2010-03-12 front | Hacker News

Stories from March 12, 2010

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1.		Tell HN: Thank you
		178 points by AndrewWarner on March 12, 2010 \| 64 comments
2.		Philip K. Dick on Blade Runner (philipkdick.com)
		170 points by locopati on March 12, 2010 \| 88 comments
3.		We Bought A Toxic Asset; You Can Watch It Die (npr.org)
		142 points by gcheong on March 12, 2010 \| 45 comments
4.		It’s time to fix the window controls (ubuntu 10.04) (yokozar.org)
		138 points by dotcoma on March 12, 2010 \| 89 comments
5.		On the Shortness of Life - Seneca (50 AD) (wikisource.org)
		124 points by nkh on March 12, 2010 \| 42 comments
6.		The cult of busy (scottberkun.com)
		119 points by chanux on March 12, 2010 \| 29 comments
7.		Rackspace passwords are visible to customer service (rondam.blogspot.com)
		110 points by lisper on March 12, 2010 \| 39 comments
8.		Jason Calacanis’ Backup Plan For Replacing Content: Steal It From Wikipedia (blogsblogsblogs.com)
		105 points by scofflaw on March 12, 2010 \| 70 comments
9.		Netflix Prize 2 Cancelled Due to a Lawsuit and FTC Inquiry (netflix.com)
		103 points by gaika on March 12, 2010 \| 71 comments
10.		Fed up with Mahalo's search engine spam? Report it here (google.com)
		89 points by tomh- on March 12, 2010 \| 37 comments
11.		Learning About Machine Learning 2nd Ed. (measuringmeasures.com)
		85 points by liebke on March 12, 2010 \| 18 comments
12.		How I retired at age 25 (petermichaud.com)
		82 points by pmichaud on March 12, 2010 \| 46 comments
		zaidf on March 12, 2010 \| parent \| context \| on: So you didn't get into YC... Please don't write a motivational or demotivational post about how you didn't get into YC Screw that. Write what you want. If people like it, they'll upvote it.
14.		Ask YC/HN: What's a problem, any problem, you'd like to see someone solve?
		74 points by Mystalic on March 12, 2010 \| 226 comments
		ryandvm on March 12, 2010 \| parent \| context \| on: How I retired at age 25 I'm glad I can appreciate the recursiveness of reading a minimally informative blog about getting rich, all the while knowing that the punchline is going to be "write lean content that strings people along".
16.		Reddit joins Digg, Twitter on Cassandra (reddit.com)
		70 points by jbellis on March 12, 2010 \| 16 comments
17.		Example of Subliminal Advertising (youtube.com)
		68 points by aresant on March 12, 2010 \| 43 comments
18.		How to pack a stereo signal in one record groove (vinylrecorder.com)
		64 points by soundsop on March 12, 2010 \| 24 comments
		swombat on March 12, 2010 \| parent \| context \| on: Fed up with Mahalo's search engine spam? Report it... I have yet to stumble upon a single Mahalo answer page in any of my search queries. Maybe I'm not interested in the right topics.
20.		Umberto Eco - The Holy War: Mac vs. DOS (themodernword.com)
		62 points by pmjoyce on March 12, 2010 \| 13 comments
		nfnaaron on March 12, 2010 \| parent \| context \| on: Netflix Prize 2 Cancelled Due to a Lawsuit and FTC... Plus one to Netflix for making this the first sentence: "This is Neil Hunt, Chief Product Officer for Netflix." No vague hiding behind an unidentified team or blog. A person has chosen to identify himself with the decision, and the company chose to present it that way. The general tone is also positive. This is a good way to communicate. Contrast with Amazon's anonymous whine on their kindle blog when they gave in to MacMillan. Not signed by a person, not even "the team." And full of blame and "you'll see!" http://www.amazon.com/tag/kindle/forum/ref=cm_cd_et_md_pl?_e...
		skennedy on March 12, 2010 \| parent \| context \| on: So you didn't get into YC... Personally, this post is the first one I have ever wanted to down-vote and wish I had that ability. If someone is pouring their ambition, time, and resources into a product, who are you to judge their desire to get feedback from fellow HN readers and/or applicants? If you do not want to read about their HN application success or rejection, do not read it. Lots of stories are submitted and posted on this site. If not interesting to you specifically, move on.
23.		Reflections on Avatar by Ray Kurzweil (kurzweilai.net)
		60 points by limist on March 12, 2010 \| 58 comments
24.		Medieval Iceland and the Absence of Government (mises.org)
		57 points by kiba on March 12, 2010 \| 32 comments
25.		Learn to program in 21 days (comic) (abstrusegoose.com)
		56 points by thomas on March 12, 2010 \| 16 comments
26.		Ambilight for HML5's tag, in Javascript. (chikuyonok.ru)
		56 points by bkudria on March 12, 2010 \| 12 comments
27.		"LuaJIT's interpreter () beats V8's JIT compiler" - Mike Pall (lambda-the-ultimate.org)
		55 points by petermichaux on March 12, 2010 \| 17 comments
28.		Dynamic Charts with HTML5, Canvas, and Flotr for Prototype (humblesoftware.com)
		53 points by yanw on March 12, 2010 \| 1 comment
		JacobAldridge on March 12, 2010 \| parent \| context \| on: Jason Calacanis’ Backup Plan For Replacing Content... I'm kind of ambivalent on that point. Part of me suspects that bad things happen when good people just stand by and watch. I also think each of these is another data point in a Google discussion, more than about Jason.
		tc on March 12, 2010 \| parent \| context \| on: We Bought A Toxic Asset; You Can Watch It Die Everyone is still mistaking why these bonds were/are 'toxic.' It isn't that no one wanted to buy them. It's that no one wanted to buy them for the price at which the banks needed to sell them to remain solvent. The bonds were 'toxic' because if the banks sold any of them for their market value, the banks would have had to mark down the value of the bonds still on their books. That would have shown that the banks were insolvent. By not allowing a market value for the bonds to emerge, the banks could maintain the illusion that their assets were greater than their liabilities.
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