skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm surprised that noone has mentioned the case of Igor and Grichka Bogdanov here. These were borderline literary theorists that actually did have a complete nonsense physics article published.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_Affair
What a fascinating read. Thank you for the pointers. Oracle Night will be the first book I buy for my new Kindle, which arrives in Buenos Aires on Friday.

Speaking of which, the international Kindle makes dramatic, life-altering geographic purges all-the-more palatable to those of us who live on bread, water, and books.
The examples the author cites:

- a film which was released in 'beta' at Cannes, giving it a bad name

- voice-recognition of contact names for mobiles, where the technology became widespread before it was usable

- his own experience of demoing a product without a nice interface to a client, causing the client to lose faith in the project.

What is the commonality between these three scenarios that isn't generally shared by web startups? (I don't know if the article was aimed at web startups, but it's relevant here). Each time, the crappy version 1 was shown to a large segment or some key players in the market (film critics, a huge number of mobile phone owners, and the sole client), and put them off the product.

I have a friend who is worried about this for his web startup. "If people see it when it looks crap, they won't come back". The thing with web startups is the few hundred people who might see it in the crappy phase will likely be a very small slice of your total market.
And, the payment system you end up incorporating will not be as dead simple to use as iTunes.

As bad as Apple is at vetting and distributing software (when compared to the web they are bad a distributing software, at least in terms of speed), they are terrific, although expensive, payment processes.

The fact that every iPhone user necessarily has an iTunes account, and they are only one touch and a password away from paying you for your software, can't be overstated.
The Story Behind the FAA Flight-Plan System Crash
What's the main one advantage of Node.js over php (or ruby)?
Your attribution is wrong.

He's not talking about iPhone developers, he's talking about the people in the sentence before it:

After ten years I am fucking tired of the “Web development is not real programming” bullshit that the arrogant bastards in “real programming” are spouting because they’re too frightened to learn something new.

Now, the Venn diagram may have some overlap, but still.
"It also supports JavaScript geolocation, which is (I hope) only the first step towards true device APIs that will give JavaScript developers access to phone functionality such as the camera, text messaging, the address book, and more. I’m assuming Apple is working on all that because it’s the next logical step."

One could also argue that Apple benefits most in the short term by crippling web apps, since the App Store represents a revenue stream and is the main selling point of all their recent advertising.
The essence of the AppStore hovers around marketing & distribution, not technology. Apple set up a great distribution channel, making it super-easy for developers to get paid & they are throwing in some free promotion to boot. In the end, it's about money: can you afford the opportunity cost of not being present on the AppStore & make money right now? What's the cost of promoting your WebKit app going to be? Apple convinced people that it is ok to pay a little money for simple apps that run on their mobile phone. That was Apple's genius move, not the technology that makes iPhone apps tick. If you simply follow the money the whole AppStore debacle becomes a lot clearer.
As I said in the article, it's event based which means it can handle massive concurrency and serve pages that don't necessarily reply straight away - perfect for implementing things like comet. It gives you similar capabilities to Ruby's EventMachine. I don't think PHP has an equivalent at the moment.
Looking for an internship
The Art and Science of Blogging - Part One - The Art
To me, the important part of node.js is that it's using the V8 (http://code.google.com/p/v8/) JavaScript engine which Google has a strong, vested interest in being the fastest dynamic platform around and a lot of really smart programmers to make that happen.

Otherwise, it's a matter of preference. What's the main advantage of PHP/Ruby over Perl?
See my post below, communism has always devolved into statist tyranny in every attempt so far. If a software development methodology had an equivalent track record to communism (adjusted appropriately for the subject matter) it would be far more reviled even than waterfall (if you could imagine such a thing) and nobody would ever seriously propose using it.
Interesting that this was posted shortly after the discussion about developing on handhelds prompted by RFS5. The hardware used by the MIT system, excluding the projector, is mostly provided by mobile devices these days anyway.

There could be an interesting way to take the RFS5 idea and combine it with an approach similar to this. Targeting developers in that case would be a smart approach since they're more likely to be early adopters.
LED Tattoos could turn Skin into Screens
I don't know if this is already done. But the second point really begs for an entrepreneur to solve this. A simple model for payment for web apps, you could support one off sales, subscriptions models etc. Make an API for developers and handle all the credit-card processing stuff.
Steve Blank talks to entrepreneurs about the customer development process
The US does not just have 38% of GDP in debt. That is just the PUBLIC debt.
Or as the CIA puts it "...the cumulative total of all government borrowings less repayments that are denominated in a country's home currency".

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...

USA

Public Debt: 37.5% of 14 Trillion Dollars (GDP)

External Debt: $13.75 Trillion

Total Debt: 138% of GDP

Canada

Public Debt: 63.8% of 1.303 Trillion (GDP)

External Debt: $0.7811 Trillion

Total Debt: 123% of GDP

ALSO, it is very important to clarify that Canada does Net Present Value accounting for our retiree programs (our version of Social Security actually has a FUND where we save money for our retires, its not a cash in cash out program). If the USA did account like Canada did you guys would be at roughly double our debt level. Check out IOUSA for a better explanation.
You can't however do without walkways if the people have nothing to walk on, to continue your analogy. (When thinking from a business or tech sense.)
You left out one important point that he mentions but doesn't give enough credit to...

3) There's still a lot of features on the iPhone that you can only access through native apps.

He claims most of the apps he has could be web apps. But I just opened my iPhone to the Top 25 paid apps and 7 out of the top 10 could only exist as native apps (and the other three are debatable but in theory you could write them in Javascript)

Here's the list...

Voices: Requires access to the mic

JellyCar: Requires native app for soundtrack (which is actually a big deal in the game)

RedLaser: Requires access to the camera

Call of Duty: Graphics require a native app

All in One Gamebox: Graphics require a native app

Alarm Clock Pro: Has to be able to play music library

Metal Gear: Graphics require a native app
Schiller Interview About App Store, Claims Devs Actually Like Approval Process
Organic SEO. (Lots of work. Requires savvy. Not guaranteed. Stupendous ROI if you do it right.)
Building Scalable Databases: Perspectives on the War on Soft Deletes
PPK is an idealist. Applications need to make money. Web applications on the iPhone are slow and have less functionality so they make less money.
Music is bad area to be dealing with economic arguments because copyright is such a murky topic, but by way of counter-example - John Fogerty cut back his productivity due to disagreements with a recording company. Further, the fact that there are incentives other than money doesn't affect the point that money is a factor. You need to consider the examples that an era didn't produce, not just the ones that it did.
Thanks to you both for your pointers. I will explore both.
I really like the car analogy he makes: If your client asks for a car and you want to iterate, don't show them a frame with wheels on it, show them a skateboard. A skateboard is useful in its own right, although it doesn't have all of the features that they will want in the end. Iterate to a bike, a motorcycle, and finally a car, but at each stage you have something that works on its own.

There was another article on HN a while ago about differentiating between features and core functionality, and making sure to focus on the core functionality first before you try to add the extras. Also, knowing which parts of the UI/UX are part of the core functionality is important, as is illustrated in the author's demo product fiasco anecdote. As a developer I tend to focus more on the back end functionality and supporting systems, but something can be technically beautiful and still look like useless crap to your intended users.
"I've been reviewing the early days of my business, and tremendous luck was involved. Sure, I was there, and did the work, but a big part of it was the wave."

Without the luck, the hard work would have had less effect, but without the hard work the luck would have had no effect. So, it was the hard work. Some of that work was recognizing the world that luck presented to you: studying the waves.
I was thinking that operating on family / friends was considered a bad thing. As an example

"physicians generally should not treat themselves or members of their immediate families" because their professional objectivity may be compromised in those situations. Exceptions are allowed for "short-term, minor problems" or "in emergency or isolated settings."

http://www.aafp.org/fpm/20050300/41shou.html
The question that got me to leave Seattle for greener startup pastures
"...the feature has been put in simply to meet the requirements of a few Enterprise customers...". Ouch.
Feedback on new site: CrowdPic.com
We just launched our photo contesting site at CrowdPic.com. We are looking for some honest constructive feedback on the idea, design, etc. Any feedback you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
Adam Martin
http://twitter.com/colttrickle
Make the most of Windows 7's high-powered taskbar
TimeGT Call for Help: Video Narration
Vanity - an Experiment Driven Development framework for Rails
The Copenhagen interpretation is nonsense not because it's wrong, but because it's the minimal explanation for what is actually happening. It gives us a single-history picture of reality without making any other assumptions--the quantum wavefunction isn't even considered "real" in the traditional version of the interpretation.

Compare this to academic nonsense, where all kinds of unneccesary nonsense is introduced to satisfy the academic's whims. It's nonsense by inclusion, not exclusion.
Beatles piracy fixation gets stranger with huge FLAC release
PDF workflow tip: Use watermarks
Apning | User-generated local news
I voted you up, but that's kind of like saying you'd lend money to Bill Gates. There's no point in it. The question in lending, apparently, is who can you lend money to that is at the intersection of really needing it and really likely to repay it.

Norway would just pay you back immediately, thus making your lending pointless. And if we're actually talking about lending them an amount that they'd need, like, say, a trillion dollars, I'm not sure that I'd bet long term on the Norwegian economy at that scale.
I'm not sure that Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson count as "people in 1830" in the same way that the Salem Witch Trials might constitute "people in 1692". I'm also of the opinion that you should also account for the other two points, even if to say that you don't mean to refute them by refuting the third.
Thoughts on semantics for 3D graphics
I know this is really only applicable for a few cities, but speaking for myself: as a consumer, I don't want webapps right now. AT&T's network sucks hard in NYC, and even if it didn't, a very large portion of the time I spend with apps on my phone is when I'm killing time on the subway. Offline is important, and while we're starting to solve that with some of the browser tech he pointed to, it really isn't there yet in a form that's competitive with native apps.
> if [Finland] seems that much more socialist than the US, it is probably simply because they don't spend so much on their military

I just have to interject that even if Finland spends relatively little of money for it's defense, when you consider all costs the budget climbs quite high. What I'm obviously talking about is conscription, which Finland still has in use. Just how do you measure the cost of one year of the life of nearly the entire male population?
Son et lumiѐre- Rethinking Light and Sound
THE DIRECTOR OF THE CENSUS OF MARINE LIFE ON BROADENING THE SCOPE OF GLOBAL CHANGE TO INCLUDE ILLUMINATION AND NOISE.
French lit only seems easy because academics aren't aiming to be right.

But that is the whole problem: whether or not the discipline aims to be right. I am very closely acquainted with a relative who has a Ph.D. in French literature, and he literally would rather die than attempt to earn even an undergraduate degree in physics.
We IT people look at smartphones as computers with phone capabilities but I think the average consumer sees them as phones with other stuff added on. This is an important distinction.

Over the past 30 years people have come to accept that computers do not work at times, whether it is due to hardware failures, software bugs, or viruses. There is no such history of acceptable failure with the telephone, it has always just worked - even in a power outage!

I can see why Apple is being paranoid with making sure the phone just works, it would be a product-killing public relations nightmare to have a bug or virus break a phone's core functionality.
Thanks for a good overview of the "optimistic" side. I hope you're right.

But help me out on some greater understanding of "GDP"...

When wages stay constant or go down, but a profitable financial industry instead is created that lends money to consumers at say 20% or more (for simple consumption and/or speculation with no potential to increase the productive economy at that rate)...

Isn't that financial industry profit part of the GDP? As are naked credit default swap trading profits? Etc...

Are these kinds of profits the same as profits from a physical export? Or development of natural resources?

Wouldn't higher wages and less lending have been a better use of national wealth and productivity?

Are all "profits" truly equal in terms of their real long-term effect on an economy
The 'Hello World' example (at the top of the front page of the Node.js website) is a server that listens to http requests, waits 2 seconds, then responds 'Hello World'.

The server is supposed to continue responding to incoming requests even while it is waiting 2 seconds for previous requests. So I figured that if I quickly queued up a bunch of requests (say, over the course of one second), they would all respond just as quickly after the two seconds was up.

However, each response came a full 2 seconds after the previous response. I increased the wait argument to 10 seconds just to be sure.

This seems functionally equivalent to blocking. Is this the way the example is supposed to work?
Etm:Store and create events, tasks, and actions with py
If I Started an Investment Fund
At one time I loved Visual Studio enough to write Visual Studio Hacks for O'reilly, but I have finally had enough. The thing is bloated and continues to get more and more bloated. I have turned off as much as I can and removed all the toolbars, but it's still their in the slowness, lockups, and occasional errors. (and esoteric rules like running in admin mode when using certain projects types, etc)

After using TextMate for Ruby/Rails/Erlang projects I see that you don't need a bloated IDE to write code, I think the next step for me is Emacs (and I am looking at using MonoDevelop for future C# work).
Why not create an iPhone app, which is simply a WebKit view dedicated to your web app?

The client see's it as a "iPhone app" you can host/sell it in the store, but it's really just a web app.

(Maybe there's a restriction on this, but I can't see why there would be...)
Should Page Speed Influence Google PageRank?
This is the problem though. The app store is like "American Idol". Singers see American Idol etc as a quick route to fame. Then they're "famous" for 30 minutes, then not.

It's far better to build up a real sustainable following yourself based on real merits. The app store is full of gimicky one time apps people will use once to show their friends, then never use again :/
Adam Smith gives the example of paying for roads by road tolls in his book The Wealth of Nations. In the United States, much of state and federal funding for highways is derived from a tax on gasoline and diesel vehicle fuel, to much the same effect. The ultimate incidence of ALL taxation is on consumers (and everyone is a consumer), as any competent economist will tell you. These forms of paying for roads are not socialism, by any definition of socialism that I have ever seen, but they are forms of taxation that allocate the cost of using the tax-supported, publicly available resource rather well.
I was fascinated to learn that Jordan was working in the same office as Robert Cook, the guy who was making D/Generation, a game I remember fondly. Like Prince of Persia, it also has an enemy who is a dark version of the player.

(The lineage of the concept is more complicated than one game borrowing from the other, however: The journal entries show that another coworker, Tomi, suggested the dark version of the player, while Robert suggested creating the dark version by jumping through a mirror.)
What's wrong with the fullscreen mode in VS, or disabling all those windows that you seem to hate? Wouldn't you get the same result?
Japan is horribly indebted because of their lost decade. Public debt is headed to 200% of GDP this year.

http://blogs.reuters.com/japan/2009/11/14/japans-bulging-deb...

It's credit rating is ranked lower than Botswana:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/japan-falls-...
AOL Reveals Lame New Look & Logo
Argh! Not the dreaded "I don't want to live in a world where X" cliché again!
From the site: "etm is an acronym for Event and Task Manager. It provides a format for using simple text files to store event, task and action information, a command line interface for viewing tasks and events in a variety of convenient ways and a curses-based GUI for creating and modifying events and tasks as well as viewing them. Alarms are supported for events and repetition for both events and tasks in a powerful and flexible manner."
Finally someone gets it. The model Apple uses at the moment does scale, though. In a point in future you could approve not for a single app but for a whole app store.
Security Architecture and concepts in Google Chrome OS
I've never seen Ze Frank before today. When I first followed the link, I saw a site with almost nothing, and a video with no obvious reason to watch. So I didn't watch.

Then I noticed that this post was attracting a fair number of comments. After reading most of the comments I decided there was probably something in the video worth seeing, so I watched it.

It turned out to be well worth it, for entertainment and insight.

The comments also made me look up the word 'sardonic.' Even at this late date, there are mysterious gaps in my vocabulary.
The Cost of a Sick Chart
Blocking Bing because Bing may in the future pay some sites to block everyone-other-than-Bing seems premature. Perhaps hypocritical too.
Bingo. The big attraction is that developers can make a silly puzzle game that would have to be free on the web, but they can charge 99 cents for it in the app store. Plus, billing and credit card processing is just done for you. It makes me wonder if there is an opportunity for a startup to provide a web app store. Would be hard to pull off, and would likely really irritate Apple. But it might be possible.
Cyclone: a safe dialect of C
Was your client sending the requests concurrently? If I do that and run "ab -n 100 -c 100" (for 100 requests run with concurrency 100) the benchmark takes almost exactly 2 seconds to execute all 100 requests.
The left fold: 2009-11-23: Java closures, GC roundup, and Microsoft assertions
Very interesting deconstruction but what I find more interesting is that app - Wow! Very crisp and useful service. Going to be using it for the current project I have with a friend of mine.
When has capitalism killed people? I often find when people trot out this claim, they're thinking of things like imperialist wars or the coercion of disadvantaged workers--things that cannot be said to be "capitalism" in the modern American use of the term.
No. If you go look at the balance sheet, the profits are: Office and Windows, distant third XBox division, losses everywhere else.

Other things may "sell" well, but nothing else makes money.

That's how profitable Office and Windows are.

Incidentally, if you've ever wondered why Microsoft is so willing to go to bat for Windows or Office lockin, this is why. They are a mighty edifice built on two things, and if either one of them fails they are in for a world of hurt. This does put them ahead of Google, though, which is a mighty edifice built on one thing, ads.

This probably also explains why Microsoft might be willing to pump a lot of money into this task; cutting off Google's traffic cuts off their ads, which cuts off their Windows quasi-replacement (their new OS stuff) and their Office replacement (Google Docs). If Google was just sitting there, raking in dough from online ads, but had no OS or Google Docs, Microsoft would probably be content to just watch them, but Google really is a huge existential threat to Microsoft, who really is in a much more insecure position than it may seem if you just read the bottom line on the balance sheet.
Modern cheerleading with "stunting" is basically group gymnastics. Hence xiaoma's comment.
Is it indeed a "small" group? Here the sample size was 65. Isn't a sample size > 30 usually enough for most studies?

That aside, given the dramatic results, wouldn't this demand immediate further investigation? Certainly first to determine how common these blockages are in MS patient?

Should blockages prove commonplace in MS patients then, since the surgical procedure's risks are known and the alternative outcome is very poor, shouldn't surgery be considered immediately in many, if not most, cases?
I don't think it's premature, I think their plans are evil, so I react to that the only way I can. Nothing premature about that. If Google were to think about doing this, I'd do the same, to send a message.

And why hypocritical?
my vote would be with Hong Kong too. Indeed I plan to look for investments there when I get more time (and a little more capital).

(this is partially driven by the fact that it is one of the 2 places in the world I would consider moving too to live)
Uncertain Future Of Formula 1
In every business I've been involved with, the execs made decisions that are really the customers' to make. While the execs were usually pretty accurate, they didn't see that they were predicting the customer (and unnecessarily so), rather than "making executive decisions".