skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It would be much better to write/wrap C/C++ code to work with Node.js; the main reason this library is useful is that browsers don't expose crypto APIs, and in-browser javascript can't call down to faster code.
How to compute Fib(n) in log(n) time
I don't know about anybody else, but I hadn't ever heard of plurk before this. They could have leveraged this for some great PR ("come see the site that is so awesome that even Microsoft wants to rip it off"), instead they throw a fit and destroy any PR and goodwill options they might have had.
No no. That was a bit more of a joke.
Note that "skygrabber" is the #5 search phrase on google right now.
http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends?sa=X&oi=prbx_hot_...
LinkedIn OAuth: Zero To Hero
> I wouldn't use it, since I wouldn't trust it to get me the best prices.

This is the fundamental problem with AI: if it's not as smart as a human, people won't like or trust it; but if it is as smart as a human, people especially won't like or trust it.
Congrats on the growth. I think you're going through some growth technology problems as well?. I find the responsiveness of HN has changed for the worse. I notice the main page doesn't respond sometimes and trying to check out the submissions for top leaders / heavy users yields no results. Just an observation.
I originally argued against the statement that we will have a "lower energy budget" in 90 years.

In short, I am arguing about developments that will come home to roost in less than a decade -- and disprove your statements. Even if these developments take five times as long, you are still vertigo-inducing wrong...

You are arguing like some sort of inverse Kurzweil. :-)

>>Solar cells are promising

They will never help much where I live. But not many live here.

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

People in the highly populated parts of Europe will literally need a reason to not put them on the house -- in just a few years. Then add 80 more years of tech development...

Consider how much energy you'll get from solar cells in a city's total roof area. 1 square meter under the equator is 1 kW. If every person have 10 square meters of solar cells, it should be enough for all energy use (below the polar circle).

(The same goes for energy storage, developed over 90 years.)

>>Uranium is non-renewable.

Check up on Thorium reactors (and also on more modern versions of normal reactors, which burns a larger fraction of the fuel).

Then add 90 more years of development...

There is lots of Uranium in the ground. Raise the prices and it will come up.

>>And fusion is yet to prove it can provide enough energy.

We will know about e.g. General Fusion, Polywell and TriAlpha in just a few years.

Realistically, I'd not give that large chance for the individual projects (10%? 20%?). But I'd be surprised if nothing like that comes along in 90 years. Just consider space based solar, with the next-next-next-next generation of super cheap launch systems.
I was addressing the last thing that you said.
And that spam email stuff is going to stop arriving, too.
Moonlight 2 Released
> It clearly can't be random if four other major browser vendors independently score over 90%

?? The other browser makers score well on ACID3 because they've been developing and bugfixing to ACID3 as a benchmark. It's not random, it's a tautology.
How to be funny
How2GET the most relevant information from a large data set with minimal filters
What are the strategies and current solutions for delivering relevant information (tweets in this case) using a minimal amount of filters & how to couple this with tools that equip the community for self regulation.
Pivot, Don't Jump
Did you not read the entire story?
hmm....what you're saying doesn't make much sense. niche networks charge premium CPMs (e.g. expensive to the advertiser) because they have to support their sales force and support staff. they are also generally not self service at all. adroll is way, way cheaper than a vertical niche network because it is self service. if you want to pay +$20/cpm for someone to pick sites from a list for you, definitely go with a niche vertical network. if you want a cheap self service option that has access to the same sites go with adroll.
This is a great idea.

I think there is one catch, though. I think he's assuming that my accuracy is the same around the target that I am aiming for, regardless of where it is.

I find that this is not the case. As a "below average" player, I am still much better at hitting the triple 20, for example, then I am at the triple 19 - even though the triple 19 is theoretically "easier". What throws me is that the triple 19 is not centred across the board so lining up to it is more difficult.
Anyone else getting a 502 bad gateway through to the actual site? http://fathomdb.com/
Video of Tim Anglade's Tin talk from NoSQL East
Tab-Modality and You
For what its worth I just read all three and really dug them! It might help to use a more regular blog format so people can post comments?
Don't forget Calvin!
Google toolbox for Mac
South Africa World Cup 2010 Tickets
We have tickets to all the big World Cup Qualifying games as well as tickets to every world cup game in South Africa 2011
I know it's a joke, but the truth is that this is exactly the kind of bug that unit tests won't find. The unit tests would have simulated a bunch of gyro settings, with and without a single gyro failure (but not two gyro failures, as that was an accepted design limitation).

Running the gyros with the torpedo still on the boat, however, would not have been tested because the designers didn't think of it. If they had thought of it, the failure wouldn't have happened in the first place.

Testing can verify that your software works within the space of behavior that you already know about. It can't make up for your failure to understand the problem fully.
Same problem here. That's sort of discouraging. :)
The two things I don't understand about the "climate change is not man-made" point of view are:

1. What is the actual, plausible motivation for the entirety of the IPCC to mislead people about climate change?

2. Why are measures to reduce carbon output so maligned? At worst, they will be a wasted effort. At best - if climate change is indeed man-made - they will prevent huge environmental disasters. (Bangladesh mostly vanishing under the sea, global food production collapsing, the oceans' food chain collapsing due to acidification, etc.)
Byki Free Holiday eCards
They also lost a lot of important cases back then.
My experience:

* Used "techncrunch" promo code when signing up.

* Supposed free pro account actually costs $1 per year, even using the promo.

* Impossible to switch to "free" account.

* Leave.
Congrats! Love the design, clean and original. Everything is well laid out and the copy is excellent.

Another plus because it doesn't look like another 37signals web app clone.
Correction: This computes Fib(n) in O(n log n log log n) time given a fast integer multiplication.
I hadn't seen the other two, but I've now read (and enjoyed) all three. Thanks!
Predator drones use less encryption than your TV, DVDs
and our intern @alexcoomans!
5 Steps to a 4% Conversion from Tweets
You may be able to avoid the biggest problem - which is money 'trapped' in the account by depositing all your funds, daily, into your bank account. Its called Daily Sweep. Wait, you've never heard of it? Oh yes, thats because not only is it -not- advertised or mentioned anywhere on the site but to activate the -option- it you need to call up on the phone!

But its quite easy to do once you know about it. With your biz paypal account call up and request activation of Daily Sweep. If the first person says they dont know what you mean keep asking, eventually someone will admit it (only took us 2 tries!) and set up the option. Now in your account activate it under your prefs.

Every day, the earnings will be Swept into your bank account, just like a Merchant Account. No guarantees they wont try to, say, pull money from your bank account tho...
Yeah that was a bug i noticed right at the very last minute. Amazon would error if promo was for $0 so I have been working on hacking a fix in - we've never given away free Pro accounts before so we just caught this issue. Ideally should just bypass Amazon completely.

Hit me up with your username and I'll manually bump you up to a year account until we get that resolved.
Same problem here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=994358

It's the unknown and unanticipated failure modes that cause the worst problems. Predicted failure modes at least have code to deal with them, even if it's buggy. Unit tests reduce the bugs, but non-existant code for unanticipated failures, while it doesn't have bugs, doesn't solve the problem.
Lets also remember that that is the 2nd time in 6 months MS has been caught out on this kind of thing, and the 2nd time they've used the 'but a contractor...' excuse...
It was working a few minutes ago, seems to have just broken.
Life insurance over 50
Many older people need life insurance for business, final expenses, or to cover obligations. You can still find life insurance over 50, 65, or sometimes up to 80 years old.
Near Boston today from 6-8pm? Meet Randall Munroe at MIT book signing
Testing can verify that your software works within the space of behavior that you already know about. It can't make up for your failure to understand the problem fully.

Thinking about correctly testing software is generally one of the best ways to improve your understanding of the problem.

I quite often find bugs during unit testing simply because I'm forced to think about how the software will break, rather than thinking about how it will (or should) work.

I think of it as being quite similar to waiting overnight to proof-read your own paper. You need to be in the context of the reader, not the writer, or your brain will skim over most mistakes.
When I get back from my meeting I'll put links on them back to here - thanks for the idea. I should've thought of that.
Thanks a ton! That means a lot to me as I am a jack-of-all-trades type and never really associated with having good design sense haha.
re: "I am perplexed why this kind of information is not classified."

I speculate that it is mis-information: half-truths.

What is described is an incredibly involved maze launch procedures and potential elaborate security violations leading to launch. It looks like a big maze of "attack here!" signs. So, if you are assigned to work in one of those bunkers, but deep down you are actually kind of unhinged... the design encourages you to show your hand early by aiming for a false vulnerability, with lots of ways to catch you waiting in the background.

I would bet that there are trivial bypasses to all of the security, but that the nature (even existence) of those bypasses are a secret some guys are going to take to their graves. That is, I would bet the most trusted "missileers" could single-handedly launch one of those puppies by first disabling or agreeing with the other guy in the room then opening up an access panel and, more or less, crossing two wires. It would be less safe to build it any other way than "launch at will, though you might have to kill another guy first although he stands a 50/50 chance of killing you first". Why make a more complicated game of it than that? The only things to really guard against are take-overs of a silo (capturers should have no clue what wires to cross) and not-yet-fully-trusted missileers. Meanwhile, the failure modes of control and command have to fail gracefully and, in this case, that means putting the bombs fully under the control of a few trusted guys who are relied upon to exercise good judgment.

I'd bet those things could be launched in less than a minute, more or less by flipping a disguised switch. After all, that's what the Soviets did:

http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/17-10/mf_dea...
Well, I hope HRW and Wikipedia [edit: and CIA World Factbook] are full of it, for your sake...
I'm not the OP, but:

Whenever you update a reference count atomically, you need to use a memory barrier to ensure that that memory write becomes visible to the other cores before any other memory operations you want to make. Those are not cheap, and doing one on every Py_IncRef and Py_DecRef will have performance implications somewhere between murderous and tragic.
It's pointed out in the comments on that article that left-right aiming is a lot easier than up-down aiming, too, since left-right aiming depends only on being able to line your arm up with the board, while up-down aiming requires you to correctly calibrate your throwing speed.
Ask HN: Useful bug reporting tips?
Hi chaps,

I'm currently working on a bug/issue tracker (purifyapp.com) and I'm writing an article about how to write useful bug reports. Do any of you guys have any tips you'd like to suggest?
Indeed, you should probably have a blog about grandchildren or boy bands.
I've seen some of the stuff they are working on, fathomdb has some truly awesome technology. Can't wait to see what they release next.
"We worked with Microsoft to make sure that Moonlight was available to everyone on Linux and BSD."

Why doesn't Microsoft just open source Silverlight? Much as I applaud the energy and work of the Moonlight developers, I personally would have a lot of difficulty with donating my time to do a multi-billion-dollar corporation's job.
Predator and Reaper drones run on VxWorks, for which crypto is readily available.
I agree that the person you're responding to was a bit biased politically. However, I don't feel that the comment was meant to be a discourse on politics as much as it was to illustrate a point about business practices. Thus, I'm willing to let it go.
If everyone else is at a point where they can do both reasonably well now, then I think it reflects pretty badly on Microsoft that they cant even do it with their next generation browser.
"It's quite possible that's the case; I think most people on Mac would rather use Quicktime (w/ Flip4Mac [1], which is Microsoft-supported) for free than pay for VLC."

I'm probably an atypical Mac user. I sometimes use my Mac to watch movies, but generally don't care for the OSX UI and don't care if something doesn't have a true OSX feel (n fact, non-OSX may suit me better). (I have a Mini for development purposes but do most things on Kubuntu.)

I like using VLC because, aside from its feature set, I use it on Vista and Kubuntu as well and know what it can do and how to do it. (Usually; for whatever reason, the default keyboard shorts are oddly different on different platforms. I don't think it's because of collisions with preexisting shortcuts, and I usually just reassign them to suit myself.)

This thread has informed me about some other OSX options I'll try out, but so far VLC is about the most full-featured player I've seen. Couldn't live without the equalizer, gamma/brightness control, audio sync adjustment, and such.
Shuttleworth steps down as Ubuntu CEO
Maybe U can get closer to what is possible, if U invest 3-6 months in learning something about "statistical learning", "machine learning" and that stuff.
look here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=881230, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=198601, and googling around on hn might help as well. There are thousands of articles, videos and books covered here on this page.
And btw. what is relevant? Relevant to U might not be relevant to me.
I'm sorry for your problem, it shows that they are not well organized, but as I said in my first comment the best is to work with your bank for online payment.

You can offer paypal as an additional payment system, but really, work with your bank. You know the guy/girl there, and they care more about your business than paypal, because your good business means money in their vaults.
Your proposed system doesn't provide non-repudiation, which is something that paper cheques do provide.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-repudiation

A suitable XML schema for digitally signed cheques would work though, provided that it was thought out properly. It wouldn't even need live Internet connectivity.

However, this still leaves those instances where a computer is not necessarily available.
If only this was written in python...

A port anyone?
Give Google Chrome for the holidays
Then you may enjoy node-crypto: http://github.com/waveto/node-crypto
Agreed again - if Microsoft was in beta too - it can be argued that the service was never fully offered to the public either, making the case even weaker...
Why are so many people still on IE 6 then?
Discount Code for my Hacker News Friends -- Perq
HACKERNEWS50

Use this discount code and receive 50% off Perq for six months.

What is Perq? Perq is my startup's application for small business and HR folks to track and manage employee Paid Time Off (PTO).

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First, through our research and personal experience, we have learned that small companies are often overlooked when it comes to business software. Employee benefits management, like PTO, is often bundled into large, expense payroll services from ADP and the like. For us who do not want to sink our fledgling capital into overpriced payroll services, there is a need for HR tools.

Second, by tracking PTO, saving one day of employee's time by preventing vacation 'overages' recoups the cost of our software instantly. Companies can save thousands of dollars by making sure employees comply with their company policies.

Our Goal:
To save business owners money, by giving them control over attendance policies and paid time off.

Our Invitation:
If you are a small business owner or manage groups of people, we may be a great tool for you. We invite you to check our Perq, and save with the discount code.

If you do not fall into the group above, take a look anyway, and any feedback on our application is welcomed. We are looking for ways to improve our product and our offer.

Happy Holidays,
Team Perq
Your stories are most appreciated. If I extrapolate from myself, the problem is simply that the people who enjoy submissions like these are often reluctant to go through the new submissions.
Do you feel the same way about MySQL, Java, or Eclipse, for example? Why is it so bad that a group of developers are motivated to port a commercial product? And why is the reaction "MS should do this" instead of "Thanks MS for helping out".

I just don't get the animosity around Mono and Moonlight. Those guys have balls, and they're doing great work to bring a set of technologies and tools to Linux. Why is this in any way bad? And please leave the IP poisoning arguments at the door--those have been thoroughly addressed and that horse has been beaten to a bloody pulp.
If the AK fires fine with cheap powder, then that's another advantage for tightwad armies.
Pay attention, FF 2 predates acid 3, yet it scores much higher on acid 3 than even IE 9.
Wow HN, talk about blaming the victim here. I guess Plurk was totally asking for it?
Getting things done by procrastinating
I'm not sure if he mentions it in the article I linked but there's a podcast (http://eluv.podbean.com/2008/10/10/eluv-live-interview-with-...) where he talks extensively about oil (coconut in particular) and he touches on fish oil and what happens when oxidized.
If an enemy could take control of a Reaper he wouldn't... Until it was returning to base at the end of its mission, at which point he'd fire its Hellfire missiles right into the control building. Then the dominoes would fall like a house of cards. Checkmate!
This is a valid point. Your blog should ideally be related to the business you are launching. Luckily, this frequently happens just because people's interests tend to line up that way.

But even if they don't, you'll get some interest from people just because they know who you are and are interested in what you're doing. And they may know know someone who would be interested in it...etc. So the permission asset is a pretty flexible tool, but obviously most valuable when it's on topic.
Sure, writing tests can find design bugs. But that's not really the question at hand here. The specifics are that we have a clear and obvious requirement ("torpedo should self-destruct if it turns a full 360 degrees") that turns about to be missing an important point ("EXCEPT IF IT IS ON THE BOAT").

No amount of testing the former will lead you to realize the latter. Sure, you might happen to come to the realization while writing the test, but you might do so over breakfast too.

I'm not saying "don't do testing". I'm trying to point out that it has limits. The fact that you've written tests and they pass doesn't get you off the hook for design bugs.
Force For the Future
Are these interviews available via a podcast?
No explicit mention of the San? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushmen

From Wikipedia:

The Bushmen have provided a wealth of information for the fields of anthropology and genetics, even as their lifestyles change. One broad study of African genetic diversity completed in 2009 found the San people were among the five populations with the highest measured levels of genetic diversity among the 121 distinct African populations sampled.[1][2] The San people can be considered the most basal branch of the phylogenetic tree comprising all living humans; its divergence node with other humans is the deepest ancestral state that can ever be reconstructed using DNA from living humans.

===
When you visit South Africa, a trip to the Cradle of Humankind is pretty cool.
So, in other words, even if you use Linux you would have to actually pay for Windows just in order to have the warranty (you have to have something to install to the computer when you take it for repairs).

Normally you can just reject the Windows license for which they have to reimburse actual money back to you.
I don't want to see graphical ads with tits (I'm looking at you Evony), ripped bodies, or oral cavities (teeth whitening). All of that stuff is, just like porn, opt in. Its also why I sign new PC users up to Gmail and not Yahoo Mail. Anything else, and especially contextual text ads, is fine by me.

That's why I agree with Google's position.
Rent a Car
This is why I use Amazon Payments. Unfortunately, their documentation is awful, but at least it's Amazon. They have a pride and reputation. I've never had a problem with them.
>> "But the truth of the matter is that most people won't install ad blockers on Chrome because people are fundamentally lazy."

BS. Most people don't install ad blockers because they don't want them. Not everyone is a new age hippy anti consumerism activist.

If an advert annoys you, don't visit that website again. Vote with your feet. That's being honest.

I not lazy, and I won't be installing adblock. I don't think doing so is good for the web.
I questioned your 2 hour old account elsewhere in this thread, but this settles it: flagged for trolling or possibly even astroturfing.
I was just expressing my personal opinion. I have nothing against them porting whatever they like. I just don't understand the motivation myself.

Just think, what if the same effort that went into copying Silverlight had been put into creating a true open source alternative to Flash and Silverlight?
This page is simply good graphic design.

A much better example of NYT's use of interactive media was their unemployment graphic: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/11/06/business/econo...