skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
world's gotta choose

And has. A few will pay (to produce or to consume) better content. Some will lament.

Some vendors and some consumers will have better content and will find (some?) readers will pay. Most readers will be entertained by whatever manufactured news or whatever minimally-engineered product is presented. Those that are not sufficiently entertained can and will look elsewhere.

Having been subjected to watching the local "news" (and once you remove the shiny production sets and the perfect hair and computer graphics and event-specific theme music) and various of the mass-market low-cost products, there's "no there there." For me.

This is a fundamental feature of modern business; a business is led to monitor and to maintain or reduce expenses and overhead (long-experienced employees are expensive, long-term research is expensive) to stay competitive; it's effectively a slow race to the bottom. To how little news you can have (or software engineering skills, or new pharmaceuticals, or whatever the product...) to fill the allotted product slots and to meet your cost and revenue goals.

The world has chosen; both the producers and the consumers.

But around the edges of Big Pharma or Big Media? That's where all this consolidation and this business process optimization gets very interesting. Where you get bloggers that post (good) news. Where you get Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, games, tools, or other productions. Where you get hundreds or thousands of musicians offering up music you'd never hear in mass-market media. Where you find the folks that'll buy. Same thing Big Pharma or Big Media are looking for. Except you don't have the overhead.
I'll try it better :) Thanks
"My sincere apologies, I'm not an IDL programmer and I jumped the gun."
Perhaps that is why some call them the "naughts".
Isn't this an over-generalization? It's not fair to stereotype all government officials in India like that, is it?
I believe the premise is that we could reduce CO2 emissions if we substituted biochar for coal in energy production.

However, I'm having a hard time making sense of their numbers...
Can Foursquare and Farmville Spur the Dollar's Recovery?
Well, if they're going to claim they have a good rating from the Better Business Bureau, hopefully people will start sending complaints there: https://odr.bbb.org/odrweb/public/getstarted.aspx?siteID=33
I didn't specify that a string should be a distinct datatype, but merely a datatype and a first class citizen of a language. If a language's type system is strong enough, then obviously a distinct data type isn't needed.
A little OT, but does anybody here belong to the BBB? Is it worth it, do you think?
"So I think that it is not only reasonable but very much a good thing that ieure pointed out that ESR is a nutjob."

That was a very sophisticated formulation of "I don't listen to people whose politics I disagree with."

That is exactly the problem of the entire Republican party, and you seem to be saying that the principle is sound (just as long as it is directed at "them" and not "you").

It saddens and surprises me that you and your up-voters seem to be endorsing ad hominem as sound debating practice. Of all places, I would hate to see Hacker News descend to this level.
I did four B-Plan competitions (had success in all four) in the spring of 2008 and the experience was useful. I would HIGHLY recommend and HN'ers in the Boston area sign up for this years event, which is going on now.

The good things:

1. Great networking: The MIT 100K competition has a lot of support in the Boston area. It is a great way to open a door to almost any company that has any affiliation with MIT.

2. Business issues: I know the prevailing ethos here is build something people want and the rest will take care of itself, but these competitions do force you to think about how you will sell you product, the importance of barriers to entry etc. As PG said he is even rethinking the mentoring aspect of YC to more richly incorporate this kind of info.

3. Money - These competitions are serious cash cows. 35 team at MIT get $1k, 7 get $10K, and at least 2 get $100K. In addition there are special prizes for mobile and other areas. If you have a half decent idea it is a way to get YC caliber money with no dilution. All you need to do is find a student at MIT to participate, which is trivially easy.

The downsides of these competitions (in addition to what the author said):

1. Wrong teams: Often the teams are comprised entirely of MBA's. Even though many were former hackers, they were at school to become managers not makers. I'm not anti-MBA, but the big problem is the fact that by the time you win a competition the MBA is a month from graduating and is on the hook for $200K in debt which dampens the entrepreneurial enthusiasm.

In any case I think the process is well worth it.
It's worth pointing out, for those who may not have RTFA or RTFComments, that this statement was a retraction from a commenter who attacked the claim that the code in question was dead code.
The fact that the variable is never used is relevant to whether or not ESR's claims are valid.

His general political view points are not.
I have participated in several business plan competitions, not so much to win the competition, but to have a reason to finish writing the darn thing under pressure. My biggest success didn't win any prices (but we participated with it) and the business plan/idea which did win a price I shelved immideatly after, as it wasn't that interesting to me and it was too niche to make a really big impact, from my point of view.
Why we have skeptics
In the USA you can't use the brand name as a noun, or the owner risks losing legal control over the mark. Hence "FRISBEE [TM] brand Flying Disk."
It seems to me that a central part of this argument is having "...suddenly had to allocate a bunch of resources to customer support and bug fixes...".

Building the smallest possible marketable product doesn't mean building a low quality product.
Maybe you weren't being serious, but I don't really see how technological advancements of that sort are going to make people any more comfortable being confronted with the fact of their mortality.
When I watch those commercials, I always assumed the scam was that they were sending you a "free CD", but charging a good price for it with their "shipping and handling charge".

I wasn't nearly cynical enough it seems.
It gets slow that way if you do it a lot. I've been entering unicode in vim (ctrl V u xxxx) and keep a list of the frequently used nearby. But this looks even better.
Why not?

I don't think the initial hypothesis is so bad: If you can't hear something coming, you're more likely to get hit by it. A gas engine is significantly noisier than a hybrid one.
Your thoughts on waving so far
When an Indian leaves the country to go west, he's made to feel like a traitor for leaving his "motherland". A lot of Indians live with some form of guilt for having a happy and healthy life outside India. The guilt takes some people like the ones mentioned in this article to go back and do some good for the country.

I think Indians at home need to realise that there is a world outside India. It's exciting, it's beautiful and it's worth exploring. It's OK to not live in India. There are a billion people there already. The country can do with losing some.

The closest we can get to a world without borders is for people to take the chance to go and live in another country, when they can.
I'm not Indian but have dealt with contracts from India. It really comes down to two things.

1) Work culture - Indian work culture, for the most part is not same as the work culture in the US. From what I've seen, Indian bosses are a lot more assertive and controlling than you would expect from your boss in the US. I can only imagine what it must be like in bureaucratic government agencies in India.

2) Infrastructure and Equality - Its just not there. It might be sprouting or even maturing in certain places but for the most part, there is immense red tape and corruption in India. This is common for most developing countries and until the average minimum wage in India for a low level government official is somewhat closer to something decent, the bribery and favourism will continue and ambitious programs like these will continue to fail. Some of the smartest Indians I met in college told me they have a better shot in the US because there is no widespread favourism here.
I've joined in order to be able to display the seal on my own ecommerce site. As a single-person company, it isn't terribly expensive (it is priced per employee).

I don't have any hard evidence (such as an A/B test) to support my decision, but I'm selling monthly subscriptions to businesses and felt the impression of credibility was worthwhile.
Lots of people still make it work. Solutions for the problems quoted:

1. Pollution: Dont live in the city.

2. Traffic: Get a big car and a driver ($140 a month). You can sit in the back with a laptop and 1MBps connectivity for $15 a month.

3. Corruption: Work in the private sector and not in the public sector.

I was just in India and the undercurrent of the country is very positive which I cant say about the present feeling I've gotten in New York city.

Bottom line: Its a big change, moving to a different country, but IMHO its possibly a smaller problem than starting your own business.
Interesting, BBB profile has this explanation:

On television, the company offers a promotion for a free computer learning cd. Consumers taking advantage of the free cd are offered upsells. If accepted, they require the consumer to return products to avoid being billed. If consumers do not return the products, they will continue to receive additional products and be billed for those products.

http://www.bbb.org/denver/business-reviews/computers-trainin...
Building the smallest possible marketable product doesn't mean building a low quality product.

This strikes me as more than a little unfair. Anyone who's actually built and deployed software knows that customer support, bug fixes, and maintenance are practically guaranteed parts of the product lifecycle.
From Eric Raymond (ESR, in the comments of the original post that JGC responds to) - http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1447#comment-243042:

"As other have repeatedly pointed out, that code was written to be used for some kind of presentation that was false. The fact that the deceptive parts are commented out now does not change that at all.

It might get them off the hook if we knew — for certain — that it had never been shown to anyone who didn’t know beforehand how the data was cooked and why. But since these peiple have conveniently lost or destroyed primary datasets and evaded FOIA requests, they don’t deserve the benefit of that doubt. We already know there’s a pattern of evasion and probable cause for criminal conspiracy charges from their own words."
Unfortunately, the generalization is well-deserved. The behaviour of the official named Mr. Brahmachari : feudal, mercurial, inconsistent, authoritative...is the template. If you're lucky, there's often exactly one guy somewhere in there who is sincere, professional, and is literally the one doing all the work, and he sympathizes with your case.

The number of young Indians who, in theory, can transform Indian cities into Silicon Valleys of the East vs. the bureaucracy is like a water and dam situation. The smarter water flows West instead.
> What is the best way to deal with skeptics of generally accepted ideas?

You know, this could be read very, very wrongly.
The problem is they're losing the most ambitious and the most intelligent, the ones who could help the country the most.

However, the country was wasting those resources anyway.
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I imagine, "What's all this? Why not just write (dwim)?"
"that code was written to be used for some kind of presentation that was false. "

In other words, he doesn't know a damn thing. I can't help but feel that the anti-warming crowd (which includes ESR if I remember correctly, he wrote some long rant about peak oil?) is trying to blow a tiny mite up to be an elephant. It's typical revisionist behavior, just like the creationists who find a small bone that is not where biologists have predicted it would be, and they think they have refuted Darwin.

In any case, this all seems to be very ad hominem (revisionists trying to discredit scientists instead of providing data). Even if somewhere out there in the vast internet a false chart is floating around, it does not refute global warming. (Note: I don't claim that global warming is real - I don't know. I just don't like the style of this "mite-gate").

The way to resolve this seems to create some proper charts off proper data.
I sooo need a new theme, but haven't found anything worth implementing :)
Search engine competition could help media companies
I generally dislike when periods are taken as part of the URL. Then you can't end a sentence with a URL like http://example.com.

HN does it right, but Gruber's example seems to put the period in the URL.
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I agree - the remedy is transparency and to understand how, where and when these models are used - especially if they're being used to form significant public policy as is the case here. It seems reasonable to believe that the code was used for some purpose - even if it was dummy data - but clearly questions remain that should be asked and answered. What makes it even more troubling is the attitude of engagement of these scientists as if they are above being questioned when it is now revealed their emails suggest doubt, evasion and even suppression of valid but differing studies.

I've come to believe that AGW probably exists but am not married to the idea either - but nor am I convinced we need massive corrective policy versus adaptation (heck - I live in Canada after all, and after last winter we could use a little warming). That said, and I'm not saying you're doing this but many proponents of AGW are attempting to minimize the implications in the emails but their impact cannot and should not be denied: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/nov...

Also - given the lack of transparency and the emails that have now come to light, the researchers most certainly open themselves up to questions that include whether or not the underlying data has been manipulated/adjusted such that the coding adjustments are no longer necessary http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/26/mcintyre-data-from-the...
I didn't follow this in detail, so far I have mostly seen some words taken out of context that can mean one thing or another. Personally I prefer not to judge words that are taken out of context.

In that sense, I suppose an actual prosecution would be a good thing, to end all the senseless speculation.
He was significantly less deranged prior to 9-11-2001.
Publish or perish. This all sounds very normal to me. I don't see references to making data fit, rather it sounds as if he is looking for a ways to extract some useful information from it.

Anyway, you know what: people believe what they want to believe. This discussion is completely pointless.
Cannot view either address yet - will check back later
As someone who grew up in India, studied and worked and the US and who spent 6 months attempting to help my previous employer set up an off site development centre at a third party vendor, before returning to the US, here is my perspective.

Management culture is not controlling or assertive in a manner any different than that practised at my US employer. The differences are mostly in response to such assertiveness, Indians tend to typically approach such assertiveness by authority with mere acceptance without necessarily understanding the reason underlying the decision. Such management assertiveness I have found to be misguided with the same rate at both locations.

Management response to highlighting inefficiencies in work culture or ineffectiveness with regards to output is specific to the organization, and in my experience I found the response to be similar, hide inefficiencies rather than work towards improvements.

I do not think I would find it difficult to go "home" (I consider US to be my home now), I would only need to find an organization that has the same first principles of continuous (personal and profession) improvement as I do.

Finding such an organization in either nation would be similarly difficult or easy.
Interview with Google Go Language lead Rob Pike
Well you can do all these sitting in NY, minus the inconvenience. As long as you have an original good idea for business, you don't need to move to india (or anywhere else) to make it successful.

I guess my main beef with this feel-good, nationalistic, let's-all-go-to-india movement is that whether you like it or not - regardless of your original intentions - this will only benefit the elite few, the rich will get richer and poor will remain where they were before you went to india hoping to make a difference.

Indian doesn't need an influx of ex-pats to go to india to make a difference, they have plenty of smart people there already, they need a change in corrupt culture of government bureaucracy and outreach of social development that reaches way beyond the western-looking city landscapes.

They got their priorities wrong.
Anyone searching for outright fraud in in these emails is going to be disappointed. The problem is not fraud, but rather scientists who believe that they are correct, and that their job is now not science but public relations.

That said, finding this was a big deal: http://camirror.wordpress.com/2009/11/26/new-the-deleted-dat...
Honestly, it doesn't seem that scammy. I always thought it was quite obvious it's a trial offer. I guess it depends on whether or not those CDs are good to justify the price.
If you drive a prius with a thought toward efficiency it is quite good. If you are a pedal masher it won't be so good.

I have found this to be true for any car. The question for hybrids is if it's any more or less so. That is, is the effect of a "lead foot" more or less pronounced on average fuel consumption when compared to a non-hybrid economy car?

My anecdotal experience with economy cars versus a similarly small, "sportier" car (Honda Prelude) is that efficient driving has more effect on the the latter (17 to 30 mpg, factor of 1.76) than on economy cars (25 to 36 mpg, factor of 1.44)

they would fail modern emissions tests miserably, but cheap and efficient they nailed

IIRC, the high-efficiency "HF" version of the 80s Honda Civic CRX typically got 45-50mpg, with the same caveat that it couldn't be produced today due to more stringent emissions standards and the added one that it only had two seats.
I am the same. I yawn when nervous or scared. I used to yawn when walking past a bunch of thugs at school in the mornings.

People at work tend to yawn when I talk to them.
Peer review and such is more of a quick sanity check than anything else--in principle it's about verifying soundness, in practice it's more a quick and dirty filter to remove absolute rubbish. It'd be nice if things were more rigorous, but there are systematic limitations--e.g., triple checking someone else's work and not finding any problems does not advance one's scientific career. It tends to work out well enough most of the time, though.

In any field there are usually different factions of experts and you should consider all positions. If all experts agree (!) then assuming that position is probably not going to materially affect you even if they are not exactly on the right path.

Really? I can't actually think of any scientific fields with significant factional divides. Disagreements over trivia, perhaps (such as quantum mechanical interpretations), but nothing major. Disputes over major issues in science tend to be worked out pretty quickly, rarely persisting as stable factions. And yes, on the current topic, experts in climatology do pretty consistently agree on the science (proposed political "solutions" are another matter entirely...). What did you have in mind?

Factional wars may crop up around the fringes in fields that are only partially scientific, but it's typically parts of the field that are especially difficult to study scientifically that the factions split over.

Often it takes outsiders to shake up a field.

Often? Really? Do you have any examples? The only significant shakeups in science that I can think of were started by people trained and acknowledged in the field (though typically young, obscure researchers, not famous and influential scientists).

Personally I'm with "House", assume everyone is lying (or at least wrong) and you're usually right.

In matters of science, everyone is wrong, but some are less wrong than others.
There is a very similar file briffa_sep98_e.pro where the similar code does not appear to be dead code (or, at least, it does not die as soon as the code in the file the blogger was looking at). Most importantly, the above-quoted comment, "very artificial correction for decline" is not found in the code that the blogger looked at. But it is found in the code that I am talking about.
One reason why holocaust revisionism is so popular is because of laws. With laws in Germany and Canada that forbade even questioning the number of people that was killed, one begins to wonder if that debate ever happened. The question comes up: "What are they trying to hide with laws?".

I personally think that Holocaust happened - but I am not so convinced that the "official" number is accurate.

The best antidote for any skepticism is clear and open debate.
(revisionists trying to discredit scientists instead of providing data)

If you claim P=NP, and I show a flaw in your proof, am I also required to provide a proof of my own? Of course not.

This is how science should work; both scientists, their competitors, and anyone else with a passing interest will carefully try to discredit existing work. In this case, it looks like a specific attempt to discredit it failed.

You are correct that creating proper charts off proper data would be the best solution. Unfortunately, much of the data has been "lost", making this impossible.
Yay! A story about politics, programming, and climate science, all wrapped into one! It's like Christmas has come early here on HN.

And the story just keeps getting better and better, too. Lots of twists and turns.

So now we have code comments which are incendiary put ahead of, as it turn out, dead code. It's as if we found IRS code that had pieces in it like "This part makes sure all environmentalists get audited" but then the next part never runs. So it looks awful, but it does nothing.

So I guess that's the key for any kind of code analysis, right? What does it do? You run the code. Has anybody taken the raw input and ran the code to make sure this piece of code is currently representative of the code used at the time?

No wait -- we can't do that, can we? Because the data was lost/destroyed, right? So we have some version of some abstract pieces of code with incriminating comments in them that aren't being ran. On one hand, if you're looking for some kind of solid proof of scientists gone wild, you're never going to find it -- no matter how many times you add up nothing and nothing you'll get nothing -- because there are data and reproducibility problems that we can never resolve So it's always going to be he-said, she-said. On the other hand, that's been the problem with this issue all along -- data, models, and reproducibility. This case just brings it all out into the glorious sunshine for programmers like us to view.

Outstanding.