skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Pretty much - there an app that uses Rolex's trademarks without authorization and they haven't taken it down yet.
This is yet more evidence that Microsoft still tragically misunderstands the web. How can they still be so far behind the curve? People don't search for news articles--they search for information (e.g. Wikipedia, local doctors, vendors, etc.) and for sites like Facebook (rather than typing out the URL). Colluding with a moribund print media industry will buy them nothing.
I'm getting new users for $2 each with Facebook Ads, anybody else using them?
Except his intent seems to be to put up the minimum amount of content allowed and make money off of ads. For example, when poking around his site, I confused ads with site navigation. His other ads are also not distinguished from the rest of the site's content - seemingly to trick people into clicking them.
The problem of too many product offerings (the paradox of choice / analysis paralysis) is something I'm trying to address with my startup Kallow.

The issue with Adams' solution (which may work for some) is that customers sometimes don't know exactly what they want, and have a hard time describing it, especially when it comes to things like personal electronics. You are essentially asking them to design a product for themselves, which sounds kind of cool, but will leave a lot of people confused.
You have a bunch of web sites with the same poor-quality layout that are dominated by ads, that's pretty much the definition of a spam ring, and I don't see why it's so surprising that google would want to limit clickthroughs to your sites.

I'd say the best way to improve you're score would be to get a good design that looks legitimate, and content-focused, and try to vary the designs of your other sites to look more like you are actually providing something other than the same ad links people were looking at when they clicked through to your site.
Responding to your edit: I don't think data.gov should be in the business of curating too aggressively. It delays data being released, and it brings in a lot of questions about the politics of how that curation is done. I agree, though, on the need for a variety of release formats, detailed descriptions of the data, open and versioned repositories, and the political clout to get the data all in one place.

I think of data.gov as a layer below IPUMS - you go to data.gov to source your IPUMS-like project (or your company that's built around doing the detailed curation you're talking about).
Yeah no kidding, I want my up-vote back. . .I should have known better, a title like that is to good to be true.

Somebody please kill this.
I was going to answer the title, with "no" - http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/brain.html - but the article itself agrees with me anyway.

So. Your title is misleading & not representative of the article, & that's annoying.
Can you back that up with some links to data?
I've been using Hive for the past month or so. It has significantly reduced my development time in doing analytics. If you're interested in this tool, let me give some advice:

1) Hive shines when your dataset is truly massive (ie > 100mb). Anything less should probably be done in MySQL, unless your backend processing is considerable.

2) Don't come into the project thinking "Oh, I can do SQL on huge datasets and get immediate results." Hive's main advantage is reducing the need to write custom MapReduce scripts--so your processing time is still the same.

3) Hive has its quirks. You have to structure joins right and your where clauses. It's not as forgiving as typical SQL.
Interesting take. This adds weight (but not proof) to the oft-repeated mantra that Apple doesn't know how to deal with businesses, just individuals.

(Edit: spellnig)
It has nothing to do with tolerance, and everything to do with paying my rent.

I rant and curse about this, but at the end of the day, I have to play ball.
I buy disposable filters because I care?

Wouldn't one of those micro-mesh cones that you can use forever be more eco?
Ask HN: Ideas man vs  Practical Man
I've been reading HN for quite a while now, since the 'beginning' as you might say.

I'm ashamed.

I don't know how to code to a build standard and won't have the possibility to learn. Now I'm good at coming up with ideas but havn't the faintest how to put them into action. I've got a notebook jammed with ideas in different fields but no practial way of going about things. For the record I'm a CAD technician with IT support capability.

In essence my query to you is : How do I take my ideas for startups and run with them without turning into a pointy haired boss.

EDIT: You know what... it always happens at the right time.
http://paulgraham.com/start.html
Rogue Amoeba
It's true that it is extremely painful to watch emails and bad reviews come in complaining about a bug that you fixed weeks ago when Apple is blocking you from getting the fix out there. On the other hand, we make money off the app store, and we didn't off of our website. So it's a little easier to be tolerant.
You could possibly create an API for this service and see how people use it. In my current project I have a need for something like this but having to send an email complicates my use case some.
Isn't nationalism great?
I still don't see how any developer benefits from app store rejection. It's more that it hasn't been an issue for most developers because most apps get approved, but when it does hit it's still a pain in the ass to deal with - not a benefit from what I've experienced.
Just a quick note on the poor quality layout - I have an info resource site that was put up with a mediocre design. One time, I upgraded the design, only to have CTR cut in half. Left it for a week and switched back - CTR doubled straight away. Might be one reason the layout is the way it is - intentionally deceiving/confusing is often a different issue though.
github should take that as a compliment. :) github's design is okay, but it's too cluttered for my tastes. It feels like a messy desk.
The title of the post is exactly the title of the article, so I'd say it is very representative of the article. That the answer to the posed question is "no" is not misleading.
Blackberry is the #1 smartphone, yet the app ecosystem there is pretty dismal. Clearly there is another dynamic at work there, and pure installed base isn't as compelling a factor as it seems. One reason could be that the Blackberry platform is absolutely horrible to develop on.
Microsoft will release tool as GPL: http://port25.technet.com/archive/2009/11/13/update-on-the-w...
Update on the Windows 7 USB/DVD Tool: MS to release as GPL
There's another path that information takes. Even if web developers still supported IE, they knew about better browsers and used them. Since most IT people are also doing computer support for their family and are considered more skilled by friends, alternative browsers found their way to "normal" people. Remember that there was almost no marketing from Mozilla (at least in Europe) before Firefox came out... and somehow they got to the current position. I converted a couple of friends and one company myself.

I read a lot of stories like this one and I'm sure I will buy a different phone. People I meet may notice and hopefully I will convince them to look at alternatives too. There is some real influence that comes from geeks and developers - even if it starts small :)
Roasting your own doesn't equal better coffee. Roasting is a skill and not everyone has it.
customers sometimes don't know exactly what they want, and have a hard time describing it,

I don't want to minimise the problem quoted, but that is not the entirety of it. There is still a problem for people who do know what they want, due to the one thing that is hard to quantify: whether the device performs its function well.

The toaster example is particularly apt. I can start off knowing precisely what I want: Say, I want a white 4-slice toaster with wide (bagel) slots and a defrost function for under $150. Ta da! If that is all there was to it, I could be finished in 3 minutes - it's not actually that hard to find one (though not with Google - you need a real e-commerce site like Amazon).

The problem is that when you do find a few toasters that match your requirements on Amazon, most have reviews like "stopped working after 2 months" "completely uneven toasting" "doesn't pop toast" etc etc. So then you have to wade through review upon review on model upon model in order to find the least sucky toaster. That is when the toaster hunt becomes a time sink.

Now there are sites like consumer reports who are supposed to give you a recommendation based on some actual testing, but of course they are too slow moving - whatever model of toaster they recommended 18 months ago is no longer to be found.
Re: "(to be fair she said that all users will click on 1/4 of the ads presented to them, not '1/4 of users will click on an ad')"

That's even worse: she assumed that 4 ads would be presented per e-mail, so the CTR would be 100% per e-mail.

That's beyond absurd.
Google AdWords, if managed properly, does a very good job at this. Take his example: For example, let's say you're looking for new patio furniture. The words you might use to describe your needs would be useless for Google. You might say, for example, "I want something that goes with a Mediterranean home. It will be sitting on stained concrete that is sort of amber colored. It needs to be easy to clean because the birds will be all over it. And I'm on a budget.

So say I am retailer of stylish, affordable outdoor furniture, among many other products (that is what is important in the query, more on the Mediterranean part later). I might have an ad campaign dedicated to patio furniture. Within that campaign I might have an ad group for plastic furniture (easy to clean).

That ad group would include a mix of exact and broad match keywords/keyword phrases like patio furniture, budget, cheap, affordable, stylish, along with negative keywords like expensive, wood, etc. The ads would deliver him to a landing page with links to hopefully appropriate furniture. On that page he can then see the various items that meet his basic qualifications - stylish, affordable, easy to clean - and click through to the items that look like they would match his Mediterranean home, with its amber colored concrete patio.

Reading through what I just wrote: I don't know much about the furniture business, but Mediterranean might actually be an important and useful kw to advertise on...
2 would be relatively easy to accomplish by scraping www.epguides.com.
Please stop spamming your site all over this thread!
Seems like he means "hobbyist developer" not "indie developer."

The external forces on an indie developer -- someone trying to sell apps to make a living -- are much worse compared to developers on payroll for a large software house.
Your contact information isn't in your profile, but you've given me some great ideas. Would you mind emailing me at vmc@leftnode.com so I could personally contact you in the future?
Indie developers probably don't have as much time or money to burn as do "real" developers. So the possibility of rejection probably encourages independent folks to not take the gamble; if the app is developed but rejected, the code and the time spent writing it becomes completely useless.
There's always some gearhead out there eager to pounce on every little inaccuracy in order to impress everyone with their deep knowledge of automobiles, isn't there?
Interesting point, though I more or less disagree about the level of curation necessary to make a minimally useful product. I think data.gov is FAR below that level, and is just noise so far. But these are practical questions, and I think we agree in principal about a lot.
Many of the bars around the college I graduated from had a "drunk bus" that would give you a free ride home. The only expectation was that you tip the driver a few bucks. There was even one that would pick you up and take you to their bar...
I'm disappointed this was downvoted. Some people have a genetic predisposition towards depression. It's no joke.

While the submitter's work situation certainly could use improvement, the loss of sex drive, fatigue, and feelings of worthlessness may be symptoms of a disease. Left unchecked this could lead to a number of maladies, including suicide.
Liability? Probably nothing worse than putting a bunch of drunk people in a crowded bar at 2 am on a weekend. That is to say none at all.
I'm an indie, and I disagree. Big vendors can call Phil Schiller and ask what's going on. Small vendors can't.

Even putting that aside, companies like Google, etc., can afford to develop huge complex apps, and run the risk of them not getting in (look at their navigation app). I can't do that. At most, I'm willing to throw away maybe a week's worth of work.

After two recent pretty egregious (on Apple's part) rejections, I've got increasingly cynical about the platform. Needless to say, I'm not putting much effort into development anymore. Customers e-mail me and say "When is feature/app X coming?" And I have to tell them it's probably not coming, unless Apple gets their crap together.
HTML5 and Beyond
Also posted here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=937541
The Top Most Common API Pitfalls
Polyglots Unite
maybe it just needs to be anonymous a la craigslist.

This is starting to sound like a great start-up to me.

ineed.com
Trouble At Twitter: U.S. Visitors Down 8 Percent In October
People blank with pressure. The first thing the interviewer should do is lay off the pressure not turn it on. Seniors and Out of Job People tend to freak.

Even at Google, a job is not a vacation. Wanting to hire people who react well under pressure is completely valid.

The mistake, which is not at all unique to Google, is to think that "high pressure interrogation at a job interview" is usefully similar to the kind of pressure that might occur on the job. For some jobs it will be. For many others, it's completely different.

Compare these scenarios: "QA just found a huge, unexpected performance problem in this server application and no one knows what's causing it. The application goes live in 48 hours and you and your team have until then to make it handle ten thousand times as many users as it does now." vs. "You just landed after a 10-hour flight and will be meeting a major potential customer in 30 minutes. TSA blew up your laptop because it looked suspicious and the airline sent your luggage to Albuquerque so instead of a carefully-prepared presentation all you have are a couple index cards with vague notes about the product. If you don't make a sale, your company will be bankrupt in a week."
Little jarring to see this link here since I'm currently a developer on the openforum codebase....

"Wait; people are actually going to use this site? People I might actually care about? Creeeepy"
Pretty similar to mailinator.com witch I have been using for a while.
> DH0. Name-calling.

I disagree. I said nothing about the author, I said something about the tone of the story. Read the definition of the word you supplied:

> writing about someone as if they were a saint

What name does this call the author? For that matter, is it even derogatory about the story? I think it's a factual description of the post. If you choose to take it as a negative statement about the author by way of being a criticism of the story, I think your argument reflects biases I do not share.
Wait, really? You guys must be using many more modules than I am. I just checked a couple of nearby development boxes with various Drupal projects on them. The smallest had 41 tables. The largest had 92 tables. Most had fewer than 50. (These are primarily Drupal 5 deployments, maybe Drupal 6/7 add a lot of tables?)

This seems to be a list of the tables in a default Drupal 5 installation: http://webdevgeeks.com/schemaspy/index.html. It looks like Drupal 5 has around 40 tables out of the box.

Here's an ERD for CivCRM, which I believe is built on top of Drupal, so this would be additive to the base Drupal install and whatever modules CivCRM depends upon: http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/CiviCRM+ER...

Here's an ERD for Joomla: http://www.oozman.com/oozing/ideas/archives/erd-joomla/ (v 1.0 and 1.5)
I bet the commenter above would prefer to be judged on his accomplishments as an interviewer, rather than some half-assed assessment of him as a person made in a comment.
Assuming you want to find a technical co-founder you will need to bring valuable skills to the table. If you have truly amazing ideas this could be maybe 50% of what you bring to the table, but more likely your ideas will be 5-10% of your contribution, because once you get going on an idea you are going to need to iterate and at that point you need everyone to be bringing ideas to the table.

The essence of a pointy-haired boss is someone who has a lot of ideas (which may be good or bad), but is so entrenched in middle management that they have no idea how to actually get things done. As an engineer I love when people have great ideas, but I hate when I'm the only one working 16 hour days because the non-technical folks think their job is to tell me what to do then wait til it's done.

What constitutes valuable contributions? Well, I think Spencer Fry said it better than anyone else around here ever has: http://spencerfry.com/whats-a-non-programmer-to-do
Social Recruiting
Isn't nerd the name of the stereotype? A hypothetical nerd has control issues etc. by definition - why would anyone call someone a nerd if he did not think the other one has nerd traits?
But Colaprete couldn't resist a further tease, saying that other features in the spectra hinted at a variety of additional chemicals. "This goes beyond the water," he said, but declined to discuss any of this additional information, suggesting that it was in the same state as the water findings were shortly after the impact—they still haven't eliminated enough possible explanations, so they can't talk about it with any confidence.

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/11/nasa-announces-s... ...includes pictures of absorption spectra - anyone who can guess what lives around the other significant data points? My knowledge of chemistry is sadly lacking...
The difference is that maskur masks the address of incoming mail, whereas mailinator doesn't. Mailinator is good for when one party wants to hide their address, whereas maskur is good for situations where both parties want to hide their address.
Interesting, but who pays for this? Is this an ad-supported model, or are you charging each signer a fee?
I sympathize with you and I hope your customers complain loudly to Apple so that they may be prompted to get their crap together sooner.
Its all a fab.

A year ago engineers and corporates around the world made sure they have an iPhone app no matter the expense, and now everyone start to abandon the idea.
There're a couple parts to your comment. Yes, some third graders could do that no problem, even under the time constraints and pressure. I certainly could - I think I could actually have done it faster in 3rd grade than I could now. It's just like a math test or math competition, and good students have no trouble getting perfect scores on a math test even under intense time constraints (< 1 min/problem) and intense pressure ("If you don't ace this quiz, you'll never get into Harvard and then your life will be wasted.")

The second point of your comment is legit - this sort of time/pressure constraint isn't really representative of the workplace as a whole. Nobody should have someone hanging over them making sure you do your math right in under one minute - you certainly don't at Google. The interviewer probably should've tried to make the candidate feel a bit more at-ease.

But the sort of quick estimation skill necessary for these interview questions is really important. There've been countless meetings when someone (often me) has proposed a solution and I've done some quick mental math calculations only to find out that it just won't work. It's really valuable to get those calculations done in a minute so that you can brainstorm new ideas, rather than waiting until after the meeting when you probably just won't do the math at all.

And this is something that I really wish schools taught more of. Being able to get a quick, mostly-right-but-slightly-wrong answer, and being able to tell what ways your answer is wrong, is probably more important than being able to come up with exact answers or parrot back the formulas you supposedly memorize.
no kidding. I'm running Ubuntu Jaunty and I still can't get decent drivers for my Radeon X1550
This is true, but the scope is not really "indy developers" but "developers with a day job." I've got two apps I hack on on the weekends, and the review process has been frustrating and painful. (almost 2 months now.)

But, that's it. I don't worry about bills or lost funding or any of the highly stressful aspects of app development there'd be if this were my "real job."

As perverse as this is, this "review process endurance" stamina I have is a real competitive advantage, when you consider the fact that most iPhone apps that do well have a huge first-to-market advantage for whatever thing it is that they do. Ie, other folks who may have been building the same app as I have probably won't have the ability to endure the process, and hence my app will be the first to market with this capability, albeit much later than would have been possible without the review process.
Being well over the age of understanding all the new cool words, I hit up urban dictionary to find out what 'meep' meant: "The most versatile word in the English language, or in fact any language." Kind of like a blank Scrabble piece, I guess?
Sarko clash
Maybe it's the traditionally educated engineering in me (I was trained as a mechanical engineer), but I don't see a point in this purely theoretical hand-wavy math. There are established ways for us to get good estimates of a great deal of information - including your hairdresser problem - that involve seeking out real data. Sitting in a void of zero knowledge and postulating wildly, even if it gets you in the ballpark, is wildly inefficient and I'd hate to be involved in it as part of a professional company.

A number out of your ass - regardless of how soundly backed with logic - is at the end of the day a number out of your ass. This isn't to say that all inference or estimation is bad - but rather that estimations done in a complete void of background data is practically useless.

A more concrete example: estimate the number of users our chief competitor has. I can go through this like a logic puzzle and come up with a number that has zero verifiability... or I can go look up relevant data (their page rank on Google, other available metrics on their site, etc) and arrive at a far better conclusion.

I agree with the GP that these exercises are pointless and unrelated to the job for which you are interviewing. As a traditionally educated engineer, my training teaches me not to guess whenever facts are available. Don't try to memorize and infer numbers - keep your references within reach at all times. An engineer who makes few assumptions about his data is one who makes fewer mistakes and costs less money in damage.