skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
A review of the best robots of 2009
No it's not. My incentive to be a donor now is to be able to get an organ if I need it.
I got CDs of the Brandenburgs, a desktop sundial, and a build-it-yourself 1/20 scale model of the Wright flyer.

Also socks and some other stuff. But there are more presents to come tomorrow as we visit the in-laws.
Yeah, it is a couple of years behind the state-of-the-art, but the main reason is beacuase of how TRAI defined broadband (Always on connection with minimum download speed of 256 kbps). If they increase the threshold, I think the ISPs will catch up.

From what I have observed, the ISPs (or the telcos) in India are a lot better (in the 'dont-be-evil' point of view) than their US counterparts. I have used Airtel and BSNL broadband services for many years and both of them worked perfectly well without any glitches at all. I cannot comment on BSNLs, but the Airtel customer service is very good too. I may be wrong here.

I am using a 256Kbps connection for some time now. It is more than enough for my humble needs. So cannot complain. Viewing videos and all is a pain though.
I am using 1.5 mbps down/500kbps up, at the place I am staying for a couple of months in Bangalore. It is good enough for most of my work. I can't do multi-party video conferencing, but I don't _have_ to have that to do my work.

But, yes it is a step down from the 100 mbps line at home, but it isn't 60 times better at home, but it feels maybe 5-10 times better. The worst is probably the uneven service. It drops quite a lot (sometimes several times an hour) and you often have to wait for minutes for it to come back up again, not to talk about the powercuts. If this place didn't have a backup generator things would be dire.
I had an HN-Christmas. I got stuff that I saw other HN'ers recommended over the last year.

First was the CDs. Arvo Part Fratres. Arvo Part Tabula Rasa, Gorecki' Symphony #3, and Steve Reich Music for 18 Musicians (These are REALLY GOOD) I am enjoying the heck of of them so far this morning.

Then, from another HN thread, the ultimate nerd game, Settlers of Catan. Can't wait to try it out later today.

Finally some custom teas. Good stuff! I'm drinking a double-spice chai with milk and Splenda. Delicious.

By the way, if you haven't figured it out yet, you can be bad and Santa still brings you cool stuff. I think this whole "making a list" stuff is just a big lie. If you ask me, the big fat man is a pushover.
Video is also available at http://www.vimeo.com/1594866
Let me what inner workings of the system ud like to know. App is on PHP, MySQL. Most of the JS/CSS is coded by ourselves.
Documentation, there is some and there is PRD as well that explains how things are supposed to work.
About it being easily translatable, I don't know because we never thought of outside US market while developing it. So seriously I don't know. I assume there will be work.
Anybody else here remember trashing their handset-cradle 300 baud Kansas City modem for one of them there shiny new 1200 baud Hayes machines? And now they tell me that ten thousand or so times faster ain't enough?
The little schemer! I knew I forgot to ask for something. I seriously love getting books for Christmas.
I'm pretty sure the US gov't could "persuade" Google to hand data over if it really came down to it.
Apple purchased iSlate.com in 2007
Yes you could, both Cubase and SoundForge we're ~$500 products that would allow you to do multitrack editing like this on a PC.
The video of the Quattro s650, claimed as the world's fastest packing/sorting robot, is particularly impressive as it handles a surprisingly large variety of objects.
It's much more of a social challenge than technological one.

Bruce Sterling has described a beautiful society functioning along these lines:

http://tqft.net/wiki/Maneki_Neko
The content is given to you on conditions outlined in Terms of Use. If you a agree to the terms, but later violate the terms you are breaking the contract, thus violating contract law.

If you manage to avoid getting into contract by side-stepping "I agree" button, you are obtaining content without a license, hence violating copyright law. The act of side-stepping can be construed to mean "unauthorized computer system access", aka "hacking" or "cracking".

None of this is likely to get you prosecuted, but then if prosecution is all you care about you could use other means to obtain content which are also not very likely to get you in trouble.

This is not a legal advice, I am not a lawyer.
Settlers is great. It has a bit of a learning curve, though, so if you have any friends who know how to play (and who would be okay with a few "open hand" rounds), you might invite them over. Have fun!
Logicomix.
Paul Theroux travel books.
Borges short stories.
I think it's amusing that I read this article on what is probably the future form of news.
Dude. . . this is a great book. I plan on finishing it today, in fact. Warning: the last two chapters are mind-bending.
T max<T>(Comparable a, Comparable b) {
if (a.compareTo(b) < 0) { return a; }
else { return b; }
}

Or something..

Explicitly specifying that a and b needs to be comparable instead of shooting an endless template error message.

And: "My approach works, theirs does not work." explains perfecly why C++ is what it is.
...is there anything Emacs CANNot do?
Was thinking that exact thing yesterday when I had to go to the mall for last minute presents - had major crowd/chaos anxiety, turned and bailed. If Amazon could do real time shipping, it would be a miracle. Happily pay a premium for it. They could have distribution hubs in all major cities...
In Afghanistan, Internet was only really available on a couple bases. Our's (U.S.) offered troops 56K to your plywood shack for $35/mo and it had about 50% uptime. After a year of that, pretty much all domestic Internet connections rock. I empathize with your plight, albeit over a shorter amount of time.
"If you like low taxes and the death penalty, try Texas. For good public schools and subsidised cycle paths, try Portland, Oregon. Even within states, the rules vary widely. Bath County, Kentucky is dry. Next-door Bourbon County, as the name implies, is not."

That's one of the secrets of the United States. Federalism allows citizens lots of lifestyle choices, while still building a great deal of national cohesion. And that variety state by state is what produces a uniform attractiveness to immigrants (the main point of the submitted article) that keeps the United States growing and innovating.
I've thought about making a real-time forum: basically the same thing as an ordinary forum software, but with presence capability and posts happening in real time without reloading. Or, if you look at it in another way, it would be a chat room with persistence, result is searchable, possibly threaded.

The hope is that conversations in such a medium would be something in between regular chat and regular forums, and they could be compelling enough.

The technology is not a big issue for building this, the Tornado framework has a chat example from which you can start. Text messages are short, they can be kept in memory and saved to disk once in a while either DIY or using something like Redis.
Logitech DiNovo Mini Keyboard. If you have an HTPC, this is a must have. I have it working with ubuntu plug and play. It rocks.
A food processor! I can't wait to use it!

http://www.amazon.com/Cuisinart-DFP-14BCN-Processor-Brushed-...
In large cities in China they effectively have this through a million people being employed as couriers. You order something on taobao.com (kinda like amazon) and someone calls you up, asks you where you are, and half an hour later they show up on a motorcycle wherever you are and you hand over cash for your order.

It's basically UPS entirely staffed by bike messengers. It's realtime and it's awesome.
bought myself another 80GB X25-M SSD along with MCE optibay so I can RAID-0 them in my 17-in unibody macbook pro. Also a 32GB Class 10 SDHC card for my Kodak Zi8. And a UI stencil set for making website mockups http://www.uistencils.com/

I got my family a 23andme ancestry DNA test and they LOVED it. Gave bro-in-law & sister a Flip MinoHD for baby vids
Suffering from a serious case of GAS (Gadget Acquisition Syndrome) :( Canon 70-200 IS 2.8 and a 17-55 IS 2.8.
Thanks! we use KISSmetrics right now, i need to give mixpanel.com another look
As of right now, I can find out a lot of information about a company by paying for the data from a data provider like Bloomberg or Reuters. This data, however, should be free and well-organized.

I would like to build a search engine that indexes and organizes regulatory filings, investment message board posts, investment blog posts, the portion of a company's website dealing with investment relations, and economic news.

You input the company's trading symbol to bring up all the relevant information about the company. Furthermore, there should be an API so that people can use the index in their own applications. I have no idea where revenue would come from.
The problem I have with all of Gladwell's works (Blink, Tipping Point, etc.) is that his theories are overly simplistic. They are formulated at the cocktail party level, they make interesting stories but they are not sufficiently well thought out or detailed to actually make testable predictions or be useful in any practical sense. This is a shame because some of the things he studies (especially in Blink) is potentially very important and well done research could have wide ranging positive influence.

Ultimately though Gladwell proves himself as not a scientist, and seemingly content to just write interesting stories rather than to do the less glamorous work of fleshing out his ideas into something of practical value.
Chocolate :D
Sleep! Having family over is forcing me to take a break. Bah! :P
I got the skin of a leopard. Completely unasked for, totally illegal and now I'm feeling very guilty, but unsure what to do. It's not good to have naive family members go on safari.
I remember trashing a parallel port (or was it a serial port....) trying to get a modem to work, and having to replace with a new card.

Kids these days with their whiffy and Ethernet ports.
From my girlfriend: an Atari shirt (since I'm always lamenting that the one I have now is literally falling to pieces); a copy of The Bro Code; A bunch of amazingly delicious homemade chocolates; A stocking shaped like Kuribo's Shoe from Super Mario Bros 3 (http://bit.ly/kuribo).

From my mother, a $25 sbux gift card and chocolates.

Given that I don't actually celebrate christmas and didn't want gifts, it's a pretty good haul.

I also got my girlfriend a sock monkey patterned after Rorschach from Watchmen (http://bit.ly/5h0nfB), which she liked (huge Watchmen fan and loves sock monkeys).
2009's Top Threats To Science In Medicine
2 Books, a grease gun and shop light (I'm teaching myself car repair) A case for my new droid phone and lots of candy.
i have a logitech mouse waiting for me in the states, which is a present to myself (i have a glass desk and they just introduced a mouse that works on glass).

but what i received was a very nice black jacket kind of thing. not sure how to describe it - like a thin fleece, but not very fleecy. i am sure it's a horribly technical piece of clothing for climbing up mountains or something, but i will be using it when i go north next week (summer here in the source - just had a xmas day picnic!).
TDR?
1200 baud would be just fine if I could read the news without an unwanted megabyte of bloat per page (even worse with pagination).
Entice A Gorgeous Body With Acomplia Diet Pill
I would prefer if people would link to the normal article, not the printable page. If I want that version I can click the print link myself. If I don't want that version, I have to go search for the original location of the article.
I study software, not software engineering
Storing size separately from the character data, rather than as a prefix to the character data, would indeed alleviate some of the potential problems of a size+data string. I could see myself using such an implementation in situations where the minimal overhead of allocating a separate area on the stack or heap for the size+pointer struct is negligible. Expanding strings would certainly be a lot easier, and it would open the posibility (as you mentioned) for complex data sharing among strings, similarly to Qt4.
Four days off. :)
I never noticed that emails were not shared publicly. I always assumed that people I wanted to speak with simply had not filled in that field.

Good call.
In general, linking to the canonical version of an article rather than any other version helps the HN duplicate detector do its job. That is especially hard for articles from the Economist, which live under multiple URLs in different subdirectories on the Economist website. But most of those articles, as this one, are well worth submitting and good food for thought.
Sweet Dauntless, I'll add that to my search list. More free Xmas shwag
Samsung N130 Netbook, A $50 bond and a coffee mug. Oh, and a Rubik's cube that has been eating up far too much time.

For my Dad, I promised to pay for a golf club he has on backorder. For my girlfriend, I got a PS3 with MGS4 and Little Big Planet (which is really so I can play LBP). Still trying to get my Mom to tell me what to get her, sadly.
1. Shipping the game
2. 10 000+ people buying it because it's fun
Get off HN, turn off the computer, and enjoy the wonderful sin of gluttony.

Merry Christmas.
Will it blend!
AVATAR. Plug into a clone of me and watch him do everything I think.
I am pretty sure that Reddit comment sections are just generated by an AI now. How many times has that exact thread progression occurred before?
A "Wiz" ARM-based open handheld gaming platform. And socks.
Ask HN: Share Your New Year Resolution
Share your new year resolution with HN
I got Monopoly City, an old Chase Manhattan stock certificate, and a mint condition 100 trillion Zimbabwe dollar note.
The best thing my wife and I ever purchased was a food processor. We use it sooo often.
Primary resolution is taking all my half-done and unfinished side projects and bring them to completion.

Secondary new year resolution is hopefully triple QWXGA, you can never have too much pixel real estate.
I don't see any reason for all cultures to have a negative view of nepotism. Were I a parent, I'd certainly try to provide the best possible platform for my children on which to build their careers. I see nepotism as wrong only when it comes at too great a cost to the company or country in which it is practiced, or violates laws or company policies.
I put the seasoned and reasoned schemer on my list. Will have to wait til next week until I see family to get them though.
that's a weird ass present, is it skin skin, or some garment made out of it?
White american women are more likely to be homemakers or only work part-time than women of other ethnicities because they are more likely be married to white men who make enough money to support a family on their own. So I think there is probably some correlation between white male dominance in the workforce/salary-wise and white female absence from the work force. (I'm a former homemaker and white female. I am currently working due to having gotten divorced.)
An automatic, voice based translator: talk in one language on one end (to an iPhone or something) out comes another language and subtitles in another :-)

One thing that's interesting about this is that it's not too far off. We have speech recognition technology, computer voice technology, and translation technology. They need to get better, and faster, but they're there.
Story of a benevolently networked society
I just got cash. I'm impossible to shop for, since I just buy whatever I want. So about 5 years back we just agreed that I just get cash, since that allows me to buy the stuff I really want, when I get the itch.
I love John Derbyshire! Whenever I lament the current stock of presidential candidates, I always say, "We need someone like John Derbyshire running"; somebody who can employ logic and think on their feet.
Not that we've beaten this dead horse enough. Anyway, a quick summary of the Reddit discussion for easy digestion.

* Brew coffee using the Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol, or HTCPCP http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/CoffeeMode

* Vi Within Emacs using Viper mode

* Video Editing via GNEVE http://1010.co.uk/gneve.html
WHEN I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
‘Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;

Give pearls away and rubies	5
But keep your fancy free.’
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me.

When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again,	10
‘The heart out of the bosom
Was never given in vain;
’Tis paid with sighs a plenty
And sold for endless rue.’
And I am two-and-twenty,	15
And oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.

(A.E. Housman A Shropshire Lad, XIII)
I got this link from ntoshev's comment here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1015177
If you find yourself enjoying Settlers, take a look at BoardGameGeek's top 20 list of games: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgame

While Settlers is a nice gateway game, there's a fair amount of chance involved that can be frustrating. I'd highly recommend Puerto Rico, Tigris & Euphrates, and Caylus. Good games, although they're a bit more involved than Settlers.
A necklace, a lamp, a dress, the 'inventor's almanac' book 'They Made America,' and several socks, the limiting factor for startups.
emacs will never solve the halting problem.
Time Domain Reflectometer
Grand words, but not much content and brazen attempts to sneak in ad-hominens under the radar:

"The climate change legions are recruited mainly from the Western left-intelligentsia, their kitbags stuffed with all the sub-Marxist and ethno-masochist flapdoodle of the modern Academy. They hate capitalism, they hate Western civilization, and they hate their own ancestors. The kind of dramatic social engineering implicit in the phrase "combatting climate change" is emotionally appealing to them."

With all the nice words around you would hardly notice.
Over the last couple of months, I became involved with a nonprofit which is taking a whack at #13, Online Learning. It is not technically the "current best solution", since it is upcoming: http://www.innovativeineducation.org. The website is admittedly rough, but this organization is initiating free online accredited college courses. This spring semester will be for no credit (Calc I and Organic Chem I), as it will be a trial for the technology.
For-credit courses are scheduled to be offered starting in the summer/fall, back-dooring through community colleges until its own accreditation is achieved. The idea is to start with Gen Ed type classes which can be taught online and transferred to just about any school, and to offer more courses as the program grows.

Since the endeavor is structured around corporate sponsorships, Innovative in Education can afford to pay professors and graduate students appropriately to create high quality content and instruct live online. No complicated login process to access the live content; users can just tune into the classroom page at class time, and view the embedded livestream. (Of course, content will be archived as well, a la OCW).

Actually, on that note: there seem to be good streaming solutions for live action video (high FPS, high compression) and for slides (low FPS, low compression for detail clarity), but I have not found a solution that allows the broadcaster to selectively switch between the two optimizations. If anyone knows of such a streaming solution, please share. Thanks!
Why is something like Google/Yahoo Finance not good enough? Apart from 10-K and 10-Q's?
Kulic 1.1 su Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic
Right now, it's not that much different. Reddit's front page can be awfully toxic at times, and I don't think people automatically look at reddit and say, "I might find some interesting economic news here if I can just wade past all this other crap."

Once I have enough users to keep the site afloat, I'm going to start offering recommendations. There's a lot more to come.
They're offering same-day shipping in major cities now.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=2...
The entire skin. Quite thick - not really wearable.
The classical music selection is excellent. I just downloaded Moonlight Sonata movements I and III.
A new set of tires for my car and a really nice scarf. I love practical gifts.
HackeR zOoeRR
I'm impressed that you still use hardware samplers. It's pretty much the first thing that I would think of replacing with a computer (quasi unlimited sampling memory, unlimited storage, etc). I have a S2000 somewhere, gathering dust...
You may not agree with him, but others do. A certain first lady, in a couple of her speeches, still makes my fist clench when I think about them.

Anyway, my present to you, is that I'll say no more. It's Christmas. Let's enjoy the day.

Merry Christmas.
Logicomix is brilliant, got it for my birthday in November. Enjoy!
Equality and comparisons in presence of subclassing etc. are not the business of a sane man. I think it is impossible to write an .equals() in java that satisfies all the relevant laws people usually assume from it.
An Intel SSD. Best speed-up I could get short of getting a new laptop. :-)
Hey, there are 12 days of Christmas, so I've got 11 more days to find out what I'm getting... ;-)

(Seriously, we celebrate most gift-giving on Epiphany, the traditional 12th day of Christmas, when the Magi brought their gifts to Bethlehem. Takes the "gift whammy" off Christmas itself, though we have a few minor gifts.)
I have an old HN thread bookmarked, "Ask YC: What would you tell your younger self?"[1]. I read it over a few times a year and I think that on some level, it has affected my perspective. The thing is, the advice given is nothing new, especially the message of "do what you love".

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=372573
Have you ever used Bloomberg or Reuters? Google/Yahoo Finance are far from useful for anything but an overview of a company. The service I am talking about would be aimed at more professional users.
This was posted a few days ago. Using the normal link would flag it as a duplicate.

However, I think in most cases I'd prefer the printable version. Some articles are split up into multiple pages, and the printable version combines them and is often cleaner and faster to load.
Magic Mouse, an AeroPress and some cigars
psst: justin.tv

Justin used to run around with a helmet camera and a laptop+ 4 bonded wireless modems in his backpack.
A llama.

(Go, Heifer! http://www.heifer.org/)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle
70-200 is a great lens. The only non-prime I've owned.
Always remember: There is no sex in the champagne room. None.
What's the point, then?

In traditional (solid-state-based) transistors, smaller dimensions has always meant faster switching speed, less energy waste and more efficient use of chip real estate. I fail to see how any of these are applicable to molecular-scale devices, although I could be wrong.

I think the proper way to see this is as a feat not of engineering, but of experimental physics; in that light, the mere novelty of having fabricated a single-molecule switching device has plenty of merit on its own. For real engineering applications, as I mentioned in the parent post, this specific example is probably of limited use, but could help pave the way for the development of other designed molecular systems.

Also, I'm afraid there is pr value in claiming to have created the ultimate incarnation of Moore's law, regardless of any actual engineering applicability. This could also have provided some of the incentive for this work.