skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Played with the demo a couple weeks ago. Very impressed and looking forward to it.
Multiprocess approaches are both significantly more complicated to implement and significantly more constrained in their functionality.

Unless you have overriding design restrictions (such as requiring privilege separated worker processes), it seems that the only genuine argument for the "multiprocessing" model is simply that Python doesn't support anything else.
I don't understand the outrage over full body scans. A doctor or nurse often conducts routine private examinations for the benefit of your health and well being. An airport screener does a fully body scan for the benefit of your health and well being -- and the well being of others. I don't really see any difference. Most of the time the doctor or nurse do their examination and there's no problem. We don't view this as being too invasive because we understand it's a wise precaution to get regular checkups -- just in case.
Disks are slow, very slow, and memory is getting cheaper. That's why a lot of data analysis stuff moves to in-memory solutions. Building those kinds of apps on top of shared memory BLOBs is incredibly unproductive because you cannot share pointers. You're right that these apps may be a minority today. But it's a fast growing minority.

And yes multi-threading errors can be difficult to debug, but all the approaches to avoid these errors can be used with threads just as well as with multiple processes. Message passing, features like those in Clojure or other functional languages, or Go's goroutines.

And to be honest, the fact that most people use threads when they don't actually need them or design their programs badly is a non issue for me. Most people are incredibly bad at most things I'm afraid. Does that mean Python should not empower people who know what they are doing?
This is simply amazing, John. I wonder what you could do with two sets...
Building support for matrix datatypes and operations (arithmetic, eigenvalues, and factorization) in PostgreSQL. I think I will use the Gnu Scientific Library, but I am still looking around at options with looser licenses.
"[ This company which I left was ] willing to negotiate on quality."

(In this case with its customers.)

Agreed, it's a BIG mistake, outside of harsh genuine deadline situations (e.g. "We've got to get these 5 million pieces of paper scanned and 500,000 OCRed by X date for the court case." (A real situation that I solved the latter part of).)
NIST certified AES-based encrypted flash drives cracked -- trivially
Google Nexus One
Buy your nexus one now
We're talking about the multiprocessing package/modules in Python:

http://docs.python.org/library/multiprocessing.html

It uses fork under the covers, so small worker processes aren't an option for that module (unless we forego interpreter embedding entirely which isn't the point).

There are other techniques for spawning processes to do some external process work, but those, of course, need entirely separate plumbing.
Sure, but then you could simply post all tha manpages one-by-one, this really isn't 'news' in any way that makes sense to me.
Nexus One--Verizon support coming
I played with one for a few hours and didn't find it any better than an OSK. I was a longtime Sidekick user though, so I have a high bar for keyboard quality.
Wow looks great! I really need to checkout Cappuccino...
Tazers will beam video of all uses back to HQ
I'm building an open source rails framework to create sub-communities on facebook that are focused on a particular interest, but also providing other views into the app, such as a standard web interface, phone interface, and iphone/android native apps. Facebook connect provides you with some interesting options for taking elements out of facebook and using them in other places, and really allows you to build one application and treat facebook as a view format rather than a completely separate entity.

I'm also building in some cool functionality to bring widgets into the app, where you can build out your pages based on what widgets you are interested in, similar to widgets in wordpress admin or igoogle.
Working on http://herefilefile.com, an iPhone app that lets you access all of your computer's files from anywhere.

Currently doing a UI refresh, planning a big marketing push including ads, contacting interested journalists, designing a web site / blog, planning the support workflow, and other fun stuff.

Things are going really well for us so far. Won a nice iPhone app competition, getting some pretty good buzz building, and looking to launch to a decent crowd of interested parties!
I feel like at least the following might bother people:

1. Doctors and nurses are educated. I will leave it at that for TSA agents.

2. A doctor's office is much more private than an airport (even though you are not really naked in the airport, you're not really sure of who is seeing the scan)

3. At the doctor's office, your main goal is to have your health checked. At the airport, your main goal is to travel.
So the author redefines "follower" to suit his own purposes? Makes the title a bit misleading.
Is it just me or is the video/tour a very tedious thing to do... I've been putting it off myself for my site.
A doctor's exam is usually at least somewhat effective or necessary. There's not a lot of evidence that says this will do anything to keep us safer.
My gut says, this was not written by a native english-speaker. I don't know if it was pieced together by a computer program, or outsourced Chinese labor, or outsourced Chinese software, but it looks like the combination of two unrelated high-performing pieces of spam email. Giving the name of a fictional acquaintance is a strong tip-off.
Now this is awesome!!!
Nice good luck, I am interested to see what people do with the API.
The Tale of the Tape: Foursquare and Gowalla
Love it - A great use of Solaris Containers.
And this is why open source is good for security applications. If you can't see how a system works, assume that it's doing something mind-bogglingly dumb.
Does anyone know if I can buy a Nexus One and use it without a cell phone plan? Or if not, is there any Android phone that I can buy to use without a sim card?
A few random comparisons from a go player here.

Any professional go player can remember their own games as matter of course. They also replay hundreds of pro games for study, thereby memorizing them. I'd be surprised if it were any different for chess players.

In fact, even amateur low-dan -- advanced but far from professional level -- players can replay games they have played in the same day, and can memorize a few games with some practice.

Go games often last more than 200 moves but players memorize sequences, not isolated moves.

Pros can routinely read 50+ moves ahead but, as tsipiteri mentioned, the hardest part is evaluating the positions.

While there is no single "world" pro championship, a couple of Korean teenagers have won prestigious international titles. A 19-year-old who's "merely" a contender wouldn't be called a prodigy in the go world. I guess Asian go players just train more and are more competitive than chess players. Unlike Carlsen, they don't usually care about a life besides their game.
There are some differences -- we generally choose the doctor and doctor's office we go to, and can relatively easily say no if we find we are uncomfortable with the particular person.

Doctors and nurses are fairly highly trained and have a lot more to lose if they violate professional ethics. On the other hand TSA-trained people have often been involved in drug smuggling, luggage stealing, and more.
I think Wolfram Alpha is actually really important and revolutionary in the amount of knowledge that it makes readily available for free. You just have to think of it more as a command line than a search engine.
Expanding my startup, http://theplanis.com , out to another hundred users - although I'm facing a difficult decision between that and one which already has a well-paying customer and angel funding on the table.
I'm working on http://www.peekmaps.com/ Lots of fun!
I love the approach here: unsubsidized or subsidized, your choice.
I agree with you, but in practice, there won't be as much memory replication as you assume. Linux (and I assume most modern OSes) implement copy-on-write: no data is copied until a write occurs. So as long as the separate process only read that large data set, that large data set should exist in memory only once.
85 Article Directories By Alexa Rank With Google PageRank
I think the outrage is mostly because of the fact that we have a reasonable expectation of privacy in our lives and because we think our nudity is part of our privacy.

A nudist wouldn't care one way or the other, a 15 year old girl or boy might be very upset about some random guy looking at their privates, as would old ladies.

You can't make exemptions on those grounds so that is a bit of a problem.

Think of this as a virtual strip search, if everybody would be strip searched on flying I assure you there would be a lot less people traveling by air.

At some point the nuisance starts to outweigh the benefits, for some people that has already happened.

Personally I'll take my chances with the terrorists, I avoid high risk destinations and high risk carriers.

If the 'terrorists' start blowing up Air France planes from Paris to Greece I'll re-evaluate that position.
I'm working on my (as of now) experimental debate site:

http://argumentclinic.net (see the about page)
As usual, not available in Canada.
http://consumerist.com/2010/01/shocking-best-buys-mac-optimi...
I'm working on http://greaterdebater.com a social news and forum website for link-sharing and debate
Why does an on-topic question that gets answered deserve two downvotes?

(I can only fix the one...)

It's not like he's insulting anyone by asking a valid question, there are not that many professions where you get information on the kind of images that are and are not legit, the porn industry is probably the major one.
Whats wrong with the current method of just filming it with your mobile phone and laugh about it online?
Google Nexus One: The TechCrunch Review
I'm working on a dissertation linking the international balance of power to the characteristics of civil wars during three periods: pre-Cold War, Cold War, and post-Cold War.
Last night I spent 1 hour going over an old system's functionality for a dance studio, in preparation for a rewrite.

The most surprising thing was the reservation sub-system. "Oh, we don't use that anymore; we've got Google Calendar".

That was listed as a "nice to have" in the original docs, but was disposable. With a traditional workflow, we would have spent a days or weeks building something.

We can iterate business requirements too - and only build those business rules necessary for the UI we've sketched out.
I can't stop trying to dev my own PHP framework. I must say that this one is the best by far:
http://backend-php.net

I love the community of Hacker News, and I'd like to create something similar but for a South African community:
http://zacoders.net
The search for a second Earth gets serious
I always thought that was from Capablanca? Couldn't find it in Wikipedia so you're probably right.
Ask: I own a great domain name, how can I turn it into a business?
Same in Russia. We still didn't get iphone 3gs too. Certification issues, guess nothing Google could change.
Sorry, the Nexus One phone is not available in your country.
I'm in Canada as well.

Could someone tell me: what is the unsubsidized price?
Right now I'm migrating a Django-based newspaper website to CouchDB. Much nicer for storing articles.

And I'm always working on my secret toy programming language.
A friend bought me a Kindle for Christmas. I still have issues with the non-sharable nature of Kindle books, but the convenience factor so dramatically outweighs everything else that I'm willing to live with the negatives. It basically comes down to ebooks or no books (or very few), since my living space is becoming so much smaller.
$530.
A lightweight Python implementation of MapReduce.
I'm only giving the circuit a cursory look, but I thought he wanted a 9V reference voltage added to the sensor voltage going into R7. But I guess a lower reference voltage may be adequate too.
ESPN launching 3D network
Still holding out for a similar phone with a hardware keyboard. BTW, I've heard tell that the Droid has a hardware keyboard, but you can't feel the difference between keys, making it less usable than the G1's keyboard. Can anyone corroborate that?
Ask HN: Intro to SharePoint/SharePoint Designer books
Recently my workplace made the decision to use MS SharePoint for all of our intranet sites. It's been purchased, installed and been half-implemented by 1 or 2 departments. My team has now been given the task of becoming SharePoint experts to fully implement it for the IT department and to lead the (16 or so) other departments going forward.

Trouble is, we know nothing about SharePoint. My team is mostly content-side, and we're not looking to create a super-custom site at the moment, but we really don't want to use the pre-made MS templates either.

We just need to get a handle on SharePoint's architecture, a good guide on customizing site look and feel, and how to best manage SharePoint's myriad WebParts and collaboration tools.

Any books/advice/sites you can point me at is much appreciated.
Wow, 200 employees when Mathematica is 600? Stephen Wolfram was taking a big risk with Alpha, but I guess he's used to succeeding at things.
JRuby Tips
That blog design is totally broken in Firefox maximized on a 1024x768 screen.
You could certainly buy one and use it with a non-contract pay as you go kind of plan. To use voice, of course, you would need some sim card. Or do you want to just use it with wifi, like an iPod touch?
Why, exactly? Why would I want Powershell on Linux?

If it's cross-platform scripting ability you're after, then why not focus efforts on developing OS-layer abstractions that various scripting languages which are already cross-platform (perl, python, ruby, etc) can use? Given that, what does Powershell offer that these don't?
I've noticed when they run their specials on laptops the prices can run lower than the online only retailers. Not always the case though.
The unsubsidized price is US$529, but it operates on a frequency band that is incompatible with the Rogers 3G network, so that won't really help you Canadians, eh.
A doctor is a professional bound by a code of ethics, with whom you might have a decades long relationship of trust. A TSA screener is a random dude who was flipping burgers last week. That's the difference.
multitasking: customer support, new customer development, writing copy
In 2040, the Chinese economy will reach $123 trillion.
If only they were selling it at sane unsubsidized prices.
Objective-C Tuesdays: extern and global variables
Apparently you're one of fortunate few who've got it already. I'm not, but the fact that it does multitasking sounds very convenient to me compared to the iPhone. The mapping stuff looks very good as well.
I just ordered one myself for $529, free overnight shipping and $0 tax to Honolulu, Hawaii. I couldn't be more excited!
Seems pretty sane to me, compared to other HTC phones' unsubsidized prices.
As usual, a crappy carrier unless you want to shell out the $530. God I hate all these contractual obligations. AT&T bends over backwards for the iPhone, where's my Nexus One love :(
hipchat looks like download only desktop app. I don't understand why people would go that route these days.
I'm trying to get together all the right resources so I can start selling my notebook scribbles as full-fledged games one day soon.
Nexus One Coming To Verizon And Vodafone
I have a droid, and the hardware keyboard is fine. There are little raised underscores on the F key and on the J key. It is ok for regular use, but probably not useful for development, as an example. Don't have a G1 to compare.

My gold standard for keyboards is still my hp200lx!
6 Advanced Jquery Tutorials To Enhance Your Skill
It's not compatible with AT&T's 3G network, so it would make very little sense for AT&T to offer a subsidy. Waiting until the CDMA version ships will net you the ability to have it on a large network with a subsidy.
In case with Lua - I can simply create new context, and voila a whole new lua vm is there. Not sure whether that could be done with embeddable python.
Postage can get rather hefty for some of those books. (Though I admit I did this with some of my textbooks in college...I'd register for the course, buy the textbook, read the whole textbook in the first week, return the textbook for a full refund, and then drop the course and take something else.)
"Sorry, the Nexus One phone is not available in your country."
Backup software that just works http://www.haystacksoftware.com/arq/
Brick and Mortar startup, with online enhancements:

Currently in the process of purchasing an art gallery space in Denver, which we will renovate, and hopefully open in the fall of 2010. (Would be sooner, but we are having a baby in the spring.)

I intend to have an exhibition every 3 months that will seek to blend technology with a physical installation of some kind. Details TBD, based on online collaboration --
The web site will spend the 2 months between exhibitions working towards collaborating on the next exhibit. Each collaborator will hopefully be able to visit in person, to create a true blending of online and physical life.
Unsubsidized phone prices make Oracle licensing look sane. :)
As I understand it, the classic use case for an ORM is for consultingware that must be installable on multiple engines with as little duplication of work as possible. A product may have seven customers, each with highly customized requirements, (mostly) using the same engine underneath but attaching to both Oracle and MSSQL, then one day finding out the sales team has us subcontracting for IBM and it needs to be ported to DB2...
To the devs: have you thought about using BOSH and ejabberd? That way you wouldn't have to poll for updates.

I built a little toy app that used BOSH and ejabberd to do chats - upside is you get all the extensibility of XMPP and the downside is that you have to deal with all the extensibility of XMPP. :)
I don't see cracking time travel, faster-than-light or zero-point-energy as a question of time. Nuclear fusion power is one. We disagree in that I regard consciousness as a much simpler problem than you do. It only looks complex when we look at it from the inside.
Why the Apple Tablet is not going to save the electric sheep
Fixing poverty through water and sanitation:
http://akvo.org/

Which is also becoming an open source platform for development aid.
Try LAPACK. Incredibly fast, and a minimal license. You'll have to deal with FORTRAN, though.
In Gödel Escher Bach, Hofstadter has three sections on "chunking." Chunking is distinguished from the type of branching calculation of future moves. Rather than evaluating linear move-countermove-move branches, humans can also evaluate in terms of previously recognized patterns or configurations of pieces [essentially what you're talking about, mightybyte, if I understand you correctly]. This kind of pattern recognition or pattern seeking is a substantial shortcut, reducing the amount of mental computation necessary in branching approaches. It's also an area in which human still potentially retain an efficiency advantage over computer opponents like Deep Blue.

There's some explanation on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chunking_(psychology)
Many years ago ('70s I'm guessing) I took a Bach piece and sliced it up via 1/4" tape. Basically randomizing snippets, each about a 2-3 seconds long.

It more or less sounded Bach-ish, but rambling. A few people heard parts of it without knowing what it was and seemed to enjoy it, though I wonder if they had stuck with it they would have realized it didn't have any movement or development. Or reliable meter, for that matter.
Compiling our JVM language (Gosu) down to bytecode. It's slow going; the bytecode side isn't hard, but the language has been evolving for 7 years or so and has all sorts of obscure edge cases, as well as some looseness in the semantics that has to be tightened up in bytecode, so getting every little detail right so all the existing code still runs 100% correctly is difficult. We're still hoping for an initial open source release some time between probably June and September.
Everything tbray says is correct, but I had the feeling I'd heard this before. Then I realized, this post is a combination of Gall's law "all working complex systems evolved from working simple systems", and Joel's advice of "never outsource core competencies"

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

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000007.html
Just got official go-ahead from client today to produce a MIS & reporting extranet app written in Perl/Catalyst/DBIx::Class with jQuery and Flash charting.
I've had my Droid a little over a month now. While I'd definitely say the keys are less tactile than my last QWERTY phone (Treo 650), I can touch-type easily enough, and my typing speed is about what I'd expect from the device. My complaint with the keyboard is more that it's off-center, because of the directional pad. That still feels a bit awkward to me.
Sheet music reader for the iPhone: http://www.wonderwarp.com/opus
I'm working on a travel website:

"Planning a vacation is hard. You know where you want to go. But what should you see once you're there? Which monuments, parks, cathedrals and museums should you visit when you're there? How do you get around?

My website helps you plan your vacation by providing high quality itinerary suggestions, contributed by travelers like you."

I hope to do a private release at the end of this month.
GPGPU in Javascript, falling sand game implemented on the GPU using WebGL
The midpoint voltage of the voltage divider used for the reference is 0.45V, well within the -2.5 to +2.5 swing.

The reason why I think it matters is that batteries are a nuisance, they run empty and will cause a problem with long running experiments, so it's worth the extra time to engineer them out of the circuit.

From what I can see they're only used to power the op-amp.

The 'floating ground' trick is s.o.p. when designing op-amp circuitry that needs to be fed from a single supply.
2-3 books/week isn't really speed reading, it's just making time for reading. Say that you have 3 hours/day that you can devote to reading. That's 21 hours/week. If you read a fairly average 60 pages/hour, a typical 300 page book will take 5 hours, and you'll be able to read 4 of them a week. At 100 pages/hour, you're at 3 hours for a book and will be able to read 7 (or cut your reading time down to an hour a day and still read 2-3/week).

It's much like programming though - you have to do it in big blocks or you won't get anything done. The first 15 minutes is just getting into the book, your mind wanders, and you don't get much out of it. It's once you've curled up for a half hour or more that you start really getting into it and can get decent reading speeds.
Yes,

Having a narrative reinforces the point that what you actually do depends on the entire context of the application. You would almost never be the one implementing cannot-be-broken-under-ANY-circumstances encryption. So you have to know what the circumstances are. In this case, the circumstances point to no-encryption-whatsoever!

Sure, you could point to other circumstances where something like what they're talking about would be useful but that's a million possible circumstances with a million possible encryption solutions and you've lost the useful urgency of the original concrete narrative.
Most Turkers are women? That's very odd to read. I distinctly remember an article posted to HN a few weeks ago where a "Turk Boss" asked Turkers to take pictures of themselves, and a vast majority appeared to be Indian men.
It operates WIND's network though. $70 for unlimited province-wide talk and data.
Echo's Sound: Reverberations in Modular Innovation