No link to the source?

http://people.csail.mit.edu/gregs/ll1-discuss-archive-html/m...
I might be in the minority but I didn't know this about recaptcha and found it interesting as well as the pdf they provide: http://recaptcha.net/reCAPTCHA_Science.pdf
We are not more regulated than ever before, that's just not true. Regulations are being removed and the regulators are more lax. Did you see what Madoff said about the regulator looking at his business? He called him a blow hard.

I also don't think most consumers of banking products are able to determine the solvency of a bank. If the FDIC wasn't there, the account holders would be at greater risk even if they did care.

I don't believe markets reform themselves. The market does what is in the individual best interest, not the interest of the market.
That's true, we may not be in a recovery but in a restructuring. Restructuring an economy is much more painful then a run of the mill recession.

However if we are indeed restructuring to be less of a consumer nation and more of a manufacturing and export nation again, in the long run that's a good thing.

Or to put it in other words, you can't run both trade and fiscal deficits at the same time for ever. Things would not have gone this far if the US didn't have such a huge fiscal deficit, which allowed China to depress their currency by buying US debt. If it had not been for China buying so much US debt, the dollar would have slowly fallen against the yuan over the years, and the yuan would have slowly risen. And if oil wasn't traded in US dollars, we would have invested more in insulation and alternatives much sooner. Now this is all finally happening and it is painful, but unavoidable.
Goldman's business was subsidized by the Government, in the form of funding Goldman's transaction partners, so that they could pay Goldman what was owed.

In normal business if my customer goes bankrupt, even if I made the sale and was owed money, I would take a loss on that transaction., and if the loss was large enough it would affect all of my employees, who in turn took the risk of working for me. I took the risk of selling to that customer, I was in the best position to judge their stability, and so would have to deal with the consequences. Goldman didn't have to deal with the consequences of transacting with unstable partners, the Government (in the form of the taxpayers) stepped in to deal with those consequences, and that is why in large part Goldman is able to exist, earn a profit, and pay bonuses.
Anyone knows a reference for this bimodality Of 1-5 Ratings? This is not what I see in amazon. Votes are not normally distributed, sure, but they tend to cluster on the upper end of the scale. The mean for amazon votes (note that since the distribution is not normal, the mean is meaningless) is something like 3.4.
Ask HN: Is it just me, or are HN comments becoming more and more negative?
In the early days of HN, there seemed to be a tight-knit group of entrepreneurs that offered support and advice to each other. Now when I read comments, there seems to be a race to see who can write the first criticism or who can pick out the first inconsistency.

Don't get me wrong, constructive criticism is essential for growth. But I feel like the atmosphere of the comments dialogue is becoming more and more negative each day. Am I the only one feeling this?

Maybe I'm just overly sensitive.
That's a neat service, thanks for linking this!
Heh, yeh sorry - a comouter was aggravating me and I took it out here.

It might be nit picking... but it's worth pointing out. It's like marketing a hack-proof computer; there would be an outcry :) (and rightly too).

But mostly it was just a throw away observation ;)
you're right, our banking system isn't even remotely close to being based on voluntary trade and "free market". so I'm not sure how we can even discuss this supposed failure of the free market.
We'll definitely look into that. We just moved from Paypal to Braintree and are still working out the kinks. Thanks for letting us know!
It is really hard to notice but on this page: http://scoutapp.com/subscriptions there is note of a 30 day free plan if you look (or search) but you don't get the same kind of information as you do on the other plans.

We also offer a 30-day free plan: 1 server, 3 plugins, and a 30 minute reporting interval.
Sean was great to work with and we're definitely planning to add all kinds of goodness for how we got here :)
Apple co-founder Steve Jobs named Fortune 'CEO of the Decade'
"Do you have any idea what the current financial situation would have looked like if the government had just let the banks collapse?"

No, and neither do you. That's why its called a free-market. It's free to do anything. It's not a free-market thats only free to take the form of what our expectations are.
The collapse of Lehman brothers and Stearns was itself a lagging indicator. The issues had already been pressing all the way back to 2007 (see 'housing bubble'). We had clear signs of a stalling economy well before these companies collapsed. The signal these collapses sent, really, was that this was going to be a deeper recession than we had originally hoped.

I don't claim to understand all of this, but my wife (PhD economics) first started sending me warnings about serious economic issues in late 2007.
There is also no telling how bailing out failed businesses will help us in the long term either. Intuitively it seems worse to me. And unfair--what about all the other banks that didn't screw up by leveraging 35:1?
Ummm...what is a 30-day free plan? Isn't that just a free trial?
How do you encounter road racers if the bicycle is "not something ridden for sport or enjoyment".

Road racers are a very small minority of the cycling population in Tokyo. However, almost everyone (non road racers) rides on the sidewalk. On the street there are relatively more road racers and hybrids.