skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
A lexicographer should be a native speaker. For a corpus-compiler, there's no reason for such a requirement.
What you're seeing for English is the Collins Cobuild dictionary.
Quirky is a social product development company
That's the problem with web apps; you're at the mercy of someone else's business model.
I'm a technical guy, that description is accurate. Minor terminology changes to be spot on:

Former MySpace executives say News Corp dragged its feet over implementing Ajax, a [set of libraries] which allow users to send a message, an e-mail or to post a comment on their friends’ pages without having to open a new browser [page].

The real problem is the hard link between page views and ad revenue. That leads to quotes like this: "We went to News Corp and said: ‘We want to change this but in the short term our revenues will drop.’ It became a long back and forth."

Bickering like that kills time and blinds you to other uses of Ajax, such as how Facebook lets users rate ads, each click loading up a new ad without another page view.
I'll point out that I doubt that amount EtherPad's purchase matters to a MOZILLA editor team and that the project being from Mozilla provides at least some guard against obscurity...
Nice clean looking site but you're going to have to be more creative with you submissions if you want to get a good link around here.

Flagged as spam.
<PLEA> Please, please stop posting this stuff about Erik Prince on HN. I have firsthand experience with the guy and I either see red or get physically sick every time I see his name. I don't come to HN to read stuff about him, and I don't think this is interesting enough to merit a place here. I don't think there are any (positive) business-building lessons to be learned by his success. I just...please no more Erik Prince. </PLEA>
But how can you tell one from the other? I'm sure many an entrepreneur has sworn up and down that they are in this for long haul and will never sell out, right up until the point where someone shows up with a large bag of cash.

Giving money to a small startup is always a gamble, and if all you've bought is access to a web app then you have to take into consideration that they can take that away from you at any time.
Using Windows Azure BLOB storage with PHP
Speedy - Painless Rapid Rails Deployment with Apache and ModRails
iPhone Privacy
I think I would watch it periodically and if anything got posted that made me concerned, I would try to think of some way to set the record straight without turning it into an Issue. It might not even be appropriate to rebut something directly, just be aware that people are saying X and maybe try to use your normal pathways of communication to casually make remarks which "disprove" whatever is being said that is erroneous. (Jumping into the conversation to rebut something when you haven't previously participated in the group is generally going to come across as defensive, offensive, harsh....etc...and can do more harm than good.)

Having fans seems like a two-edged sword to me. Look how ugly things can get when a Hollywood celebrity does something their fans don't approve of. Britney, Madonna and countless others have gotten lambasted at one time or another. Personally, I think Britney made a huge mistake when she created a reality show about her marriage. I think she was looking to "prove" to people that her marriage was a good idea and looking to get the approval of her fans. And when you do that, you signal they have a say in your private life. It's kind of like letting yourself get dragged into certain kinds of arguments: Doing so only convinces the other person that they have some "right" and that you need to "justify" your choice/position. In some cases, it's best to prove to folks their opinion doesn't actually matter by treating it as insignificant. Yet, at the same time, you have to realize that their opinion may not matter to you but can influence other people, so saying nothing may also be a huge mistake. Rebutting something without winding up in a Chinese-Finger-Puzzle-style social trap is an art and takes a light hand.

Good luck with this.
that's just amateur hour over there

Maybe not for FG, but I think we can comfortably characterize TC as being amateur in the hardware arena. Has Arrington ever run a business whose product end users paid for?
We have a strong, nice team (I Spy a Red Balloon) that is giving all of the prize money to charity (Red Cross). If you see a red balloon in the sky on Dec. 5th, let us know at:

http://www.ispyaredballoon.com/
or at facebook
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=201028633372
or
text: (262) I-SPY-SPY (262-477-9779)
Single-atom transistor discovered
I think Facebook architecture is bloated as well ... /home.php? come on ...
Two big advantages as I can see (there are undoubtedly more):

1- As experimentalists do experiments they often arrive at these same conjectures, but after years of trial and error. Throughout history there were probably mountains of data that were recorded but discarded after they were hypothesized to have no scientific value. Having a program like this can essentially narrow the search for you. It can let you get back to doing science and do less data processing, which for the majority of scientists is a godsend.

2- You can now take historical sets of data and see if you can recover new aspects of structure. Perhaps there were important features in the data that were overlooked that can now be statistically analyzed. This can lead to new research avenues.
So you meant Cambridge as "the most highly regarded mathematics undergraduate programme in the UK"? I was afraid of that. Cambridge's mathematics research may be world class, but their teaching of undergraduates is very poor.

It helps if you're an undergraduate at one of the more mathematically inclined colleges, of which Trinity is traditionally the strongest. Even then, there is only so much that small group supervisions or example classes can make up for if the basic syllabus and presentation in lectures is poor.

Sadly, both the Mathematics with Computer Science tripos option and the Diploma in Computer Science conversion course have been dropped recently, removing two genuinely useful choices. As far as I can tell, this leaves only the well-intentioned but usually poorly realised CATAM projects as the main source of computational mathematics background for students, and the criticisms of insufficient training in real programming skills are entirely justified there. There is a new MPhil course running from this year in the Computer Lab, but this is more like Part III CompSci than the old Diploma.

(Some of these comments are based on my own experiences studying at Cambridge in the '90s, though my general view is more coloured by the many graduates from Cambridge and elsewhere with whom I have worked since that time.)
The bags I use are very sturdy and functional, but they're not exactly sleek or cheap:

http://www.saddlebackleather.com/categories/79-SaddleBack-Le...

I have a bunch of them (I bought in 'bulk' to give them as executive gifts one year, and I also bought several colors for myself. Turns out I only needed one for myself.) I could sell you a used one at a discount if you like them but price is an issue for you.

Even though this is probably not the bag for you, I thought I would post about mine here, because the merchant can really sell and is adept at using storytelling. Look around on his website for customer action photos and story:

http://www.saddlebackleather.com/19-saddleback-story
Recrawling and keeping search results fresh
This reminds me of the Atlas connections interface. (see screencast: http://280atlas.com/what.php)

How does that compare to your vision?
Stanford Mobile Phone Orchestra performs with iPhones, speaker gloves
This is probably pie in the sky thinking, but I hope this prompts Apple to launch a browser based version of iTunes, using the technology/expertise acquired from Lala.
His straight laptop bags are sleeker and cheaper, but I like the vibe/storage capacity of the briefcases more.

http://www.saddlebackleather.com/categories/87
Again, product versus framework. XMPP as a communications framework has decent adoption, a number of open source servers and clients libraries in different languages. Jabber has limited adoption because its competing in a network-effect field. GoogleTalk is probably the most popular use of XMPP.

But, the meat of Wave isn't XMPP, its the combination of Operational Transforms on a federated XMPP layer with a web interface. Each of these features is equally important, so don't overlook them. OT makes collaboration easy, the web interface is the easiest user experience, and XMPP lets you scale the backend.
The real problem is the hard link between page views and ad revenue.

This is one of the many, many instances in which your business model can potentially collide with your user experience. When I heard AJAX could let you do things without requiring a page view, I said "HOLY COW! FREE MONEY!", because when you're selling things to customers every additional page view is just another opportunity to stop using your site.
I'm confused by your comments here. Are you claiming that Roman Catholics aren't Christians? Or are you claiming that Roman Catholics are never evangelicals?

Certainly a Golden Retriever is never a cat - about that I am not confused.
Pithy and true. Easier said than done of course.
The way I look at it is that if you are already doing the work to implement AJAX and remove the need for more page views to submit comment forms or do other things, why not go a little farther and write code to load new ads at the same time? There shouldn't be any reason why AJAX would reduce ad revenue if you simply made each major AJAX call change the ads.
me too. it's been a long time coming. it's live in Australia and UK. They even have landing pages though they still link to the original on them. Google Base has been quietly doing its job. Google is going to eat up all advertising revenues of real estate portals, mortgage comparison sites, etc. It's gonna happen, and it's scary as hell.
"Interserve, Inc. doing business as TechCrunch" - the phrase "doing business as" (aka "dba") is a legal term, technically known as an assumed name. This means TechCrunch is Interserve and thus owns the trademark.
I'm probably missing something, but what's the point of using something like Tornado to handle loads of concurrent connections when your database can only handle a small number anyway? All those epolls will slow the app down, waiting on a connection from the db pool.

Check out Concurrence instead: http://opensource.hyves.org/
At least that's got an async MySQL driver
It's worth remembering that how fast you master programming has something to do with your innate ability as well.
Power users can still use power tools; not all such tools are taken down by craigslist, and even if they were, there is still a gap between tool creation and takedown big enough for exploitation.

I have loved and used craigslist for years, but I have little fondness for their locking out third parties. As a seller, I benefit by having more people exposed to my listings. As a buyer, I benefit from more powerful tools.
It seems understandable that both buyers and sellers are pleased with the transaction, after all, they both agreed to it. It doesn't really address the OP's (however direct) 'that sucks' comment.

Any early-adopter of a start-up product accepts the risk that the company behind the product might be unsuccessful. Customers like that bet, in part, on the notion that despite the statistically long odds, the company is making every conceivable effort to stay alive and succeed.

The 'buyout-and-the-product-dies'-type exit introduces a sort of divided loyalty and misalignment between the goals of the founders and the goals of their customers - if you're unsuccessful you might fail and we might suffer an abrupt service termination but at the same time, if you're quite successful, we might also suffer an abrupt service termination.
Yup, the possibilities are endless. It should be built in.
Swoopo: Selling items for more and less than they're worth, at the same time
I don't know if its pie-in-the-sky as much as its an inevitable reality? Everything is moving to the web. And they are building a big server farm.

Now that things have shaken down a bit following the mp3.com legal debacle, it seems clear that Apple can let people access their own iTunes library via a browser without upsetting too many people.
The impact of immigrants on employment and productivity
How Dubai's burst bubble has left behind the last days of Rome
Rethinking the Knowledge Economy
"The Deadweight Loss of Christmas" (the classic)
More details here: http://seriot.ch/resources/talks_papers/iPhonePrivacy.pdf

Note that this applies to only applications installed by the user, there is no hacking going on. Much like installing an application on a desktop.
The CruchPad Story: 3 Startup Lessons
Oh, good Lord, no. If I had a nickel for every hard-slogging, monomaniacal, talentless writer, poet, painter, actor, singer, musician -- and yes, programmer* -- I'd met in this life, I'd probably have more than enough money for a down payment on a house I couldn't possibly afford to live in. Love isn't enough. Love and study together aren't enough. Love, study and application aren't enough. Love, study, aplication and diligent practice aren't enough either -- one may be able to elevate himself above equally apt colleagues, but actual aptitude counts for a lot. As does the ability and willingness to realise that most people (and therefore, probably, himself) are merely adequate to the task.

*Okay, there's a difference between self-deluded artistes and self-deluded programmers. Artistes can always claim to be before their time, misunderstood, and operating on a whole different spiritual plane. Programmers need, at a minimum, to create something that works in order to claim any success or ability at all. A real genioid can produce code good enough to receive "Works on My Machine" certification, and that can be proven to scale to five or more "simultaneous" users (depending on how many automated virtual machines he can get to hit the server from his laptop, his workstation, and that old Pentium II in the basement).
I'm tired of seeing the 10,000 hours everywhere, there are so many counter-examples I have no idea why anyone buys it.

It doesn't take 10,000 hours to become a master striker in football, they are all young and the older you get, the worse you get. Does it take 10,000 hours to write master songs? No. Look at virtually any modern band. Not many people go through the same gruelling tours as the Beatles did before success.

Also, to pretend the complexity of the task has no bearing on the hours it will take to master it is nonsense.

You don't need 10,000 hours in virtually anything to be an expert. 10,000 hours to be a master of tic-tac-toe? No. Does it take 10,000 hours to become an expert coin-flipper? No. An expert dish washer? An expert waiter?

I also have take umbrage with the word expert. I think if anything it should be something like virtuoso, an exceptional ability, not just an expert. All of the examples I've seen used are people with exceptional abilities, not mere experts.

Ach, I don't know why I get so annoyed at it, it just seems to me that it's trotted out for totally inane lists like this one all the time.
It's important not to ignore the context of this "discovery": to become a trojan on non-jailbroken iPhones, an app must get into and remain in the Apple Store.

Has nobody else figured out the other reason why Apple bothers to have an official store with officially-registered developers? Apart from the "big piles of retail cash" angle?

It's because of this. Apple doesn't need to treat every application running on the phone like Hannibal Lecter, locking it inside some kind of padded sandbox with steel walls and redundant alarm systems and then (in a small but significant number of cases) watching it escape anyway. Instead Apple relies on a simple dynamic:

If you write an application that steals user data for nefarious purposes,

...and anyone at all reports it to Apple, today or in the future... [1]

... your app disappears from the App Store; a window pops up on every user's phone telling them to uninstall the app because it is a dangerous security breach, and (incidentally) that the developers are bad people who cannot be trusted; the developers are blacklisted forever and ever; and an enormous lawsuit gets filed against the developers -- who, because they had to register with Apple just to get an app accepted, have a business address to which that lawsuit can be delivered.

That's not considering the possible criminal proceedings. The cops will also not have a problem finding an iPhone developer, because distributors of non-jailbroken apps cannot be anonymous.

I'm guessing this is going to be a pretty effective deterrant. It seems to have worked well so far.

Of course, the usual problem will apply: To what extent will users voluntarily relinquish their personal information without realizing what can be deduced from it? In a world where Facebook asks you for your email password so it can riffle through your Inbox, this is a serious concern.

---

[1] Obviously it's best if the review catches security holes and TOS violations before the app is launched, but that won't happen in general. And it doesn't need to.
I haven't had a chance to watch the video yet, but one correction - John Resig is the original author of jQuery, Yehuda is on the core team.
just wanted to make a point that others seem to have missed. to the extent that this is avoiding taxes so that more money can be given to a particular charity, isn't it "robbing peter to pay paul"?

this might not make much sense to the american mindset, which seems to be virulently anti-government, but taxes don't just vanish - they pay for vital services. more than that, reducing how much tax someone with many millions pays implies that others, with less money, either pay more or receive lower quality services.

i realise this is a minor detailed compared to giving to charity or keeping it all, and i don't mean to detract from that. i just find the "it's cool to avoid taxes" (and instead give more to charity) assumption a bit odd.
maybe learning isn't equivalent to getting rich, and maybe people are motivated by the latter.
Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde, Founders Live Dual Lives
FYI, Swoopo has already attracted 131+ competitors. Traffic stats for all of them are maintained here:

http://www.pennyauctiontraffic.com/
hey derek - you mentioned that you wrote this article after being prompted to do so and I thought I'd take the opportunity to try and prompt you to write another one!

You briefly commented on living the (relatively) simple life - having fairly few possessions etc. I try and live somewhat like this myself and have found it very liberating.

If you're interested I'd much like to read an essay with your expanded thoughts on this lifestyle decision.

cheers, david
Ironic that a talk that mentions distortions in the press around security issues, would be linked to by such a horribly written hit piece. It would be nice if a mod could replace the original link with the pdf above.

The talk finishes with four recommendations:

1. User should be prompted to authorize read or read-write access to AddressBook
2. WIFI connection history shouldn’t be readable by “mobile” user
3. Keyboard cache should be an OS service
4. iPhone should feature an outgoing firewall

Seems fairly uncontroversial. Hopefully we'll see them in 4.0.
You still need to get the application on the iphone somehow, and there's no indication this can happen through Safari. If anything, this is a good argument for the controversial "walled garden" approach Apple has taken to date.

Also, its worth noting here that if what is described as possible here is a security hole, then every operating system ever made is insecure. You can run a keystroke logger on your mac or any other operating system that would access everything you type, including passwords. You could also install a screen capture utility that records and automatically uploads what you do. Just because you can run a program that gets your personal data doesn't mean that the platform is inherently insecure. Now I understand that it may be stupid to allow apps access to information, but there may be a good reason here. Its possible that applications might need to access contacts, bookmarks, etc. and without knowing more about this particular situation, I can see why these types of things might be possible.

As things currently stand, some level of common sense is required by the end user. With the walled garden approach Apple has taken and with the coming Cloud operating systems, security will be force-fed to the end-user. And though this isn't perfect, its pretty damn good from a security standpoint.
The Lambda Calculus: Its Syntax and Semantics
A classic is available for free on the web.
Here's one of his past essays that's relevant: http://sivers.org/freedom
And most classical musicians don't need the pull of a social network to gain traction - they have a track record in symphonies, typically a strong network of other musicians from a strong music school, mentors and so on and so forth. Meanwhile, someone trying to "break in" to any non-classical genre, be it pop, rock, metal, synth-groove, indie-emo-core, anti-folk, shoegaze, etc, needs the help of a social network to garner excitement about their particular brand.

You don't need a brand as a classical musician, as you're usually just playing someone else's tune. (Unless, of course, you're both a musician and a composer, and so on and so forth)

So, of course it's not going to be much of a use to you, as you completely disregard most changes in musical style and composition (I personally love classical music, but that doesn't preclude me from loving other "modern" styles) over the past century or so. Your stubbornness in not exploring new aural sensations eliminates you from their target niche, just as the discouraged unemployed are eliminated from the unemployment statistics ;)
Most young footballers that becoming professionals have probably played over 10000, certainly the ones around 20 (not so much the 16 year olds)
The level of transparency about which APIs a particular app uses on the iPhone is not particularly good. I have a feeling that some apps and libraries, particularly advertising/analytics solutions have been abusing this fact.

The Android system of notifying the user exactly which APIs are being used by an app, prior to install, seems like a step in the right direction.
The point of the blog post is not that _you_ should be learning, it is that your _startup_ should be learning.

A startup is almost by definition in an exploring phase. Key to success (and infinite richness of course) is to acknowledge this fact and build your startup as a learning entity.

The consequence of this insight is that it's counter-productive to keep things secret or wait too long until launch.
Frequentist Statistics are Frequently Subjective
iTunes on Windows is pretty nasty compared with iTunes on OS X, I don't know if I'd look forward to a web version.
the message i'm taking away from this is: no matter how much your acquirer assures you that they won't interfere with your business, eventually they will.
I remember seeing a penny auction for an iMac sell for 236 dollars. At .60 a bid, that's $14,160 in revenue, or 12k profit. Absolute insanity. That being said, I think they've hit a critical mass. What will probably end up happening is that those that buy bids realize that they're buying overpriced lotto tickets, and bore of the game. But there will always be more fools to the fire.
Honestly, the only thing that's stopped me from deleting my MySpace account is the fact that I have to log on to MySpace to do it.