skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
First of all...you might want to consider getting a blog. This is really good stuff :)

Second, I haven't used a Nook, but I own a Kindle 2, and I freaking love it. I carry it everywhere and I often find myself wanting to stop whatever I'm working on and go sit in a coffeeshop and just read. The device isn't perfect, but I don't have any major complaints at all. Most importantly, when I'm using it, it disappears in my hands. I'm not reading a Kindle, I'm just reading.

Also, I had an MP3 player before the iPod and it was a painful experience. It was clear that there were large opportunities to improve the experience, but I would argue that the biggest one that the iPod solved was making it easy to get content on the device, which wasn't the iPod at all, it was iTunes. This is similar to how I see the Kindle. The device is good enough (just like the gen-1 iPod, which was fugly but functional) but the really killer feature is how incredibly easy it is to get books onto the device. I browse Amazon all the time on my laptop and when I see a book I'm interested in, 1 click and I have a free sample on the device waiting for me. If I want to buy after reading the sample, just 1 more click. Easy. I buy probably 3-5x as many books as I used to, and it takes me 10% of the hassle and I'm not paying much more in total even though I read way more. The device is only one piece of the puzzle here; the overall Kindle business model is what's really amazing, imo.
thx, that was my humble contribution ;-)
That's basically the same reasoning that applies to any server-side scripting language: high level scripting languages are much more efficient to develop with than more structured lower-level languages, and the web-application model lets you use HTML as your GUI which is quick, easy, and flexible (though not as rich or stable as client-side GUIs can be.)

My personal preference for server-side development is Modern Perl, because it lets you develop anywhere along the "highly structured" to "rough scripting" line that you please. Other server-side languages are fine if they suit your development style, but I like to adjust my style to suit the project, and to use a language that can adapt to whatever style I need.

Client-side, Javascript is great especially with jQuery. I couldn't deal with javascript development without selectors; it's far too much effort. I'll have to give Javascript a try for server-side development, but I don't think I'd want to do a large project in Javascript. My current application at work has nearly 7K lines of client-side Javascript, and it's already getting unwieldy.
Twitter Clone Scripts both Free and Paid – The Shootout (24 in total)
Actually, the current understanding is that the drones were hacked by insurgents specifically funded by the Iranians, so...

I don't even like the idea of microblogging, so to me this is about as big of news as hearing that the IRA managed to bomb a backyard chicken coop.

ed: didn't mean hacked, I know it was just a matter of listening to the data feed, not actually doing anything to the drone.
Agreed.

Have you read Neil Gershenfeld's "When Things Start to Think"? A lot of the more general problems surrounding new technology and its (flawed) implementations are discussed in this book, very interesting. That book is from 1999 btw.

He also discusses the drawbacks of ebook readers and his arguments still stand today, even though the technology has matured significantly.
Which accent ^^ ?
A friend told me that a Harvard MBA graduation dinner Warren Buffet was invited to speak. Apparently one of his lines was something like: "If you were going to do anything incredible you'd have dropped out by now". I bet that went down well.
Call me unimaginative but I think this would be feature creep. First, e-book readers are very very far from solving the problem of being as much fun to read as dead tree books so I would concentrate on that first.

Second, books don't have videos in them. They have mostly words and a couple of illustrations. I don't see this changing in the short term. I think videos in books would be way too distracting. Books are very different from newspapers.

I can read e-mail on my computer and on my phone. I can read the news on my computer or on my phone. A device that is sold as an e-book reader but isn't as fun to read as dead tree books but it can do the same things as my phone and my notebook has no appeal for me.
The Observer Design Pattern
So has this place officially turned from being interested internet business into a bunch of whining complainers about 'the system' like reddit? Sad
Well, #iranelection was the #1 most popular news topic on Twitter in 2009, according to their blog (http://blog.twitter.com/search/label/2009), so there is an actual motive available.
Chinese proposal to meter Internet traffic
Assembly Oriented Architecture
That's kind of sad. You can't call people? You can't email them?
I haven't had extensive experience with e-readers, no more than seeing them in the stores, so take me with a huge grain of salt: What's so dumb about Sony because they want to give you an e-reader and just an e-reader?

I want a device that I can load whatever text / PDFs / etc. I want into it for convenient reading later. I don't want 3G. I don't want DRM. I don't want a device that is constantly begging me to open my wallet. I just want... an e-reader.

Also, the page is a useful interface tool. The size of a page in a traditional book is limited by its physical characteristics, but segmentation of the data makes the experience much more comfortable. I notice this whenever I read a wall of text on the web versus reading pages in a print publication.
Could be an interesting way of monetizing maps. So far, I'm not sure google has any good way of making money on maps.
I agree on this point, but not because no one wants to. People talk about the "perfect device" and so you end up in feature hell and a device that does everything, but nothing well. It makes marketing easy. "Device X does 11 things, device Y only does 9, obviously you should buy device X."

The minimal route produces the better interface, but people hate feeling like they've spent more for less. Either way, I'm interested in where the market will go. Make no guesses about it. Apple is making an eReader. A tablet that is both a notebook and an eReader would SUCK. The tech isn't there yet. What Apple wants is a device that ties back into the Apple store and captures another media segment, not a revolutionized notebook that does everything.

That said, I have had a chance to use the nook and admit it is both comfortable and functional. Given some software revs it may usurp the kindle as the contender to beat.
EtherPasteBin?
Avoid These Simple Usability Problems To Increase Conversions
See, when our (US) government does it ...it's okay. It's just those other evil countries that are wrong when they demand user data from an Internet company.
Tesco wine visual search app
In my mind, this still isn't a particularly good reason to do it. Let's say the last 9-12 months is when ACID3 became compliant in most browsers (I think it's actually less). That means, by definition, only apps written in that timeframe even had an opportunity to use whatever features were previously broken. This is a tiny percentage of code on the web.

Now, it could be that ACID3 is testing the 100 most useful things that previously did not work. Somehow, though, I doubt that's really the case. And even if it was, there are without a doubt 100 more important bugs in IE to fix.

So, yes, ACID3 compliance is pretty low on my wishlist for IE bugs to fix. If they were fixing ACID3 bugs and letting more important things fall through the crack, I would be even more displeased with IE.
Ruby Metaprogramming Simplified
Here is an approach to ease unleashing the power of Ruby’s metaprogramming.
I have to disagree. Unless you live in a city, your average person has never heard of Yelp. When Google bought YouTube it was a different story.
Probably because investors aren't that rational after all and don't really care why the offering came out.
Are you reading also 3-5x more books? I am just asking and not trying to be a jackass.
He Delivers Christmas Trees for Rent
Uh, there are ads on Google Maps pages.
I've long thought that this book was a subtle attempt at humor.
When do you plan to leave beta stage?
I'm no expert, and you may be right about my inaccuracies. From what I've read, part of the problem is that the system set up in 1913 was designed to be complicated and confusing to conceal exactly where the control lies. It's probably also overly complicated because it's designed by committee with many competing interests, just like all of our laws are.

One thing you said which I'm not so sure about is the dangers of inflation vs deflation. Inflation is bad for lenders because they money they get back isn't as valuable as the money they lent, but the interest they charge is supposed to cover that. Lenders are only really hurt when the inflation rate exceeds interest rates. For debtors, inflation helps them pay their debts with less valuable money, but only if their income keeps up with inflation. For most people that hasn't happened; I believe inflation-adjusted incomes peaked in the early 70s, and has held steady or dropped since then while debt has climbed dramatically. So, inflation has not been good for debtors.

Deflation is good for lenders because they get paid back with more valuable money then they lent, if they get paid back. Deflation could be bad for debtors because their debts are harder to pay, but the cost of other living expenses ought to drop in a deflationary environment which would leave more money available to pay debts off. It would probably be more difficult for employers to reduce salaries in a deflationary environment than it is for them to avoid raising salaries in an inflationary environment, so debtors are more likely to keep or increase their spending power during deflation. If we had a long-term deflationary environment, interest rates could drop to zero or even go negative without hurting lenders, so long as the rates are higher than the deflation rate, and this will help the debtors as well.

So overall, I think deflation is better for everybody, so long as it's gradual. Deflation means that the value of our money is increasing over time instead of decreasing, and that can benefit everyone. There is a potential problem with interest rates on existing debt, but if the deflation is low and consistent, lenders could be encouraged, or forced, to reduce rates accordingly. This wouldn't even have to be government-mandated; competition among the banks would bring back 0% loans that people would use to refinance their debt at lower rates.
I expected something about CPU design, but it's actually about web services.
> What's so dumb about Sony because they want to give you an e-reader and just an e-reader?

The fact that it doesn't have the content that most of us want to read.
Global Guerrillas on the Drone Hack
TL;DR. Get a real blog.
Looks like they hit a roadblock somewhere:
The Java Supercompiler Version 1 is scheduled for completion in late 2003.

I noticed however that Ben Goertzel is listed under "People". He's an important person in the field of Artificial General Intelligence (like Eliezer who posts here from time to time). I'm not sure if there's a link between this (apparently dead) research project and his AGI project Novamente.
And hardware quickly becomes a commodity.
12 Days of Christmas: Gifts for the Web Designer
Has anyone been Approved for more than $200,000 with EZUnsecured.com?
I used them and got $175,000 but I was hoping I could have gotten more. I saw the Videos on their Website and it looks like some People have gotten more than that - If you got more than $200K please let me know how you did it. My Business is 4 Years Old and my Credit Scores are all over 700. Below is a video I found on them - Just FYI:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdDnYFLT4gM
I am definetely going to buy an eReader sooner or later. I am actually interested in hearing your opinion on which one between K and N would be a better choice to hack. I like Nook better for the hardware seems more versatile and rooting is very very easy (the entire OS is on a microSD card inside the device). Yet, I think K's out of the box configuration is way better given the longer battery life and the ability to access free internet (at least a tiny part of it) from anywhere in the world.
What is your take?
Why would someone downvote my comment above? I did agree a source of the wealth was likely inheritance. But why couldn't James, with his clever, some would even say mean (to Snape), talents not also be likely to go out and get into adventures, take a few risks? (before Harry arrived, of course) He was still young after all. Remember, Sirius was the wealthy one in school. James went to stay over his house as a kid. Nothing was ever said about James Potter having a significantly wealthy family. Also, Hagrid says "D'yeh think yer parents didn't leave yeh anything?" That sounds like Lily and James made at least some of the money.
I messed with it as well, but I think there's a lot of inflated importance on page turning speed and it's probably fixable with a software rev either way. I've never been able to turn book pages much faster and it never hindered my reading pleasure. I think they need to focus on the menu system a little more. It's good, but could use some improvements.
Wait, you're saying Apple is going to build a tablet?!?!? NO WAY!!!!
Tech4000: Twitter Hacked, Again
Whatever happened to the OSI's Open Source Awards?
What Life Might Look Like as More of Us Live to 100
C is not simple and brief for all things, though - for example, details of resource management leak across library interfaces, complicating things. Sometimes using C is a reasonable trade-off, sometimes not. Still, it's small and simple, and it's weaknesses are reasonably well known. It's a useful tool, though prototyping and exploratory programming are not its strong suit.

I find I'm happiest working in a language that allows very easy integration with C, but provides garbage collection, some kind of module system, better strings, a REPL, etc. You have more flexibility while prototyping, but can rewrite the parts in C that need it, and all system calls (fork, dup2, etc.) are still accessible. Having a pervasive associative array ("dict" or "table") type in the language helps, too - it's an incredibly versatile data structure.

Lua works particularly well for this (and it's simple and clean, like C), though Python and Lisps/Schemes that compile to C work well too. (I can't vouch for Ruby here, since I already know Python and Lua and haven't bothered with it.)

See also: Andrew Koenig's "C Traps and Pitfalls" (http://www.literateprogramming.com/ctraps.pdf) and the book, which expands on the paper.
This does not make any sense. It appears that neither the government agencies involved nor the reporters writing the stories understand how internet connections are built or sold.

For example, why does/would there need to be an ITU proposal to "use BGP routers to collect traffic flow data, which could be used, by bilateral agreement, by operators for billing purposes"? This is what virtually all internet transit providers do right now in order to bill their customers.

Massive WTF; no information content.
Honstly, OOP isn't that bad. This would be a lot better of a read if he focused on how C is good, not how he hates OOP. OOP is a valid way to solve any problem, though certainly not the only valid way.

Incidentally I wrote an article in defense of OO:
http://www.zideck.com/blog/article.php?id=1
I'm guessing he programmed a promo code system into Skribit and didn't test it before giving the code out to TC. I've done stupid shit like that. Does that make me a liar?
"call" people? What do you mean? I thought you could only call methods.
I think that what's particularly hard with C is not the details about pointers, automatic memory management, and so forth, but the fact that C is at the same time so low level and so flexible.

So basically if you want to create a large project in C you have to build a number of intermediate layers (otherwise the code will be a complete mess full of bugs and 10 times bigger than required).

This continue design exercise of creating additional layers is the hard part about C. You have to get very good at understanding when to write a function or not, when to create a layer of abstraction, and when it's worth to generalize or when it is an overkill.

Of course the same thing happens in other languages as well, and even in higher level languages, but usually in C there are more layers of abstractions required compared to a similarly complex project written in an higher level language.

Another difference with higher level languages is that with C the abstraction layers at the "bottom" usually have to deal with low level details that require some practice and knowledge. For instance it's common to implement data structures, some automatic memory management stuff like reference counting and so forth.

This is the reason why I think programmers should learn C and try to write at least a large project with it: it's a good exercise.
I'm kind of curious how this would be practical, from a maintenance viewpoint. Would you then adopt the program's output back as your new "source"? Is the output readable, maintainable?

If you end up keeping your original source, and merely compile the output from this thing to get a fast executable, how do you debug stack traces when it crashes?
Incidentally, how hard is it to remove Safari on a Mac?
I concur. I live in kansas City and work on computers all day. I've heard of Yelp, but I've never used them or seen them pop up in search results for local business.
And absent a control that article is still meaningless. Perhaps 1/100th of employees would feel engaged with their jobs today absent Drucker.

Additionally, the line "success depends on a company’s ability to unleash the initiative, imagination and passion of employees at all levels" made my head spin. I really don't wan the unleashed initiative of a lot of people--they're just not that bright, not that creative, and left to their own devices they'd be potentially counter-productive.
You claimed: "As for fusion, you could add the chances of success if they were completely different approaches, but they are not."

1. I asked for support: "Please explain how a known success/failure of one of the three projects I mentioned would influence the likelihood of the others? I can honestly not see how you could argue that."

A basic presentation about the projects is NOT supporting that...

You back away from that, now that you have read up on the basics. Is that your standard method when you have guessed about something you don't know anything about?

2. The only "real" thing we know about TriAlpha is that they got large investments from people that presumably got more info. (They claim to publish more in 2010.) There is data on a previous project and IIRC, they talked about FRCs.

So on what do you base your claim about probabilites for TriAlpha?!

Note: AFAIK, to breed tritium is quite common for all fusion DT plans.

3. I haven't looked into the subject about extracting hydrogen from the lead/litium -- why do you claim it to be hard?

>>But we are not aiming at technology demonstrators running sustainable reactions

AGAIN: You made a claim 90 years in the future. These will be built (if one works) inside 20. And deployed inside 30. So your comment was totally irrelevant for my thesis. But you knew that.

>>As for solar, you seriously propose replacing the roofs of every home in the planet with solar panels.

Sigh, do I have to quote the BBC reference I gave:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8386460.stm

A key goal for solar is what is known as grid parity. That is the point when it is as cheap for someone to generate power on their homes as it is to buy it from the grid.

It varies from country to country depending on electricity prices, but the institute estimates that Italy - which has a combination of sunny weather and relatively high electricity prices - should reach grid parity next year. Half of Europe should be enjoying grid parity by 2020, it estimates.

So in ONE decade, half of Europe are expected to start plastering everything with solar cells -- there would need to be a reason NOT to put solar cells on a roof (or south facing side of a house).

I already explained about pre-high scool math. But AGAIN:

10 x 10 km of solar cells is enough for ten million people. That is nothing, considering that you can take unwanted land 50-100 km from the city, if you really need more.

Are you trolling?

That will happen in 10-20 years. Consider how much cheaper/better solar cells will be in 30 years...

http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/24240/

Now go up to 90...

>>Unless there is a huge political drive behind this,

AGAIN: See BBC reference. Solar cells will generate energy cheaper than today's normal price for many countries -- already in less than 1-2 decades. And they seem to keep falling in price.

Why would politicians be involved -- except wanting to tax solar cells?

>> [Thorium]

Active research subject today, India is building a prototype. Not totally trivial, but there is afaik no known show stoppers for deployment inside 90 years(!). Do you know of any?
OpenDNS Upgrades Network, Rising To The Google Challenge
I'd like a real-time-updating version of instacalc. Great tool for communicating about calculations, but it sucks having to send the URL back and forth all the time.
Two new Drupal CMS releases are now available
I thought the bulk of apple's sales came from Itunes sales (which includes the app store, music, movie, etc)
It's a fantastic language for prototyping. If you want to try an algorithm, you sit down, write an astonishly small quantity of code and it just works.

That's true of Python and Ruby as well, both of which have basic features that Javascript lacks like modules and namespaces, and don't have its silly misfeatures like implied global scope. Javascript may very well end up "winning", but that will be because of its ubiquity in browsers and not on technical merit.
Launch Your Startup With Microloans
Regardless of the presence of motive, the execution (i.e. juvenile website defacement) doesn't exactly imply high-level cyber ops. And an easily fixed DNS hijack isn't really going to "take twitter out of commission" or whatever the purpose of this supposed cyber attack would be.
LHC ends 2009 run on a high note
Which is good for consumers.
Ask HN: What can Search Engines Crawl?
Let's say I have a site that provides dynamic data, for our example let's say stock prices, to web consumers. Because this data is so dynamic, I'm using JSON to pull it from a server and Javascript to stuff it into an empty html file.

My question: What do the crawlers see when they visit? A blank page? Or do they execute the Javascript on page load and get the dynamic material as well?
Yet one more example of why competition is good for the consumer.

Lately the browser war has made me very excited (love the Chrome for Mac beta, can't wait for extensions). Hope this DNS war will go on for a while so that further improvements and innovations can be squeezed out.
Startup Advice Contradiction: "Iterate Quickly" or "Trust Your Guts"?
Or some random kitties in da mines.
The directions say to set export MYSQL_CONNECTOR_JAR= to location of a mysql client jar -- you see this error message if you don't do this.
I don't like how an evangelist can completely jump ship from all the things he loved and pushed and used before he changed jobs in less than a month.

In whole it makes one seem even less trustworthy than normal sales people.
Gmail and Google Apps Accounts hacked - labnol
Indeed. FWIW, _C Interfaces and Implementations_ by David Hanson touches on this (and a great C book besides).
Burnham's Beat: The Great Abdication
I've found that it doesn't correlate with their analytical ability or ability to architect a clean system. But it does affect the readability of their code.