skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
On a personal note MRSA is a tough little bug. I got it in the hospital after I broke my ankle and had to get a bunch of screws and a plate installed. They ended up removing all of the hardware and keeping me in the hospital for ~90 days on IV Vancomycin. If you develop a resistance to Vancomycin (VRSA - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancomycin-resistant_Staphyloco...) you are pretty much done for.

It is actually pretty frighting; there is one one drug that can fight a serious MRSA infection (Vancomycin). Once we become resistant to that we have to start taking drugs like Linezolid which can kill you faster than the infection. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linezolid

If you are headed into the hospital for surgery make sure you talk to all of the doctors about their infection control procedures. Make sure every nurse/orderly/housekeeper and visitor washes their hands before they come into you room.

Sorry about the off topicish comment.
* hey?), some believe that a full moon -- not to mention a blue one -- can cause strong emotions to flare. Some evidence shows that arrests for petty crime and public drunkenness increase 5% during a full moon*

Anyone know why? Any ideas on the causal effect? Pure chance?
Happy New Year HN
I'm on vacation in Tokyo. Happy New Year from the land of the rising sun. Where else in the world are people celebrating?
Thought Etherpad might bear a mention in the bit about wave.
1. Get hold of some clear cellophane (the stuff used in the video is for gift-wrapping fruit baskets and the like)

2. Use pins/tacks to attach a top corner to a wall, unravel to desired width and pin/tack the far top-corner

3. Use a sharp blade to trim, then tack bottom corners

4. Tile surfaces and repeat for wider coverage

5. Use white-board pens and eraser as normal

Bingo!
Happy new year HN What changes do you want to see in 2010?
Wish you all a very happy and prosperous new year.

What changes would you like to see in the world in the next year? What are you going to do about it?
I have a couple of questions.

1. I couldn't find biography of Alan Lakein, the author of the book.
Did he achieve something as extraordinary as Bill Clinton did?

2. Could Bill Clinton achieve the same life goals without help from this book?
SICP by a mile, for one reason: the SICP videos: http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.001/abelson-sussma...

That's the best 20-hour introduction you could ask for.
If you think technology will solve terrorism I think you're entirely on the wrong path.

As security in the computer world shows it takes only a relatively small number of miscreants before you have the ability to hinder the lives of a very large number of people.

You need a near 100% success rate in order to control the problem through technology, something you are unlikely to achieve.

A real solution, therefore, must be sought outside the technological arena and at a much earlier stage in the lives of the would-be-terrorists than several hours before they are about to detonate a bomb.

Countering radicalization is probably a much better way to spend all that money than by spending it on technology.
For newer browsers (ff3.5, new safari and webkit) there are
css3 commands you can use to provide this kind of eye candy simply.
You can add a drop shadow to text (-moz-text-shadow, -webkit-box-shadow, or generally text-shadow),
Or to elements (-moz-box-shadow, -webkit-box-shadow or generally box-shadow).
Or rounded corners (border-radius).

Given that these elements are only eye candy, I don't worry too much that they are invisible on IE and older browsers. Think of it as free candy.
It may require properties of the specific cellophane he's using. The thing that's interesting about the video is how clean the erase is. He calls it Clearphane by Highlander. They have a ridiculous website, http://www.highlandsupply.com/
The CLR may support tail-call optimization, but that's not much. You can have support for TCO in a JVM language, it's just that interoperability with Java suffers.

When comparing the CLR to the JVM, I'm only jealous of one feature of the CLR ... stack-allocated objects.

On the other hand, saying that .NET's support for multiple languages is "equal or better" then that of the JVM is just flat wrong.

The CLR doesn't optimize call-sites where the called method is virtual. This is alleviated somewhat by the semantics of C# (all methods are non-virtual by default), but for dynamic languages it's a disaster. The JVM on the other hand does this ever since Java 1.3 (when hotspot was added as an option).

And the DLR is a cool framework for language designers, but it's one layer above the CLR, and it's just code extracted from the IronPython implementation. And related to speed, if you compare Jython with IronPython, Jython does a lot better right now, although it's not the most active language-implementation on the JVM.

The upcoming InvokeDynamic for the JVM will really kick ass for dynamic invocations ... the JVM will allow one to make calls without knowing the type of the object used in single dispatch ... and those call-sites will be optimized (like method-inlining) just as with a normal "invoke_interface".

And then there's the little things that make your life easier on the JVM ... for example it's easier to generate .class files, or .jar files ... along with debugging symbols. And the JVM is truly multi-platform.

You mentioned tail-calls ... well, the tail-calls in Mono have always been broken and unusable and there's no fix on the horizon. Also speaking of Mono, the GC is not generational and does not defragment the heap. IMHO, it's a low quality implementation that's only optimized for C#.
Ah, the "I'm a big man, I code by writing bits to the platters with a magnet" argument. (Quick, prize to the first xkcd link here!)
5 quarters of profitability on an 8 year run leaves a pretty big hole to be plugged (and doesn't say how profitable).

And do you mean profitable including the start up losses or profitable for those quarters only?

Wherever I go I see WIIs, Xboxes not so much any more.

They're still being sold in record numbers but WII outsells xbox by a comfortable margin.
Very clean and minimal desk and desktop, easy(right hand) access to Notebook+Pen, easy(left hand) access to Coffee and Water cups that are placed on top of unused mouse pads. Silent mobile on the monitor stand, unhooked telephone on left hand side.

Reference books on top drawer. At the end of the day cups go to sink, notebook and book go back to their respective places.

Most important for productivity separate machines(laptop for browsing/email/IM, desktop for work) for separate tasks and starting work at a proper(quiet) time.

I have always found that if i can get the above right i have a good day.
US startup visas
That's a beautiful analogy, with more than just a grain of truth to it.

Especially the Gates - Blair bit.

IBM managed to 'reinvent' itself after a very rough patch, maybe microsoft will manage to do that too but definitely not with the current leadership. To solve these issues you first have to be able to admit (maybe even publicly) that there are issues. Until then it's down.

I remember IBM passing out little flashlights with 'I've seen the light', and they really had.

Microsoft is at least a decade away from a moment like that.

Give google another 10 years to figure out how to kill office and they probably will.
From the 'Story' page on the site:

'The filmmaker at the table reminded the others of the story told in the classic film It’s A Wonderful Life — a tale about a small banker, played by Jimmy Stewart, who almost gets crushed by a big banker. In the end, though, the community rallies around the small bank and helps save it.'

Or looking at it another way, through the incompetencies of staff the bank loses a fortune and has to be bailed out by the public. Is there a modern day remake in the offing?!
Thanks for that pointer -- I added that link to the original post.
How could they possibly think that is a good idea? I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when they decided they needed a EULA and a users address before they would them look at a list of products.
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Obama Admin: Mandated exemptions can strengthen copyright
http://rumkin.com/reference/whiteboard/surfaces.php
After filling out their form all I got was an SQL Error. This must be some secret-ops-CIA-type of Company...

But if this thing works, it is exactly what I'v been looking for over the last years.

IdeaPaint got me hoping. Their idea: Paint your wall with whiteboard color. The Problem is: You can't enter the room with the painted wall for a couple of days until its dry. Some students foundet the company, because during their time on campus they felt whiteboards were rediculous expensive. So they dropped this product on the market, for the exact same amount of money per whiteboard-m²... but its so easy! Ah I forgot, you have to paint your wall...
There is a reality out there, we're not arguing over pastels vs. chalk vs. pencils. You can write webapps in assembly if you're so motivated and tenacious.
I thought the article was worth while if only for pointing me at various plugins I wasn't aware of. If you're a vim hardcore then this is probably nothing new... but for others who are not it seemed useful. I agree that having some more info on why these plugins are useful would be nice, but following the links was easy enough to see if the plugin was interesting.
A very good idea. I made myself a blackboard of wood with a very expensive paint so I can use color chalks. I love it, but is bulky and heavy, and dusty.

I will try this need method.
I own a Wii and I hate it. That controller is cool but once you get used to it the games themselves are pretty lame.

And you can't use Wii for pretty much anything else. Surely you could "buy" a browser with Wii-points (if they haven't made it free already). But the web-browsing experience is also pretty lame. And you can't use it to watch movies.

So I bought a Wii because it was cheaper at the time (not anymore). But you won't catch me buying any games for it. I just borrowed some games I didn't like and now it's just sitting there ... and from time to time when a friend comes I just take out the free "Wii Sports" that came bundled with it.

If Wii really outsels Xbox it doesn't say much because they target different markets.
Possibly, but not certainly. Small banks fail for a variety of reasons, not in the least because of their inability to absorb a single larger loss.

Traditionally the 'credit union' is the bank form with the lowest rate of failure.
It's not a human societies thing, it's a human thing.
i don't know much about machine learning, but is the idea that i can use these to generate synthetic random data? for example, samples from a given distribution? or, in astronomy, start with the distribution of stars (brightness and spatial clustering), and hardware (sensitivity, resolution) and generate images, complete with noise?
For many people it's a 'one or the other' even though they're technically different target markets.

WII hit the sweet spot and sold an enormous number of units in a very short time, and for a very large number of those one xbox less was sold.
> Facebook started out as a web site, not as a platform. Turning that on its head is not visionary. It's an old blueprint for certain failure.

Wave? [edit for clarification: isn't that a platform first? not that we know it's a success, of course]
Ask HN: What do you think is the next Technology worth mastering ?
I have friends who got very deep into iPhone dev a few years back.
Now, they are considered masters of their craft, have managed to build a good name and connections for themselves. (And monetize on it).

Now that I have lots of spare time, I decided to delve into something (very)new.
In the hope that two/thee years down the road, I too, can position myself in the same way in a new field.

So what do you think is most worth learning ?
Wasn't there an interesting article about the use of checklists is hospitals? I remember that they helped the staff to follow all the procedures and shrank infection rates by something like two thirds or so.

Edit: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/30/opinion/30gawande.html has something about it. But it wasn't the article I sought for.
No kindle version? You're killing me!
"Don't be evil."
I haven't had an opportunity to try Wave yet.
In those terms, you're pretty much 'amongst the stars' even while on earth, as can be ascertained with a glimpse at the sky at night.
Russia may send spacecraft to knock away asteroid
I'm somewhere in between. My desk is mostly occupied by my desktop, external display, keyboard, and mouse, but I usually have an ash tray, a cup or two, and a few random things that I should probably put away. It never looks too bad, but it's never perfectly clean either.
Per quarter profitable. MSFT is public so you can see the PnL sheets online. Xbox will be in the "Entertainment and Devices" division which also includes Microsoft Hardware and, oddly, Mac Office (maybe not still). I don't know the exact numbers, but my understanding is that we are projected to be out of the $6B hole within a few years.

As for the Wii, it's a great product, but it is fundamentally a differet market and business model. Nintendo makes money on hardware sales. They have a low attach rate of primarily 1st party games. Microsoft makes money on royalties. Xbox had an unprecidented high attach rate with significant 3rd party profit sharing. Xbox LIVE is also a hearty subscription business.
Your welcome. I felt the same pain seeing wikileaks.org in the state of "shut down" until Jan 6th. Credits for [Edit: sharing] the link go to the main IRC channel at the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin, #26c3 at freenode.org
So, overall as of this writing it still is a net loss, but it is quite impressive if they planned to take a loss for more than a decade to come out on top.

I agree that nintendo has a different business model, but I think there is significant overlap between the markets, in other words I would expect xbox sales and wii sales to be competing at least in part for the same dollars.

Or is it a documented fact that those that own a wii buy xboxes later on ?
7 bucks, 2 hour read, helped someone go from a poor, rural, single parent upbringing to the top of his field. Sounds like a no-brainer. Ordered it.
Maybe I should write a mini-app for idea generation. I feel like everything I come up with is a rehash of something already out there. I tend to focus on small business stuff since these are people with money that might actually cough up some dough... maybe that's the problem?
>I'm not sure what you mean by circularity in coercion.

Cohen's book "Self-ownership, freedom and equality" is good on this point. Quite a bit of it is viewable on Google books, in particular page 60-63.

> This is not far from the truth.

Actually it is quite a long way from the truth. Governments are neither homogeneous nor toxic nor gloopy.
instead of pins/tacks we can some plane stickers which have glue on both side
Haha, it's an ad. I love how he fakes reading the name off of the product slowly, as if he's never read it before, then proceeds to repeat it, and the web address where you can buy it.

"I've discovered a product.." Discovered a product.
Already posted:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1008624 <- Most comments

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1009692

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1009540

The duplication detector I suggested earlier would've caught this:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1012215
Man rūpi: Kalėdų stebuklas
You only see that at airports and stations. Ordinary British police don't carry guns at all.
They're going to need more than 5 quarters to call it a success. The console business is very fluid and dynamic due to the gigantic reset button of new hardware platforms every 5-7 years. The 360 hasn't been a run away success -- in fact it may turn out to be the weakest selling console of the big three when all is said and done due to Sony's big advantage in worldwide sales. The 360 has been very successful in the US, not as successful as the Wii, but as you said profitable at least. The big question for Microsoft is what happens in the next generation of hardware. They will be presumably taking another round of losses when they launch the successor to the 360 over the next couple of years. I'm not quite sure where they payoff is here for Microsoft. They need a big smashing success to get ahead of the game or they will be on the treadmill of the console industry indefinitely. Big loss, some profit, big loss, some profit...
Once on the no-fly list, it's close to impossible to get off the list.

Sure, if you don't want to change your name. Go to your local courthouse, change the spelling of your name, get a new ID, you're off the list. That's why the no-fly list is such a joke.

Also, you can bet that they would not make this threat in the company of your lawyer. This is just a scare tactic.
According to Wikipedia[1], he "sold over 3 million copies" of the book. That is certainly an achievement, whether or not it was one of his primary life goals.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Lakein
Late to the party again.

The way I see it, when you face a programming problem you mentally divide it into subtasks and use solve each one in the most natural, sweet-spot manner learned from experience. Have to parse a minilanguage? Use an FP approach. Control UI widgets? Do it in OOP style, that's what it was designed for. Keep track of global game state? Just write it imperatively and be done with it.

As a professional you need to understand the good ideas in your field, but as a responsible worker you need the wisdom to avoid pushing those good ideas beyond their proven area of application. One day you'll read an article somewhere that will demonstrate how Haskell is a great fit for ragdoll physics simulations (for example), like it happened before with Parsec for parsing (another example). Until that day... don't rush in blindly believing that purity is better for every class of problem. It might be, but we don't have anything resembling a proof yet. So learn from experience, and subdivide.
I co-founded and ran Pinch Media, which recently (transaction announced last week and closed yesterday) merged with Flurry. Now I'm doing product management there.

I'm assuming you've written a native app vs. a web app. (If not, my apologies - ignore any advice I give you.) While I'm ridiculously biased, I'd recommend going with Flurry Analytics. In a couple months, it'll have the superset of features from both Pinch and Flurry. The data is processed using Hadoop, and reporting updates very quickly. It's built for multiple platforms, so it'll stay with you if you decide to build for multiple phones. And the company's well-backed and doing well financially - which is an important thing to consider, because once you release a smartphone application with analytics code in it, at least some installs are out there forever, since you can't force 100% of your users to upgrade.

Of course, because I'm ridiculously biased, you probably should check out other solutions in the space as well. :)
FreeRapid
This is why all of my disks are encrypted. Power turns off, data is gone. If someone shows up at your door threatening you to provide them with a disk image, you can happily comply. When they realize the data is useless without the Constitutionally-protected secret key that only exists in your mind, they will have to file charges, and get a judge to order you to testify against yourself. And right about then, the investigation stops, because you committed no crime, and the order to testify against yourself is illegal. (If anything, it means you have plenty of time to talk to your attorney. They are not getting the data any other way, so you have the power to say, "wait, let me get my lawyer first", even if they physically seize your hardware.)

I also have a few drives in my house that look like LUKS encrypted disks, but are actually a LUKS header with random data following it. There is no way I could ever decrypt these disks, as there is no data on them; just random bits.

Anyway, you can tell that this was never a real criminal investigation, because a real investigator would get Gmail records from Google, not from some random guy with a laptop. This was purely to scare the blogger into not publishing information about the TSA anymore. "Chilling effect."
Every time I read an article like this, I think of Google Lively. Google entering a space != Google crushing the competition.
RoG> ... I do not think this is a question of
RoG> "intellectual integrity," and labelling it
RoG> as such is unhelpful.

StC0> I think it's quite helpful. Having to hedge
StC0> myself against prejudice and sloppy thinking
StC0> isn't helping me as much as spending time
StC0> actually having substantive discussion.

I'm not debating or questioning the use of a labal to capture the concept. I'm suggesting that the sepcific label you are using is itself a barrier to communication. To speak of someone failing to exhibit "intellectual integrity" feels like you are accusing them of dishonesty. I don't think, in truth, that you are doing so, but that is how it might appear.

You could consider a better label for the near inhuman, almost Vulcan, ability to put asides one's own opinions and beliefs in order to listen to the points being made by someone else. Calling it ""intellectual integrity" is, I think, conveying the wrong message, and caries too much baggage.

And yes, I suspect we are more in agreement than not. I, perhaps, am giving more leeway to those who are not trained to set aside their natural tendencies. It's something I've had to learn, at times painfully, upon entering a business environment after doing research in pure math. It seems to be a requirement, and simply one of those things one has to do in order to communicate effectively with people from the "Real World."

Sad, but true. I've had to learn to live with it.
An unexpected fringe benefit of owning 2TB drives: the cops can't buy them at WalMart.
Government Advice For the Small Business sector
This sounds interesting, but unfortunately I was unable to find any more significant information about the tests. It seems that it's mentioned in a few of Sugarman's books but that's it. In particular I'm interested in how controlled the tests were and how they measured productivity? Would I find this kind of detail in the books?
Michael Hedges...he's the Eddie Van Halen of this kind of playing with Pierre Bensusan as the Jimi Hendrix of this kind of playing.

I would recommend "Live from the Double Planet" - because your mouth will be agape that it's one guy on stage playing 4+ parts with one instrument.

Juliard bitches.
Broadband, yes. Toilet, no.
But what would an organism adapt to if not overcoming challenges to reproducing, under selection pressure?

Our minds -- whose involuntary emotional reactions drive our behavior and impart to us many of our basic values -- are evolved. Evolution tinkers, reuses, never redesigns or reorganizes. So instead of pushing us toward the single, monolithic goal of having children, we experience constant nudging to do things that are conducive to reproductive success. Support yourself. Be well-liked. Have sex. Love your children. Achieve status. In slogan form: evolution's instrumental values are humanity's terminal values.

So to answer your question, we act to make ourselves happy, and what makes us happy approximates what is good for the next generation. There are gaps, though. Some people to focus on their careers to the exclusion of family, and contraception doesn't engender the same reaction as eating rancid meat. I tend to think this is a good thing, but I'm status-quo biased and my values are largely a product of the current arrangement, so that's unsurprising.
Very very very cool.

Example 4 is missing a closing brace.
John Gruber on GitHub Flavored Markdown