skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It’s several hundred pages and packed with insight – my copy probably has five or ten thousand words of my marginal notes in it – so it’s a bit hard to summarize in this little box.

Basically, it describes how the American society and political system arose, and how they function. It analyses all of these seeming contradictions between freedom and dogmatic moralizing, etc. I think it’s probably the best book I’ve read about how popular government operates, and how it differs from exclusive elite government.

Also, many of the differences Tocqueville finds between European and American society are still relevant today. If you want to know how the conditions described in this Economist article arose, and how these various features interact – what the “character” of (even contemporary) America is – in a deep way, I can’t think of a better book.
The Elves Leave Middle Earth – Sodas Are No Longer Free
I've been playing around with this all morning and afternoon now, if you don't plan to get hooked please ignore this posting :)

If you should ignore this warning then please check out the 'hexadecimal' file under 'Hashing-Examples' in Golly.
It doesn't seem to me as a common requirement.

"ORDER BY RAND()" means exactly as it says ... fetch the result-set in a random order, and it applies to the whole result-set, (probably) having the same performance characteristics as any other unoptimized "ORDER BY", which is executed before "LIMIT" (I like it because it's consistent).

Many people are using "ORDER BY RAND()" to fetch multiple rows, not just one ... which is also pretty bad. But in such a case other optimizations are in order ... if you're selecting 30 random items, you wouldn't want to issue 30 queries to the database.
Eat food. No too much. Mostly plants.
This is an awful analogy because silicon valley has a huge failure rate for companies. Even an established company can fail quite rapidly. Imagine launching the shuttle and 90% of the time it blows up spectacularly. That would not do anything good for the space program.
I understand what you're saying, but you seem to have supported my argument. TMZ _is_ a better source.
> more people use "pedanticism" than "pedantry,"

Maybe this is a difference of geography? I’m from California and go to school in Boston, and I don’t know anyone who uses “pedanticism.”

Anyway, I concede that literally is often used as an intensifier, even non-ironically. I like the end of that Slate article:

> The one sensible criticism that can be made about the intensive use of literally is that it can often lead to confusing or silly-sounding results. In this case, the answer is simple: Don't write silly-soundingly. Some usage books even bother to make this point about literally. Then again, most usage advice could be reduced to one simple instruction: "Be clear." But that would be the end of a publishing category.
The left fold: week in review: API design, branching, and Basic
Reminded me of this Feynman story with dominos:
http://books.google.com/books?id=1HxzLaPYo2IC&pg=PA20...
I thought the smell after it rains was ozone, or perhaps something else oxidizing the inside of my nose.
Five portable apps that run anywhere and everywhere
No documentation?
No, sorry – it's "pornografi", domain is gmail.com
An Analysis of the iKeeB (duh) iPhone botnet
There is some variation in how sensitive people are to individual odors. Picking up the ozone smell before storms seems to be sufficiently rare that a lot of people end up wondering if they're the only one.

Anyway, as I said, the ozone is produced by the electrical activity in the storm--if you're curious, you can get a smell of ozone off of artificial sources of high-voltage electricity as well. Hanging around a Tesla Coil or Van de Graff Generator ought to do the trick.

And hey, look at it this way, it's not the storm itself you're noticing--you're actually smelling lightning. How cool is that?
Frankly, both logos suffer because the concept is not particularly inspired (and has been overdone in the design world, IMHO). That said, the new version does very much one-up the other in execution, though the letterspacing toward the end has been compromised because of the attached letterforms. This throws off the balance significantly. A place to start remedying that issue would be the diagonal stroke on the N, which could certainly stand to be heavier.
ClearType, F#, Surface and Songsmith are all productized MSR projects.
Come on in my kitchen ...
I agree. Manned space programs are a waste of money. Space is a dangerous place inimical to life. There is nothing out there, no places to go, no economical resources to claim. The analogy to seafaring implicit in the term spacefaring is an emotional appeal to adventure and discovery. But going to the moon is not comparable to the discovery and colonization of America. I am happy we went to the moon, it is a great achievement but nobody can live there or on Mars. Though I oppose govt stimulus spending, if we must spend a fortune on an "adventure" program let's colonize the oceans or learn to sea-farm or drill to the center of the Earth or build giant pyramids in the Nevada desert. Such projects would at least have the virtue of being honest goals.
I always wonder what general sort of "algorithms" they use. Neural nets?
Great and Disappointing Operating Systems of the Decade
The evolution of 'nice' itself has been commented on for a couple of hundred years (if not longer), to boot!

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=nice
Twitter Is Said to Be Profitable After Making Search Agreements
> Contrast this to the kind of extreme conservatism needed to operate manned missions

Needed? By whom and why?

It's not the test subjects.
The "deci" prefix should ring a bell here.
Why? SBCL has a great compiler. Using LLVM is giving up their freedom.
Technology becomes friendlier to older generations
"Sufficient vitamin D reduces risk of nearly all cancers by around 70%"

That sounds too good to be true.
The first year or two on HN, when the community was smaller and tighter knit, I found that when I recognized other usernames, I tended to feel an emotional attachment to them. The userbase was smaller, and thus, easier to say, "Oh, it's nostrademons. I like him. I'll reply to his comment". I felt that familiarity facilitated a sense or cordiality and camaraderie in our discussions. I think that was largely a function of group size.

I've lost that sense of camaraderie here in the past year. I find myself contributing less to the discussions, and I certainly don't submit near as much as I used to. I still lurk a lot, but I don't recognize a lot of the current users and I have no sense of personal attachement to most people here aside from the friends I've made over the last couple of years here. I imagine it's the same with a lot of other users.

If users could somehow be herded or segmented into smaller groups, that the sense of familiarity, community, and camaraderie might be able to continue in the discussions while a site scales. I don't know if it's necessarily a function of what limits, permissions or abilities that would be placed on individuals within the smaller groups, however. In meat space, an individual's actions and interactions change dramatically depending on group size. I suspect that similar forces work online, too.

The question is, how do you segment the community into smaller groups or swarms? I actually think that this can be acheived using recommendations. I have a hypothesis that I want to test. My hypothesis is that if reddit had succeeded in their recommendation engine, there would not have been a need for Hacker News. Why? Because those of us early reddit readers who were interested in hacking and founding would have remained somewhat clustered together automatically via article recommendations. We wouldn't have gotten irritated at the trolls and left. We would still be reading and commenting together on similar articles. All the while, the site could grow, and the users that were heavily intersted in politics, religion/atheism, zombies, etc... would have been ushered together via common recommendations as well. I'm looking forward to testing this hypothesis with http://newsley.com if and when I can get enough users to start doing recommendations.
3 key legal tips for securing angel financing
Ah yes, some actual communists were threatened and some innocents got caught up in the whole thing.

Meanwhile, communists were killing real people by the thousands.

Yup, McCarthyism was the big problem.

Which reminds me, if "the list" was wrong then, is its complement wrong today?
Absolutely. Another symptom is machine naming. When people who will never themselves log into them tell you to dump whatever whimsical themes you had and call your boxes according to an official convention, you gotta wonder what value they're adding to the organization.
But isn't that quite often true of research outfits in large companies? Certainly the success of UNIX was not due to the internal productization efforts of AT&T, nor Smalltalk of Parc, and so on. The point to research is somewhat parallel to investing in startups--you fund many tens of ideas, and some take off with a life of their own, and others don't.
Google Reader is Wrong
Displaying and Sorting Your Items for Maximum Sales Impact
for instance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_analysis
As the professor points out in that lecture, plants have their own problems (fiber).

Human digestive tracts are made for high-quality (bio-available energy/mass) nutrition-dense foods, unlike ruminants, or large apes like the gorilla.

And most people get plants confused with seeds. No other animal eats seeds in the quantities we do, especially as Omega-6 rich seed-oils.

Pollan has become a touchstone for many, but imho he's fairly wrong.
I don't know about the solstices, but the vernal equinox is a definition (it's a location on the sky) that has nothing to do with the season of the location you happen to be in. Sorry about the discrimination, you southerners should have invented astronomy and then you could have made the definitions! ;-)
Peak of Megalomania: The Tower of Dubai
"Runs in IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari." Indeed, totally fails in Opera. Just a blank browser window. http://www.coderun.com/ide/
A simple but effective message.

If only this information was easy to come by. Most people don't have time to look into the nitty gritty details of the foods they eat.

In reality like comp programs before we optimize on details, let's solve the biggest problems we have then when those are solved we can focus on little details here and there.

Don't drink soda/juice, Eat blueberries and fruits instread of candy/cookies. Would that not significantly improve most people's health by itself?
I've worked at two startups while they slowly took away the free stuff. It sucks, but it's a phase that successful (okay, and not-so-successful, in their death throes) companies eventually need to go through.

Also, thank you for removing the apostrophe, icey. gnashes teeth at stray apostrophes
Oh but we are happy that the sunlight is now returning. When I lived in Sweden, it was always the loss of daylight that depressed me. Once you get to the solstice, you know it's getting better!
The tone of your comment, combined with the fact that it repeats the old 'Americans think they are the center of the universe' trope makes it seem like you have an issue with Americans. Add to that the fact that your apparent dis was based on a misinterpretation of the previous poster, and you came across as rather rude and ignorant, I'm sorry to say.

I didn't vote you down for that, but apparently four people did.
I read somewhere that 15 minutes direct sun exposure per day in a t-shirt between 11 AM and 3 PM is sufficient. Obviously that has to depend on the latitude of your location so I'm not sure how accurate or meaningful it is. And it does depend on the color of your skin. The darker your skin the more sun you need to get the same amount of vitamin D.
Nice link. Instant gratification is central for any environment targeted at kids. That said, Logo's motive was to have a low threshold and no ceiling, whereas CoolBasic's motive seems to be a low threshold, but a fairly low ceiling as well. So .. not a solved problem yet :)
Your advice reads like a suggestion to suffer an actual problem today -- finding and sorting IPs without needing a UDF -- to prevent a possible future problem.

I wrote a book in another comment above, so I agree that the list suffers from a lack of nuance. But I'd say calling this a "really bad idea" should just be replaced with saying "use some caution."
What about the IPhone virtual reality app? I've found that very useful and quite innovative.
I don't understand the algorithm. How can you cache any particular area, wouldn't other areas potentially affect it?
Dup: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1007750
Curious how Python has roots in lisp?
ThreeDots: The jQuery Ellipsis Plugin
Full-motion immersive 360° streetview goes live
StreetView in video motion where you can pan-tilt-zoom around as you want!
A few relatively populous example countries with less accessible courts or political systems than the US: Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Japan, China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Egypt, Nigeria, Ghana, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, etc. etc.

Can you give me an example of some place with a more accessible system? (And if you can, maybe you can think of a reason or two why that might be so?)
How to Deal with a Bad Boss - 3 Approaches
Wow. I just read a lot about sugar last night. I wanted to know if glucose was truly the only sugar the brain needed. I found that processed sugars are used almost immediately by the body; whereas, the sugars from natural sources are released at a later time in smaller quantities. I read an article that stated that these large doses of sugar cause a sudden, large increase in insulin which can actually starve the brain from getting all of the sugar it needs as the body tries to dispose of excess sugar. It was a very interesting series of articles that I might hunt down again and post on HN at some point.
That's my use case for yelp like sites anyway. When I'm at home I go out for dinner on avg. once or twice a week or so and go to a new restaurant probably less than 1 time in 10, so my need for restaurant reviews is quite low. I also have plenty of other local sources for good reviews when I need them

When I'm traveling I eat out basically every night and visit a new restaurant pretty close 100% of the time. On the whole I have much greater need for a site with reviews of restaurants in not my home town than in my home town, and that hardly seems niche to me.
Cyber Challenge tests nation's top hackers
Understanding how a computer works is a somewhat different goal from that of infusing computational thinking.

anything command line will seem boring to kids nowadays

Not quite. Remote control, for example, will always have its appeal - that you do something in one place that causes something to happen in another apparently physically disconnected location. So if what the command-line controls is "distant" enough, it'll be fun. I don't intend to say that command-line is the ideal interaction mode, but it doesn't need to be thrown out of the toolbox just yet.
Back of the Napkin on Health Care Reform
It'd take more than just a bottle of vitamin C pills, I think--it's one of the least toxic substances known. The LD50 on vitamin C is probably about two pounds of pure vitamin for an average adult.

It's probably easier (and certainly more common) to overdose on water.
Tire Prices Continue Growing
I like the idea of small <150 character anonymous comment along side the flag.

A few other thoughts:

Would it be helpful have 1 word positive and negative flags like: offtopic, uncivil, helpful, insightful, inspiring, trolling, etc...? That way, positive as well as negative behavior could be reinforced.

Would it be helpful to have a delay in how soon the flag shows up. So much online discussion get's aggravated people get angry at getting downvoted, flagged, etc... and then they quickly flame back. If there was a delay in when the flags showed up, would it decrease people's tendency to post "why did I just get downmodded" an hour later.
I don't know about sober (there's quite a lot of emphasis used, underlines and italics that makes it seem a bit shouty), but it certainly lays out some kind of coherent argument.

On first reading though I'm struck by an extreme level of nit-picking that almost strikes me as anti-science, but accompanied by cheerful acceptance of any scientific theory that supports her position.

For example the self-limiting effects of CO2. Seems plausible enough to someone reading about it for the first time, but I'm guessing this is a theory produced by climate researchers. Why does this get a free pass when other theories get demolished for using computers, creating models, assumptions and other basic tools of science?

If you need that kind of certainty to believe anything then I'm guessing your looking for truthiness rather than the truth.

Also, out of the 4 basic points, point 3 (the earth hasn't warmed since 2001) seems incredibly weak even at first glance.
Android-based tablets coming to CES
This is what most of my research has been. Here's a post from Markenomics that I created some time ago with a lot of links on the algorithms used.

http://www.markenomics.com/item?id=321

Also, the US Patent website has lots of interesting stuff if you are really wanting to dig deep into this stuff.
The garage door opener in question is weak. It has rolling codes to deter replay attack, but its behavior in "resynch" mode is a classic example of security by obscurity: "Send two incorrect codes, then another off by three."

If you're going to have a protection against replay attacks, why are you going to have a resynch scheme so vulnerable? This may or may not not be vulnerable to replay attacks, but it sounds like something kids would use to authenticate entry to a treehouse!

This is especially sad, since freely available block ciphers could do a fine job with a challenge-response protocol, and wouldn't require a resynch function. One could assume that both the opener and the remote are securely in the hands of the owner, so both could be programmed with the same secret key.

Even without challenge-response, a more robust protocol should be possible with a little memory and a time stamp. Just keep a list of last few day's successful attempts, and don't accept any already sent. The encrypted hourly time stamp would be incorporated into the encoded passphrase, and a passphrase from the hour before or hour after would be accepted. A passphrase might consist of a number appended to it's inverse, appended to the timestamp.

The attacker cannot overrun the successful attempt record, because she cannot produce a new successful attempt without the symmetric key, and replaying the old one doesn't do anything.

To make this proof against losing the time synch, just do two things: 1) have the opener adopt the timestamp of the last successful attempt and 2) provide a time-resynch passphrase, which is activated by a different button, and which also results in a "already used" record in the case of a successful attempt.

EDIT: It's gotten to the point that I can imagine the lack of an idiotic law like the DMCA could be a strategic advantage for some other country, which will result in far greater technical innovation. (China, perhaps?)
Is your Google Analytics missing page views?
Why do they need to go through it? free soda will always be a tiny expense in relation to everything else.

Sure 10K sounds like a lot of cash for soda, but a company with 50 employees is spending millions on salaries.
This article is waaaay off base. First of all, NASA is trying to get into faster launch cycles, that's the entire point of the whole reusable rocket projects. Second, nobody can complain with the shuttle software defect rate: the last 11 versions had a total of 17 defects (http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/06/writestuff.html). Seventeen. If anything, the rest of the world could learn a lesson from NASA, especially in the realm of medical technology.
Sorry, I've never seen a "need" here. Google gives free lunch, massages, has exercise equipment rooms, the works that they'll never charge employees for.

No, this is too much tunnel-vision focus on the bottom line without even a simple thought of the people.
Maybe I'm just weird, but this wouldn't bother me. My employer does offer free sodas and snacks, but I don't take advantage of them (I don't drink soda, and tend not to snack on junk food). I do drink the free coffee, but in the past, I've survived this by bringing a thermos from home. I can understand why some people might not like the free stuff to be taken away, but I'd prefer to work for an employer that compensated fairly for my work, and one that does not expect that I work more than 40-45 hours on a regular basis.
Incidentally, the original implementation of BASIC at Dartmouth was a compiler.
Direct link without the Google wrapper:
http://psoup.math.wisc.edu/welcome.html
The sugar lobby is the corn lobby, because that's where most refined sugar comes from. In other words, Midwest farmers, particularly in Iowa. See the problem now?
Diegiam Google Chrome OS
Matching Teaching Style to Learning Style May Not Help Students
World Map Of Social Networks Shows Rise Of Facebook
At the least, VAT collectable by the UK would have been charged and earned on all of that £1.6bn (which would be well into the £100~200m range). Instead, Ireland got the VAT due to EU VAT collection harmonisation.
Startup Tips from Jay-Z
Lyrical excerpts from the past decade of Jay-Z's most inspirational business-themed rhymes
There's a big gap between "has zero organized system" and "anti-immigrant"! I agree that other countries have a more rational system based on national self-interest - take fewer immigrants, make sure they're the most productive ones, profit. Hey, if I were New Zealand, I'd be selective too. Their country is essentially a beautiful national park. A few top scientists isn't going to hurt anything, and it'll help. But opening the floodgates would be a terrible idea.

That said, I absolutely disagree that this makes the US "anti-immigrant." In some ways, it makes the US more pro immigrant - we're more likely to give people a chance to prosper who wouldn't otherwise have had it. Sure, we'd benefit more by only allowing in top engineers, physicians, lawyers, and bankers, would would that really make us pro-immigrant?
SBCL's low level code generation is total crap, the smart bits are in the high level optimizations. (And to be honest, even those smart bits are fundamentally 80s technology, it's just that most dynamic language implementations never got even that far up the technology ladder). What James is doing is hooking LLVM in after most of those high level optimizations have been done, but letting LLVM worry about instruction selection, instruction reordering, register allocation, etc.

(Edit: Oh, but the place where it's hooked into also is bypassing some compiler passes that might turn out to be too fundamental, like representation selection which decides whether values should be stored tagged or as raw machine values. One theory is that some of LLVM's more advanced or future optimizations will obviate the need for that pass. The other is that really LLVM should work at the same level as other SBCL backends, after all the generic low level decisions have been made. This work is still at such an early stage that we haven't even figured out which of the two theories is true.)
The only places that there are jobs and "culture" are within an hour of major metropolitan centers?

Where there are no jobs (or means of production), there are no people. There are plenty of people conducting business and making livings even in deepest Nebraska, Wyoming, Africa, Canada, or wherever.

You seem to be attaching special importance to the types of jobs and "culture" that massive congregations of people produce, while complaining that the number of people in those locations is too high ;-)