skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Sins of the innovator
I'll second Inc. and Fast Company. Both have great content.

For an outside the tech mag, I'm a huge fan of GOOD (http://good.is). Lots of smart thinking and and in-depth explorations of the theme for each issue.
small business

home office

on the go
Hear, hear! They didn't crack or break PGP at all. They still needed the password-protected secret key to pull it off. It's not much different than attempting to brute-force anything else, including login:password pairs.
I tried to lay this out as succinctly as I could in the post :)

The primary reason and goal of Duck Duck Go is to get you the information you're searching for faster, and with less mental effort.

This new view in particular does that by reducing the clicking back and forth between results. It pulls out good info from pages where it exists. Often you click to a page and then search for your terms within that page, only to find they don't exist or only exist in a cursory or unrelated fashion.

By displaying paragraphs of readable text, you should get a much better idea whether that page has what you want. And I hope that in some cases you won't actually have to click. The take a peek feature (hover over magnifying glass) furthers this hope.

Another way to look at part of it is we are saving you (at least partially) from the myriad of interfaces that exist on all the sites on the Internet. We pull out the good parts, via Duck It or Take a Peek, and standardize the formatting for you.
Is this not a duplicate of http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=919111 ??
> And it's just as easy to say that Europeans have been brainwashed to say things like all Americans are brainwashed to consume, consume, consume.

Absolutely, and it's probably just as true.
MongoDB really is an interesting project. It really does fill a gap between key/value stores and relational databases.

At my company, we've been using MongoDB for about half a year: it was the only project that provided auto-sharding, replication, stored procedures, commercial support, and, last but not least, the ability to detect race conditions when multiple clients are writing the same data.

Pretty impressive, if you ask me. MongoDB is going to be big.
Thinking negatively can boost your memory, study finds
Spreedly has a per-transaction percentage charge on top of all the other per-transaction fees you pay to the gateway/bank/etc. Not a great option long-term. http://cheddargetter.com and http://chargify.com are much better options. CheddarGetter is a very robust service with usage tracking, branded email communication and microbilling features. Chargify includes a drop-in generic interface like Spreedly.
actually it is sort of a myth that buffett ignores the macro.

he engages in a lot of macro trades if you look back.

here are some examples: berkshire's silver trade executed by Commodity trader Andrew Hall of Phibro, going long the brazilian Real, investing in Petro China, his past investments in more than one railroad... these are all investments that correlate with a kind of macro theme. they might not be the only factor, but definitely A factor in his investment.
Feeling grumpy 'is good for you'
Very very impressed. You do a search for droid, it asks you which meaning of droid, including the cell phone, the star wars characters, and three other meanings I didn't know existed. That questioning of which meaning of the word your looking for is an incredible innovation right there. It's also so simple a concept, too. Like so many simple ideas, I'm smacking my head that I hadn't thought of it myself. I wonder if they use wikipedia for the disambiguation.
Search Engine Optimization is for maximizing your chances of appearing higher in search results than other websites. The OP's point is that SEO doesn't matter in this case. Before seeing this post I did a Google search for Droid as well and found that site. The site is awful and it could use some sprucing up- I did not even explore the site. But SEO is the least of its concerns.
IFixit launches a collaborative repair site
Performance of modularity maximization (for community detection) in practice
Anybody else notice he was using mailinator for his paypal address? Unless he has some sort of script that polls mailinator and automatically removes messages instantly, he was likely vulnerable to having his paypal account stolen.
This is to accompany these:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=919609

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=919606

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=919698

All journalist fluff based around a single report, the original being hard to find and read.
The official documentation is liberally sprinkled with such references, so I don't think anyone would mind.
How do you measure the quality of a classifier (hint, not by "accuracy")?
I have gone through my search history in Google and compared it to Duck Duck Go. The results are pretty good for most queries and really good for some queries. Some good results:

* http://duckduckgo.com/?q=%09dragon+age+review&v=d (Drago age review)

* http://duckduckgo.com/?q=surrogates+&v=d (surrogates)

Great overview for reviews and the engine knows that "surrogates" can mean different things.

Some lacking results:

* http://duckduckgo.com/?q=python+unix+time&v=d (python unix time)

* http://duckduckgo.com/?q=Marc+Cohn+-+Walking+in+Memphis&... (walking in memphis)

"python unix time" does not return any matches. Google's video results are superior when searching after "walking in memphis".
So You Want Govt Run Healthcare? (Robert Guenther's Story)
Our start on a statistics to English dictionary.
So far I've found better results.

Few complaints:
1. The results are a little hard on the eyes to scan. The gray may be too similar to the background, and the consistently large text/different size/color of highlighted words, possible overusage of icons, I find distracting.

2. I did a search and for some reason it picked shopping as default. Not sure why? I later realized the logo had a shopping cart on it and redid the search for the type I was looking for - and my results were great!
self-posting this because I think it's a story that should be heard.
Electricity is a lot more expensive than oil based energy.

In 2009, the industrial price of electricity in California is around $0.10 / kWh. That's $0.028 / MJ. The current price of diesel oil is $2.801 / gallon, which is $0.616 / litre which is $0.016 /MJ (assuming 38.6 MJ/l as the heat of combustion of diesel oil).

So diesel oil is $0.016 / MJ while electricity is $0.028. As you can see, electricity is a _lot_ more expensive in ideal circumstances (all the energy is converted to useful work). Now obviously, not all of the heat in the combustion engine can be converted to mechanical energy so there's quite a loss there while electrical engines have very good energy efficieny ratios, but still, oil is a lot cheaper than electricity, and that is the main reason it is used as the primary energy source.

EDIT: I have made a huge (100x) mistake, thanks for eru for spotting it, it's corrected now. Still, my point stands.
That was Sprint (as in Southern Pacific Railway.)
No matter how you hash them, passphrases are still pretty secure. If you can type your PGP passphrase very quickly, you're doing it wrong.
A lot of trains are electrified (I do not know what that situation is in the US).

Also, even diesel-electric trains are much more efficient than trucks.
Yes. I was going to say that too although I don't think the interface is great. If nothing else do two things: get a new logo and have a visual designer smooth out the edges of your site. It is simple but not clean at all.
There are a few commuter lines in the US that are electrified, but I don't think there is any electrified freight service.

The diesel that diesel engines burn is converted to electricity to power the traction motors, however.
What is the value to knowing this information as soon as possible?
The Economist. Concise writing style, minimal ads, and its not just about economics as one would suspect - covers the world, tech, business. Nothing comes close, expensive though.
There. Hopefully that's a little less jarring.
Fast Company is great because they usually profile 5 folks per issue around some theme. Mostly senior manager to director level folks so you get a better insight into the working of companies. Also a really nicely designed mag.

The Inc. 500 is useful in that they publish revenue numbers of companies in a wide variety of industries. I've found it very useful when assembling presentations of comps.

Also, you can get subscriptions to both magazines for free ($5 max) with various offers online.
The "cleaner" streams are heavily charged with ions - the high-sodium stream with chlorine, the high-chlorine with sodium. It would probably take more energy to charge them higher than using "neutral" seawater.
Mozilla isn't (currently) interested in countering the rise of Chrome or Safari. The Mozilla Foundation and the Firefox team are pushing for a more open, standards-driven web, and both Chrome and Safari are better than IE. Only after standards are really standard can you have a meaningful competition on the merits of various browsers.
But not, apparently, built a house.
that impressed me the most as well. the least lines I could do it in was 4.

the others I wasn't necessarily able to think of the one liner before checking the answer but I at least had a general idea of how it might be done. the primes completely stumped me.
Hard to read the text in the footer.
It also seems there is an extra box below your footer.
The Register's article on this chip (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/26/tilera_third_gen_mes...) makes it sound like there is no FP support.
Search Engine Optimization means optimizing for search engines means if your metadescription on Google sucks and your sublinks are nonexistent, you have bad SEO.
Want a Droid for work e-mail? It'll cost you extra
This is another lesson in the importance of using an unscrupulous credit card processor for unscrupulous business.
I think the UK is an odd case. The railroads were apparently so unprofitable that even the government didn't want the liability.

BNSF, OTOH, is profitable. I assume they even make money from their passenger service. (A commuter line in Chicago with 100+ trains per day.)
That's an excellent point. I've already got someone using it for the web interface despite the heavy mobile use I'm pushing, but I can see how my copy comes off as missing the "complete picture," as it were. Something I'll have to work on.

And no worries on being a competitor - there's tons of guys like us! FreshBooks, CurdBee, Ballpark, Ronin, The Invoice Machine, Cannybill - the list goes on. And Freshbooks has an iPhone interface, even.

This is - I'm told - good news. A large market with a fractured user base is a good place to enter, provided you can target a niche that nobody else has made their own... which is what I'm trying to do.
Fairly good search results, except for one thing: it seemed to me that the highest ranked results tended to be "aggregation sites" that contain links to the original material. I prefer to be pointed to the original sites.

This comment is based on only 5 minutes of experimenting, but is hopefully fair.
I tried it myself, and I must agree with some other people. The branding is a bit cheesy. While some people considered Google to be cheesy in the beginning as well, the name was a bit more consistent with the brand. While almost anything can turn into a brand name simply by being unique, the names that already exist for search are traditionally derived from what Yahoo! started. Bing, Google, etc. are all expansions of this. Duckduckgo.com is easy to remember, though. As for the search, I think it is fantastic. It is very slow, but the results seem to be very good, and the interface is clean. I would actually switch to using it if the results were obtained faster.
The summary:

"Get to know Droid a little better. Droid Does the Network. Droid is exclusive to Verizon Wireless, the most reliable network available."

If you didn't know what the Droid was, what would you think it was, and why would you care?

If you're not a VP of Marketing at Verizon, you're not going to like that copy.

It's getting harder and harder to claim that SEO is snake oil. Companies like Yelp and Mint have been built on SEO -- it's how they can out-market Citysearch and Intuit. Simple and standards-aware design and factual copy get you 90% of the way there; that last 10% is the difference between a solid site and a $170M buyout.
Inc. is indeed great.

In fact, my karma would be about 1,000 points higher if I'd simply remember to submit the online versions of some of the articles. They're typically highly regarded on hn.
I can certainly see your point here, and I agree that it's only a true problem if they're hung up on it.

It's really an attitude determination. If they're focussed on reviews instead of making the business work best, that's the problem.

Of course in the context of the blog it would be too wordy to get into all this there, so thanks for bringing it up here!
This discussion prompeted a memory of this article from 1998 in Wired:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.05/qwest.html

Regarding the origin of the Qwest network: "Philip Anschutz, who owns more than 86 percent of Qwest - 55 percent of a combined Qwest-LCI - previously owned the Southern Pacific Railroad. When he sold the railroad to Union Pacific in 1996, he negotiated to buy the rights of way alongside the tracks of both railroads. Combined, they represent the cable route of a significant portion of the network. The rest of the cable is run along lines for which Qwest leases the right of way for up to 50 years, or along interstate highways, where it leases rights of way from transportation authorities for 20 or 25 years. Eighty-five percent of the Qwest network is strung along railroads."
One more suggestion... The feature to see the content that the search engine sees (I think that is what this is. It loaded so slowly that I could not quite verify.) should be on a separate page for advanced users. Basic end users neither care nor need to know about this information because most users will not be concerned with search engine optimization.
I completely disagree with the first sin of lust for innovators. Maybe it wasn't explained the way it was intended?

You should ABSOLUTELY be innovating "in a space you have no business being in." Who's to tell you to not be there? Did Apple have no business to get into cellular phones? Did Odeo have no business dabbling in social networks, thus the creation of Twitter?

I say you should look to innovate in spaces that you have no business being in. Your unapologetic curiosity and potentially oblivious depth of understanding in that "space" is a fundamental element to many innovations.

Silly.
Like another commenter in the blog itself, I think you're confusing "filtering out 100 resumes from Craig's List" with "How you should hire everyone."

If you're sending generic copies of your resume and cover letter to a company, you cannot expect them to treat you specially.

On the other hand, I did say in the post that if the cover letter shows this is a real person, additional questions are not necessary.

Presumably if you're that qualified you wouldn't send a generic cover letter, right?
Weekend in a Space Hotel - 2 years - 4.5 Million
Browser? Operating system?

I'd love to fix it, but I can't see it in any of my configurations (Linux/Windows, Opera/Firefox/Chrome/IE.)
Furthermore, when you may be oblivious to the conventions of a "space" and have an unapologetic curiosity and approach, you will most-likely defy conventional wisdom and practices which usually breathes new life into old spaces.

OK, I'm done ranting on this piece. Curious what you think of my two statements. I guess your votes will tell.

Cheers.
No, the point of SEO is to drive you up higher in search results. Droid is already at #1. There's nowhere for it to go.

A crappy site and meta tag are unrelated.
I use OpenAir because my employer requires it. Not for billing or salary but rather to see how much time is spent on each project. Most importantly to distinguish development time from maintenance time.
Today I am low on creativity and can't think of more cool calculations. Can anyone help me out?

I just thought of one actually - sum up the size of files in a directory.

Can you think of more? ... Anything that comes to your mind.
From Minimum Viable Product to Landing Pages
The article consistently mis-spells the name of the car from Knight Rider. It was KITT, not KIT.
I agree with you, but I also agree that major changes in a companies focus can really hurt morale (if the employees aren't sold on the idea they'll push back).

Also, I think the author would agree with you to an extent. Apple really did push into a market where they didn't have any prior business, but their experiences and expertise really paved their way to success.
Natural Diet Pills for Weight Loss – How Safe are They?
Thanks for the numbers. I guess I will have to run some numbers on my own, to see if that turn out.

In principal electricity should be at least as cheap as Diesel in terms of usable energy --- because if it was more expensive you could use Diesel to generate electricity (arbitrage opportunity).

Also the efficency of moving Diesel engines is not that good. Less than 30% or so. And they can't get much better without raising their working temperature, because the theoretic maximum (Carnot Engine) isn't that much higher. Moving engines have to be quiet compact --- on trains less so than in cars. The big stationary engines in the power plants do not have to conform to this limitation. (But there is some loss in transmiting the electrity through the power lines, too.)

I'll come back with some numbers soon.

Edit: I don't know why someone downvoted you. If your numbers are wrong, they should they so. If not, there's no reason to downvote.
They were brute-forcing a PGP-encrypted ZIP archive, which would have been symmetric encryption.

These kinds of archives were produced by the PGP Desktop application (at least in earlier versions; I don't know if it still does) and were functionally similar to using "gpg -c", although the actual file format is/was different and incompatible.

Had the guy used a public/private keypair for encryption rather than a password, I suspect the work needed to bruteforce it would be much greater. But that doesn't look like the situation.
Inc. is great, inspiring and tons of useful stuff. Fast Company is good, too full of cultural and art stuff, very similar to Wired. Entrepreneur is for fast food franchisees and ebay businesses, really not much for tech startups.
Community contributions and copyright assignment
I like mrtron's suggestion.
I would prefer you to show the full url, because it offers more info on the link.

For example, when looking at blog articles, the date the article was written is part of the url...
print is fantastically underrated. i LOVE my inc mag in print. it allows physical comfort while reading.
Ugh, I so didn't want to revisit this article yet again, especially after promising I was done ranting on this, but I believe many can take issue with the seventh deadly sin of innovators of Pride "You won't give up on your favorite idea - even when the numbers prove you are wrong."

Numbers cannot always quantify and predict outcome. Again, Twitter -- while the plans I have heard of to generate revenue sound exactly like what I would be focusing on, there was no real business model or revenue model early on. Facebook was in a similar situation.

To really drive home the point, look at the history of toilet paper. YES, toilet paper. Did you know originally no one wanted to buy it because of the taboos around it in society at the time? The "numbers" would have told you that no one wants to wipe with a roll of tissue paper and to close up shop. Well, we know how that turned out.
It's not the engine that makes difference. Internal combustion engines don't vary by orders of magnitude in efficiency. It's less friction, higher scale and constant speed that make trains more efficient. Diesel or electrical, does not matter. They spend less energy per ton per mile.

// I'm not entirely sure that what I said is 100% truth, so take it with a grain of salt.
If Politicians were HTTP Status Codes
We tried to make this app very flexible so that users could use it for many different things. For example:
- Students working on a project together
- Families sharing messages
- Companies getting feedback from users
- Single users using it to store thoughts and to-dos
- etc etc

*Next week we are rolling out the ability to make reel private.
Cassandra with Scala and Akka
Do you want a happy email or do you want your servers fixed? Your call.

It's not like the two are mutually exclusive. Are you really suggesting that the entire 180 minutes of effort by multiple engineers would have to be directed at writing a "happy email" rather than fixing the problem?

The real reason, I imagine, is that if they automatically sent out an email to everyone who could be affected then more people would know of the problem. It's probably smart to accept a handful of customers being unhappy about being in the dark in return for the outage being exposed to far fewer customers.
Admit it, this was just an excuse to draw some ladies, wasn't it?
Google was once a really silly name.
thanks tony, i thought the form would automatically create the link for me.

ShoutReel creates the link automatically! :)
Hooray, thanks for showing that search isn't done and Google is stuck.
Programming Contest: Win a Motorola Droid and $1k in Cloud Credit
Yes, major changes in a companies focus can hurt morale. BUT, when you have a clear vision and mission, changes should be an expected constant. No one really handles change well, hence the reason so many biz books are written on how to manage it. And, morale goes down when the employees don't buy into the vision and mission, but if the company shows the correlation and it holds true to their vision and mission, morale shouldn't be hurt for that reason. I'm over simplifying a bit and opening up another can of worms, but I'm sure you get where I'm going.

Thank you my friend for engaging in debate. I love people like you in communities like HN. Makes participation that much more enjoyable.
There's certainly a green angle to this story:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/11/warren-buffet-buys-b...
I would love to see a blog post about your usage of MongoDB
I work for a company that models their a3 process on the Toyota process. Essentially the A3 is used as a structured method of problem definition, requirment planning, and solution implementation tracking within the business. A3 originally refers to the size of paper that the analysis was performed on. A pretty basic and typical outline of an A3 process can be found here (http://www.coe.montana.edu/IE/faculty/sobek/A3/steps.htm ). To my understanding, originally the A3 process was done with paper and pencil, and the A3 updated as conditions or understanding of the problem changed. The size of the paper (16.5" × 23.4") allowed for a fairly deep analysis of the problem. A3s can be used for anything from analysis of a single failure, all the way up to planning at the business level, with cascading A3s below being referenced by higher level a3s to drive specific actions all the way to the implementation level.

In practice the deep analysis of an A3 tends to be squeezed onto a single powerpoint slide (which makes Mr. Tufte cry) and much of the problem solving and communicative power of the A3 is lost.
hahahaahah no.
Duck Duck Go results pages actually have less on them than Google results pages. I think we're just so used to Google that we don't see 80% of the stuff that's there.
That is one goal of SEO. Another related goal is to have the search result's blurb compel the user to actually click on the link.