skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
doesn't Adobe all ready have a LLVM backend to target the iPhone from ActionScript3?
Really? A downmod?

As uncool and 90's it may be, occasionally I have to call people, and I can't really do that with any consistency.

The fact still stands that phone service on the iPhone with at&t in NYC, is dismal.

edit: Care to explain how I'm wrong? or is this a downmod for fun?
When Does the New Decade Start?
I am always fascinated by footage of assembly lines, factory floors and the process that brings us our products, from raw materials to shop floor or letterbox and all the tiny details in between. It's a shame most places have to operate under a 'no video' policy. I hope someone archives some recordings for future viewing at least.
I wonder how dumb posts like this end up on HN...
(feel free to downvote at will ...)

my trollish reply to everyone who has been analyzing the heck out of Avatar in the past week has been: "it's a friggin' ACTION movie, that's all! enjoy it as that, and don't expect more!"

james cameron was the guy who brought us the Terminator movies, True Lies, and a few other great heart-pounding action movies of the 80's and 90's (Titanic was an outlier for him ... it was far different than any other movie he had done). nobody was over-analyzing the geo-political realism or marital relations in True Lies.

the man is an action filmmaker. his movies should be compared to other big-budget Hollywood action films (e.g., transformers, bourne movies), not to deeply profound works of sci-fi/fantasy art like LOTR, Neal Stephenson novels, etc.
I was expecting problems, but I was surprised when I flew today. Jetblue, JFK to LGB (via IAD) had the exact same security checks and regulations as every other time I've flown them. I guess it just shows how inconsistently the rules are applied, which is frustrating in its own way.
IPhone game downloads to hit record high between Christmas and New Year's
Similar story with some hard number forecasts:

http://blog.flurry.com/bid/28872/Move-over-Black-Friday-and-...
El Al is often cited as an example in these discussions, and it's a pretty flawed one. The reason why profiling works (or at least works better) for El Al is that the demographics of the average traveler to Israel are pretty consistent and predictable, which greatly reduces the search space.

For instance, many travelers to Israel go for at least tangentially religious reasons; it's common practice for El Al security to ask those folks some basic questions about the faith (logic: if the guy claiming to be making a religious trip doesn't know something any observant pre-teen would, that guy deserves a closer look).

That doesn't mean that everyone traveling to Israel is Jewish (clearly not the case!), or that it's really all about profiling. But having a more homogeneous and constrained baseline (in addition to a smaller country) makes the "let's ask you some questions and see if your story makes sense" approach considerably more scalable.

Why does country size matter? A guy says "I'm visiting friends... where? Comstock - it's near Sargent." Without Google Maps at the ready, it would be hard to know if that's a plausible travel plan; whereas in a country that's only 8,000 sq. mi., with fewer people than NYC - a security agent is more likely to know shenanigans when s/he hears it.
The 'google' tag for projects on Google Code is privileged, and all officially sponsored ones use it: http://code.google.com/hosting/search?q=label:Google

There is a higher level for official Products and hosted APIs where there is a full-fledged team behind it and a much higher level of support. Instead of being labeled projects, they have top level sites:

http://code.google.com/appengine/
http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/
http://code.google.com/projecthosting/
http://code.google.com/apis/wave
http://code.google.com/apis/gears/
http://code.google.com/apis/adwords/
That video of the Amazon facility would be extra special if this were true (from the article): "When we told people were going to do this, someone said 'Whenever I click the order button on Amazon, I always imagine a chorus of happy, singing Oompa-Loompas riding around on Segways and shipping my stuff.'

More seriously, the idea of using traveling RV nomads as workers definitely qualifies as a hack. Who would have known that they'd make reliable employees given that based on the article you'd think they're effectively being paid an amount that would make them volunteers compared to their previous jobs? As an aside have you seen the systems made by http://www.kivasystems.com/? They have a number of videos on youtube.
The project has the 'google' label, so it's at least an official %20 project.
"Could someone please explain to me why he's still trolling the front page?"

There's something screwy about such content-free rants ending up on the HN front page for days in a row. My guess is that most HN regulars (and admins) are away for Xmas and New Year which allows a small voting ring (say 6 or so separate accounts) to vote up this drivel. The simple solution (for now) might be to just flag this into oblivion.

EDIT: or just a slow day for news as pg mentions above. I wonder if the "promotion" algorithm should take into account slow days? I would rather see an unchanging front page full of good links on a slow news day (than stuff like these screwy "loper OS" posts).
Browse the Artifacts of Geek History
It's a very slow news day.
'Search Neutrality' is neccessary to promote growth and innovation
Perceval thanks and by the way an excellent essay. You hit the nail on the head with ... 'our hypothetical comment-driven forum would push stories up based on quality of conversation....'. Do you think that part of the formula can be improved by including automatically a 'readability formula', where the childish comments and language would automatically be penalized by the system?
Not much too see, but it is a nice demo of web sockets.
That could be the case for a densely populated but otherwise open area. However, NYC is a concrete (and metal!) jungle. The only way to guarantee consistent outdoor coverage would be to put a cell at practically every road intersection. At that point, you might as well make a municipal wi-fi network, too. Or instead, since wi-fi hotspots are much cheaper and higher volume products than micro cells.
How is Rails "tailored for the web" in a way that Django is not? Marketing?
Very insightful piece. It would be great for open source if writing unnecessarily complex code went out of vogue.
I am happy to report that this post is coming from 30k feet via an iPhone on virgin America.
thanks, didn't know about this. Be interesting to see what happens
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Csj7vMKy4EI
From the article: The US government and the mass media selectively promote research that is favorable to the fish oil industry.

I find this unlikely. The fish oil industry is not a giant industry on the order of the corn industry, or the beef industry. It just doesn't have the size necessary for that kind of pull.

That said, it's good to read some skepticism about the utility of fish oil. As with many possible substances, there are trade-offs.
His fund gets 2.8/5.0. Partners themselves get 4.0/5.0.

http://www.thefunded.com/funds/partner/3803?name=Fred+Destin

Also, Destin really needs a new headshot. The one he has up is a pretentious sneer -- kind of the look of surprise one might have when one's "lessers" accost you. Stands out and not in a positive way.
Summary: Run gdb on your program, hit control-c and run 'thread apply all bt' a few times, to understand where your program is spending time.

I've actually used this a lot in the past, it's surprisingly useful!
There weren't "watch lists" prior to 9/11, The FBI was alerted to shady behavior by a number of them though which seems to be exactly what happened in this case.

Do you similarly think sex offender lists are a joke?
Combine that with the local paper and online/sms.
http://lamsonproject.org/
What are your hobbies?
As a hacker, I can't seem to enjoy any thing for a prolonged period other than coding, learning and building systems. Is majority of the hackers like me or have other interesting hobbies?
I agree, but it's also in our best interest to educate people about Git that show up to GitHub without any prior knowledge. Sounds like we need to do a better job of that.
Check out http://anjuno.com
Because of the internet. It makes it a lot harder to be crazy when accounts, pictures, and videos are going to show up online.
This is enlightening! I'm an amateur photographer who likes to post-process some images (mostly tweaking contrast, brightness and the hues). This post taught me quite a bit on photography forensics.
For those who have seen the movie checkout out this article on 'Project 880' which goes through the original script discussing differences which very much sound like would make for a much richer story then what we got in the movie.

http://chud.com/articles/articles/21969/1/PROJECT-880-THE-AV...
Two And A Half Men - Two And A Half Men Seasons 1-6 DVD with US$43.21
Older discussion of the same article: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=666440
I believe the 5 color map theorem is proved.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_color_theorem

As far as I know, there is a "proof" of the 4 color map theorem, but it requires the use of a computer to analyze about a 1,000 different scenarios, so its hard to check, unintuitive, and "not elegant."
Not only is that completely unrelated to the article, you're also making a broad category error: karatekas ground themselves in the business of disciprine, not punching people in the face.
Nine Lessons & Carols for Godless People
Select the right tool for dealing in the Forex system trading
Whether you are a big time investor or a small investor, it is very important that you should select the most appropriate tool when dealing in the Forex system trading. Always remember, one decision of your make you win or lose a great deal of money.
Do an A/B test!
RSS is infrastructure. It doesn't die. RSS readers as we know them might go away, but RSS readers are just a way to consume it, probably not even the best one.

RSS will likely stick around for quite a while, transparently powering features & products that's don't have "RSS" anywhere in their name.
Bear with me on this, but perhaps he read it more closely than you wrote it!

Do you not see how ripe your metaphor is for a superficial interpretation by the kind of impressionable readers that currently go around advertising for ninja coworkers? A master would have addressed that more directly in the essay: the 'frustrated expert' vignette is good, but should be expanded so that every affected ninja comes away with the realization that they are a moron. You can't leave any room for aspirational mastery. NONE.
"my trollish reply to everyone who has been analyzing the heck out of Avatar in the past week has been: "it's a friggin' ACTION movie, that's all! enjoy it as that, and don't expect more!""

My generic answer tends to be, "If we expected more, we'd get better action movies."

My specific answer WRT Avatar is that the movie obviously aspires to be more: an eco-parable, opposing large organizations, whatever. Therefore it deserves at least some of the analysis it gets.
See also The Economist podcast interview with Bill Browder. http://audiovideo.economist.com/?fr_story=839854a8c031305662...
8 Reasons Why You Should Lose Your Job ?
Does this (the mma post) deserve so many downvotes? (-3 at the point of writing)

I think it makes an interesting point. MMA fighters seem (I have limited knowledge here, I practiced Karate long ago and am seriously out of touch)) to focus on Muay Thai, some form of Wrestling and Boxing - . The "effectiveness" of various martial arts in the ring (or the street!) could be an interesting discussion (especially since we seem to be making a direct comparison to the martial arts to explain phenomena in programming). I am fairly sure such a question would be fundamentally unanswerable, but hey we discuss fundamentally unanswerable questions (like how to measure programmer productivity!) all the time here, and HN discussions are much richer than on other forums.

"If they are effective, why aren't there any good MMA fighters using them? The Kung Fu guy got brutally beat down at UFC 1."

This sounds like "If lisp is so cool where are all the killer programs written in it?" ;-)
Don't rule out the director's cut possibilities. People had similar problems with the Abyss, until they saw the extended version which turned out to make a lot more sense than the theatrical one did. I wouldn't be surprised if the version released on Blu-Ray ends up 3-4 hours long.

Great link, btw.
I can't stop seeing a small black bear tip-toeing along. The resolution is too chunky to say yay or nay to a photoshop on the basis of the body of the beast but I would agree with the other comment that the eyes do seem to be quite luminous considering the distance and the rest of the flash. Such a flash surely should have made the colours of the people a lot brighter and the woman's face, much much closer to the flash, is basically in shadow.
Start Page - Linux Mint
"In the world of worse is better, Plan9 wasn't bad enough !"

ha! Great comment! :-) I wish someone would write a book on Plan9 (like the Lion's Commentary book for Unix).
thanks, I will check it out.
From the article: The US government and the mass media selectively promote research that is favorable to the fish oil industry.

Don't countries with completely public health systems have the opposite incentive? Health care costs so much that certainly at least some countries in the world are actually interested in reducing costs associated with self-inflicted conditions...

I always have a hard time buying hard-core conspiracy theories against contrarian science. There is so much incentive in being the only "right" person if you can really prove it that there are always people trying to be that guy... right?
I agree with your reply if someone is giving James Cameron a hard time for something in his movie.

I disagree with you though if someone is pointing out how people might watch Avatar and get the wrong impression. Not that the movie shouldn't have been made or should not be watched, etc... but just that its interesting to note how people watching the movie might be thinking.
Fare: Boston Lisp Meeting: Monday 2010-01-25 Ryan Culpepper on PLT Scheme Macros
That is more involved than I thought. I was looking for a covert information channel. For instance the assistant could hold the cards in 2 different ways, 4 cards represents 16 bits of information, plus 2 more bits for which card is the high card.

Here is a simpler one that impresses many people. Deal out 3 cards across, return to the top, 3 more cards, and so on until you've dealt out 27 cards in 3 columns. Have the other person pick a card but don't indicate what it is. Ask them to indicate which column has the card. Stack the 3 columns with that in the middle. Now redeal go through the same procedure. Repeat one more time. Now count the cards out. Card #14 is the picked card.

Why does it work? Well the first time you deal it could have been anywhere, the second time it is down to the 3 middle rows, the third time it is in the middle row, then you stacked it in the middle of the deck.
Some of the 'experts' in the comment thread claimed that there was no detectable aberrations when messing with levels or what-have-you in PS.
Some folks are already working on that: http://stupidfilter.org/main/

It's supposed to identify formally stupid comments, i.e. those that have bad spelling and txt abbreviations, etc. It doesn't do anything about substantive stupidity, unfortunately ;)
Thanks for that link.
I searched and found the actual scriptment on Docstoc. http://www.docstoc.com/docs/14294813/Avatar-Scriptment-by--J...

Seriously, I really found it, if I "found" it, it would be on Scribd.
Ask HN: A free "cell phone" for use within a few miles of home?
It seems to me that I should be able to buy a two-way radio that reaches a base station at home from at least a few miles away. I should be able to hook this radio up to my internet connection and do VoIP over my existing Skype/Gtalk account.

a) Cell phone-like mobile (battery operated) radio (encrypted ;-D ?)

b) Base station at home hooked up to broadband router.

c) One time cost of less than $300.

So:

1) Does it exist? (I'm guessing no, so why not?)

2) Would it be possible to do myself without spending $1k on hardware, hacking a bunch of custom hardware/software, and getting a ham radio license?

Update:

Long range cordless phones do seem to exist, but they're not cheap.

Voyager SS 2600 ($1500)

SN 258 ($300)

I'm also not sure they're allowed to be used in the US unlicensed.
A New High-Tech Battle - Which 3-D Glasses Are Best?
The future of zombies
Hi Paras,

Since there is a little more than just changing a couple of elements on the page (code for renewals, support costs etc), I want to get an opinion before I dive in. I am sure I am not the first one trying to get an answer to this problem :)
Oh gimmick it is. It's just that the spring-sprung-brake concept has fascinated me since I was 5 yo. It would be cool to make this work; if sufficiently light, it would be a net win.
Ask HN: How would you invest/manage $20K in startup seed money?
I have wanted to start a company for the longest time. I have $300K ($210K savings + $80K 401K), I'm single, am 31 and I just got my green card. I'm thinking of spending $20,000 on a startup.

(I'm mentioning my total net worth in case theres someone who knows how to handle money better than I do, and can help me maybe use it as leverage for a startup.)

Questions:

1. Do you think I'm nuts to leave a good paying job (12K a month) in this economy?

2. How can I invest/manage the money so that I can maximise the amount of time I get to build a company.

3. Would you try to do the startup part time first? (I've been trying this for a while but it hasnt got any customers yet.)

4. Where should I live to maximise the amount of "startup time" that the $20,000 gives me? Do you think I should open up a "startup house" someplace?

Ideas I've been considering:

1. Live in India and come back for 6 months a year to keep my green card in status. Open up an office in India with 2 programmers.
2. Try to get consulting jobs on the side?
3. Ask my present employer for a part time job.
4. Buy or rent a whole house in which I can host a couple of other startups and thus save some money and create a very useful network to share in my future "trials and tribulations".

I would be grateful for any ideas that you might have.
fair enough :) for me, the storyline simply served to provide the setting for the action scenes. the story was solid enough to make for beautiful action scenes where we actually sorta cared about what happened (rather than, say, Mortal Kombat style where random dudes just fought each other without motive or reason). but i definitely wasn't expecting anything profound in a movie taken up mostly by action and chase sequences.
Downvoted at will :)

Sorry, but the last Bourne movie I saw had no plot, same goes for the second transformers movie. And LOTR wasn't exactly a cheap movie to make either... And the Terminator series has a nice deep story about AI.

It is an action movie that was fun to go see. It was visually rich. It had an actual plot (that wasn't half bad!). While Transformers2 was written over a few weeks, it produced a movie that was stupid and confusing. Avatar has been in the making for the past sixteen years. There are a ton of details that were created and even if they were not shown in the final film. A full language, foliage, planetary physics, not to mention questions like am I a murderer if I kill your avatar when you are in it? And then of course is the technical aspect of the movie from being in 3D (and cameron's history of that), to the amount of CGI in the movie. Sounds like a pretty good movie to geek out on to me.
Yes.

If you can get fired for missing a deadline in non-egregious situations, you're working in the real world alright, but as a replaceable cog -- you're a typist, not a programmer.

Firing you means that they're declaring their investment in your thoughts a total loss, implying that they weren't paying you to think (or that you didn't do any of the thinking you were paid for!).
I think that allowing mean-spirited posts to be down voted is useful. Sometimes it reminds me I need to be a bit more constructive.
Http://www.mbt-shoes-sale.com/mbtlamichilisneaker-p-9632.html
I am ignorant, but not a moron, and aspirational mastery excites me. What is your solution?
If anyone really wants to see how security should be done just go to an international terminal which ElAl flies to and watch how they screen passengers at their check in.

From my anecdotal experience, El Al has security personnel that appears trained to a naked eye, but in reality is extremely ineffective, flawed, and unethical. I had the misfortune to go through El Al security four times. These all occurred in a span of two weeks, roughly in the same circumstances (I had to fly into Israel, fly out, fly back in, and fly back out). I can tell you that the outcome of their screening is heavily inconsistent and highly dependent on the prejudices of the particular agent doing the interview, and not necessarily on advanced training procedures.

I had the same answers for their questions every time. Two of the times the agents were Israeli jews who immigrated from Russia. Since we share a common background, both let me pass after very few questions because my trip details seemed perfectly reasonable to them. The other two times, I was interviewed by jews of clearly middle-eastern descent - both had no understanding of my cultural background, and both thought my trip details were extremely suspicious, subjecting me to a detailed search. So the outcome of the interviews was effectively random, which means they might as well perform random searches.

The interviews were highly unethical, inappropriate, and degrading. Even more importantly, they were completely ineffective, resulting in a random outcome highly dependent on each agent's personal prejudices. I don't know what good security looks like, but I can tell you that this most certainly isn't it.
I used to be this way. I used to love complicated designs and read everything I could about complicated technologies. But as I get more experienced and “older” as a programmer I find complex things just annoying.

Me too. I think we're somewhat common. And yet, the analogy isn't working for me. Because there are (too few) people like chneukirchen. I don't know how to fit him into your analogy. How old was he when he created Rack? Too young to be a "master" I think. And yet there it is, a masterpiece of simplicity.

In his most recent blog entry wycats said: "...the fuller emphasis on Rack is a strong improvement from the Merb approach." So many smart people worked on both rails and merb, and now Rails 3 is being written around this simple idea resulting in a strong improvement.

The key here is just that simplicity is an important value that most of us take too long to acquire. But, clearly, it doesn't have to be that way. I wonder how Christian got it so young.
I think a 16 year old kid caught fucking his 15 year old girlfriend, or a drunk college kid caught pissing on the sidewalk, deserves a punishment that's a little less severe than lifelong registration and shame.