skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If every year you break your phone and extend your contract by two years, it is effectively perpetual. I don't know how often this happens in reality, though.

And what's stopping people from always buying the phones full-price and refusing to bind their contracts?

You can't buy a full-priced phone in any US store, and you have to go looking for them on the Internet. And if you do buy an unsubsidized phone, your service plan won't be any cheaper (except, very recently, T-Mobile).
Morals that are not backed by reason are on shaky grounds

I'd argue that all moral decisions are made on emotional, not rational, grounds. The ones that appear to be reasoned are in fact just rationalizations of emotional decisions.

Morality is how emotions manifest themselves in decision-making, and those emotions evolved to maintain specific social behaviours. There's nothing wrong with that. That's how morality (e.g. reciprocity) works in all other animals, and it's why there are so many grey areas and edge cases (white lies being a prime example).
I have a TMobile PAYG. You can get the SIM from TMobile for $7 (from the store). It costs ~$0.10 / minute to talk (if you buy credit in $50 chunks). You can top-up directly from the phone with a credit/debit card, or on the web, or using a top-up card from a TMobile store - it's really easy, especially doing it from the phone. Personally, I don't give a hoot that they are marketed towards low income customers.

The thing that totally sucks in the US market is the lack of PAYG data plans, or for that matter the price of contract plans for data only. They 3x the price of Europe.
> Get ready for China's spam of science

FTFY
Yes, but I don't have time right now - suffice to say I have as much faith in the external existence of the world as in the existence of God. I'm quite skeptical (in the metaphys sense, not quite pyrrhonic though) but as much as I experience through sense data the world and by extension other minds; as much as that I believe in the triune God of Christianity (but not all the details, many I'm agnostic on).
OLPC + Khan Academny videos = win.
T-Mobile (they have a 3G "booster" - just text them to get the offer)
Thanks Patrick. That was an incredibly interesting read. Essentially, in consumer webapps, you've got to ask "What's in it for me?" for every action you want the user to take.
Because CPython doesn't want to invent it's own scheduler (and various other things that your operating system already does for you), further multiple threads can be active at the same time if they're doing any operations that release the GIL (such as I/O), Python can't know whether your thread will do any I/O before you create it.
15+ Sites de recursos de logotipos grátis
Um logotipo bem trabalhado que consegue transmitir a idéia central da sua empresa (ou site) é sem dúvida a referencia que seus clientes irão ter de seus negócios, afinal tudo que destaca sua empresa da concorrência é um marco para fixação.
The irony is that they already have a solution for this:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/08/make-your...
If google, in theory, determined that users almost immediately hit the back button when they hit a 404 page, it would make sense to have the page load & render as fast as possible. Right now, the page size is ~1.3k for me.

I also have a feeling that the 404 may be implemented in a different part of the stack than search. In a very unscientific test of data, the response times for 404 pages according to firebug are at least 10% faster than the normal response on the same subdomain. Also, of all the subdomains I tested, only m.google.com, picasaweb.google.com, and docs.google.com had different 404 pages.

Like I said, this is all blind guessing, but my feeling is that Google has reasons for not better utilizing 404s. Having better 404's isn't rocket science and there are google properties that have them (youtube) so there's certainly reasoning behind it.
> I have a lot of Chinese-language secondary level textbooks at home, and they are very good indeed.

Can you give a name or two? From my experience Chinese versions are often less well written than some American ones. And some of the best Mathematics textbook are Soviet Russia version
Another interesting one: gears.google.com does not redirect to google.com/gears, which is a 404. Contrast with voice and talk. Discoverable URLs clearly aren't a priority.
Inducing illusory ownership of a virtual body
"they analysed neuronal activity using arrays of electrodes implanted in the brains of two awake macaque monkeys"

Fantastic for the monkeys. What happened with them afterward?
I know a guy who breaks his phone more often than that. But I don't feel much sympathy. If you can't keep your phone in one piece, it's your own fault and your own problem. Carelessness costs money.
The interview has some good tips http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/business/17corner.html

I especially liked this part:

'My advice to young people is always, along the way, have a sales job. You could be selling sweaters. You could be selling ice cream on the street. It doesn’t matter. Selling something to somebody who doesn’t want to buy it is a lifelong skill. I can tell when somebody comes in for an interview and they’ve never had any responsibility for sales.'

I use something similar when I interview people - if they mention that the have done waitressing while at University is always a big plus. It is something that hones people's social skills and on top - your living depends so much on understanding what the 'customer wants'.
I have a lot of respect for this guy. The thing that disturbed me most from the article was this:

People walking to their cars and getting in their cars and sitting in their cars while he's still loading the bags from the cart. No "thank you." No nothing. Just a trunk thump and shift to reverse.

I could never be so cold and snobby. Geez, we're all human no matter what our station in life. What if the person pulled out and got immediately broadsided by a speeding car and this guy had to perform CPR on them?
> They should start charging Google to index their content, not the readers.

Why would Google pay? There's very little in the NYT that is unique. How may people would switch to another search engine if Google ignored the NYT?

Google delivers eyeballs for free. The NYT is free to monetize said eyeballs as it sees fit.
"intended specifically to provoke argument"

Nothing could be further from the truth. I was hoping for (and got) intelligent, measured discussion from a lot of smart people on the history, merits, demerits, etc of both approaches. I felt (and still believe) there would have been less discussion without both articles being posted. As it is, the HN front page often features opposing viewpoints simultaneously, one often in response to the other. Submitting them together simply accelerated the process. It's more interesting than a poll ("Spaces or Tabs?") and FAR more interesting than me typing up a summary of both arguments and submitting that instead, as you suggested in an earlier comment.
The logo they use never even was their logo. It plain old Times Bold with different colors applied. And they use tables for the layout.

There is no image on this page, it’s all just a pretty small html file (1,359 bytes).
Probably not for long, though. At the rate they're getting better, computers will probably eclipse humans within my lifetime.

What I find interesting is that even though I get crushed by both, it's very easy for me to tell the difference between a 1d human and a 1d computer. I sometimes wonder if it would be informative to try to build a weak Go AI that gets mistaken for a weak human player.
Wii board comparable to 100x more expensive physio "force platforms"
I bailed out of the cellphone market after my last contract expired. I'm on Skype Out ($3/mo) + Google Voice (incoming calls go to voicemail and I call them back) + iPod Touch until a compelling reason to enter the market again shows up. Ideally, I'll just get a better iPod Touch and continue to rely on "good enough" WiFi coverage in my area (University WiFi + whatever I can pick up from restuarants/bars while I'm out). I would like to be connected to the phone network 24/7, but it's not worth a 10x increase in price.
In a situation such as this where there really can't be more than one interpretation of user intent, I would still redirect to the maps page but display a Twitter or Posterous-style animated message div at the top. The user then knows they made an error, and that it was corrected for them.
I couldn't find the chillingeffects mention through google.com.au, nor the article through google.com. Looks like it was buried by the news stories.
Facebook Glitch Causes Unfriendly Security Error
tl;dr: Your use cases speak into it too.

For example, in FF once the awesomebar has your address then with sufficient use most addresses are only 2 or 3 characters away (6 entries shown gives a space of > 100,000 entries in 3 chars, way more if you include unicode addresses!). So if it's something I'm going to use often at home then I'd look at the opposition for a geek news site and choose a unique letter if possible (not s:slashdot, not d:digg, not h:hackernews, etc.). Of course if it's an Apple audience you don't need to worry about this particular effect but you get the idea. Um, where was I. Yeah, if you want me to hit your link when I'm on the road or using others computers as opposed to simply when I'm home, or if I need to tell the address to n00bs not just email/tweet it then don't go for the geeky "domain hack".
DISOG: Session Hijacking - User Education
You'll probably notice that the 404 pages across most Google properties is the same. For example:

http://images.google.com/mapss

And you might also notice that no matter what subdomain you hit, the path is all that seems to matter:

http://images.google.com/maps
http://maps.google.com/images

It would be logical to conclude that there's some server you're hitting before you get to the service specific backend, and that maybe that is the reason the 404 pages come back faster.
She was working for how many years? How much money did she put into EI (Employment Insurance)?

You've forgotten how much it hurts to fall! Unbelievable. I bet you also think that EI cuts into your paycheck. That would be irrational.
If you are eligible to cancel an existing T-Mobile UK contract they can put you on a 4gbp a month 3gb soft-cap data only contract.

(I think the PAYG offer is soft-capped at 1gb, and contract rates are better for the occasional call/SMS.)

This is a great deal for N1 customers if you spend most of the day in WiFi coverage, as there are VoIP clients for Skype and Truphone on Android.
It's probably an Opera-specific problem. I've created a uservoice idea/issue for it.
PyTomTom 0.4 su Ubuntu
no? Anybody? Was this a stupid question, or did no one have any evidence pro or con?
megamark16 - can I just OT and commend you for your sit4.us idea. I think it's really good, just the right depth without being too far in. If you add some sparkle on that (style it I mean) I can see you get lots of interest.
Data Visualization Yarn: Mr. Penumbra's Book Store
I wonder when will Australian Gov Hackers try to hack some australians gmail account and Google threatens to leave Australia.
Just to warn potential readers: this article has nothing to do with quantum entanglement. It's linkbait for the title, something that's not surprising coming from New Scientist. Entanglement is used briefly as an analogy in the article, and not a very good one at that --- the interesting thing about quantum entanglement is that it allows stronger-than-classical correlations (Bell inequalities), but there is nothing in this article to suggest anything like that is going on in the brain. The original research, which is about a kind of phase locking going on between different parts of the brain, does sound interesting.
" I was hoping for (and got) intelligent, measured discussion"

the line between this and "argument" (used in the debating sense, not in the shout at each other sense) is very thin. The word to focus on is "provoke" not "argument". What makes it "argument" is that by setting up artificial poles opposed to each other simultaneously you are attempting a combative argument vs an exploratory one. That it didn't turn out that way is due to the strength of the HN community, which largely didn't take the bait. But bait in the water, there certainly was.

This is (imo) abuse of the system. Just do a thought experiment and imagine people submitting all kinds of paired posts (like you did) to get "intelligent measured responses" to their own questions - "Emacs is better than Vim"/ "Vim is better than Emacs", say. "Measured responses", sure!

HN would go to hell very fast if everone started looking for "measured responses" in this fashion. Quoting allenbrunson , "I'm just noting that this is a clever hack that illustrates a problem in the system.". It is clever. and it is abuse in that it takes advantage of a vulnerability in the system.

"I felt (and still believe) there would have been less discussion without both articles being posted."

yes this is the hack bit. And it works (as long as it is just the odd person doing this). Jumping a red light "works" too, if reducing the length of your trip is the only criterion.

"FAR more interesting than me typing up a summary of both arguments and submitting that instead, as you suggested in an earlier comment."

In other words you don't want to do any work up front but do want get people to argue each side of artificially paired posts. Hence the word "provoke".

As Allen said above, "if this hack started becoming common, I'm sure the editors would eventually put a stop to it."

In other words, it is only the rarity and novelty of this tactic that stops you from getting stomped on.

All that said, do what you will! If such abuse continues and spreads, the moderators will land on it with both feet.

Or you may indeed have found a superior method of topic submission and I am completely off base, in which case I'd expect the other participants on HN to copy your superior style of topic submission.

Signing off this thread,
Especially considering how many (and recent!) examples there are of that kind of thinking leading to disaster in economics. I'd say those that don't learn history are doomed to repeat it, but this barely qualifies as history.
Hint: it's not a person with only one testicle.
Yea now you have to try Aboriginal and Encyclopedia Dramatica to get the chillingeffects mention !
Speed here is a subject of debate. Does Google want to minimize the load time of this particular 404 page (so you can do whatever you're going to do), or do they want to minimize the time to your intended destination? I think it's the later.
Text service resumes 6 months after Xinjiang riots
Umm they don't want u to type in the URL they want you to Google even the URLs you visit daily. When people see the 404 I would fair to say they get frustrated and Google what they were looking for.
I find it deeply worrying that something can be censored based on the complaints of someone who would take Encyclopaedia Dramatica seriously.
The assumption holds. She is acting in her own fiscal self-interest, and she acted in that way earlier when she didn't complain about having some of her paycheck get dumped into EI (Employment Insurance).

It was an invest made and holy shit is it paying off now. She's able to get money and search for a much better job instead of being broken down by shitty hours and a shitty wage.
I spent awhile in South Africa studying public health back when I was in school and as a result, learned Xhosa.

Very fun to learn (grammatically fairly straightforward, but making all the sounds correctly is a bit challenging) and being able to speak a language with clicks is always a good party trick.

Miriam Makeba is the most well known Xhosa singer, but if anyone is interested in listening to some other music, Pitch Black Afro and Hip Hop Pantsula are good examples of modern SA hip hop/kwaito music. Not 100% Xhosa - both also mix in some of the other languages mentioned in the wiki entry.
(for comparison, my AT&T contract for 600 minutes, 300 text messages, "unlimited" 3g, costs - after taxes - approximately $110/mo)
The Achilles' Heel of Performance Isolation in the Cloud
Still hoping Google's acquisition of On2 means the VP* series of codecs is coming to HTML 5 royalty free.
I think it's better to return the 404. I hate it when the Comcast DNS redirects me to their search page when I misspell a domain name.
Looks good.

The only thing is that I find I'm often solving "the internet is broken" issues these days, so there might be a circular problem there.
> The question is: by how much can we alter the planet's ecosystem before it is unsafe? The IPCC's models predict about a 2C temperature rise in the 2090s from the 1990s if we have 450 ppm in the atmosphere. That temperature rise is further predicted to be the point we had better not go past, to avoid more severe damage.

What definition of "unsafe" are we using? What effects are you assuming? (Ice has been growing in the artic since 2007.) (I can't find my reference to the non-existent sea-level increases....)

As many have asked, what is the "correct" temperature? Is it the one during the medieval warming period? The one during the depths of the little ice age? Now? 1934?

We know that Earth has had considerably higher CO2 concentrations in the past. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Phanerozoic_Carbon_Dioxide... (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoclimatology )
From that wikipedia page: "The untyped lambda calculus is Turing-complete, but many typed lambda calculi, including System F, are not."

Anyone have any details about System F not being turing complete? Is it not straightfoward to implement an untyped lambda calculus in a typed one?
Just to expand on the previous reply: a lot of C libraries have a blocking model where you call a function that blocks until it is complete. The simplest example is fread(). If the interpreter doesn't support multiple threads, you have to do a lot of gymnastics to make sure you never block the interpreter in an extension.

It can be done (this is how Ruby pre-1.9 works), but people complain about it a lot. Matz's rationale for why he added native OS threads to Ruby 1.9 was "people seem to like them."

In response to my fread() example you may be tempted to say that you can just put the underlying fd in non-blocking mode with fcntl(2). This is unfortunately unsafe (as I recall), though I cannot find the reference right now. Accessing the fd directly with read() and write() is non-blocking mode is of course safe, but then you have to do your own buffering.

Also, while poll() and select() give you most of what you need to make your I/O non-blocking, I recall a case where a pipe will be write-ready, but if you try to write too much data at the same time the write will block anyway, instead of returning a short count of bytes written. This was on RHEL3 Linux, so things may have changed since then.
> There must be some agreement towards an acceptable limit to the dumping of a disruptive chemical, in massive quantities, into a finite atmosphere on a finite planet.

That doesn't tell us what said acceptable limit is.
1) i never said any job. unemployment insurance is to make sure that you have the opportunity to find another job to maintain your standard of living. if you're living fine off unemployment payments and you're taking a bit of a pay cut in a prospective job, you're not taking a standard of living hit, just a pay cut.

2)form of insurance, yes, but it does not pay out forever. there are limits on it. if you get fired, you can't sit on unemployment until you die. hence, if you found a job that helps maintain your standard of living, you're more rational to take the job than not take it and possibly end up with no income, hungry children, a forclosure, reposessions, etc..

3)ironically, i'm not. i'm quite pro assistance programs and mildly socialist. unemployment, welfare, etc. are all great programs if they are assisting the people who need them. people who don't need them shouldn't be drawing from them, though.

4) you don't think i made an argument? and if thats the way you feel, thats fine, you don't have to answer me. i don't appreciate shifting the focus to me instead of the argument, though. arguing by analogy is limited, but i think my inquiry is specific enough to fit inside the valid range.
Try reading more articles. Eventually you will get the request for registration.
One more problem: Patents.

GSM implementations require licensing IP from several major manufacturers (Nokia, Ericsson and others). As long as the project is small they probably won't bother. But just try basing a femtocell product on OpenBTS and they will be knocking on your door soon.
Challenge:  Expression without use of the verb "to be"
Americans complain just too much about their mobile carriers. You guys need to come to peace with the fact that you are below East Asia and Western Europe in mobile services and internet speeds.

You are still better positioned than 80% of the world, which includes Latin America, Africa, West Asia, Middle East and some other countries. You just can't have everything. sigh
The textbooks from the Hua Loo-keng School are very good indeed. I don't have a convenient Web reference at hand, alas.

I agree with you that mathematics textbooks from the Soviet Union are often excellent. I use two of those in my own supplemental math classes,

Mathematics 6 by Enn R. Nurk and Aksel E. Telgmaa

http://www.perpendicularpress.com/math6.html

(currently out of print, as explained on the webpage, as the second English edition is being prepared)

and

Algebra by Israel Gelfand and Alexander Shen.

http://www.amazon.com/Algebra-Israel-M-Gelfand/dp/0817636773

Both are full of interesting problems and expect learners to be smart. I particularly like Gelfand's views on mathematics education:

"I would like to make one comment here. Some of my American colleagues have explained to me that American students are not really accustomed to thinking and working hard, and for this reason we must make the material as attractive as possible. Permit me to not completely agree with this opinion. From my long experience with young students all over the world, I know that they are curious and inquisitive and I believe that if they have some clear material presented in a simple form, they will prefer this to all artificial means of attracting their attention--much as one buys books for their content and not for their dazzling jacket designs that engage only for the moment. The most important thing a student can get from the study of mathematics is the attainment of a higher intellectual level."

The late professor Gelfand was optimistic--based on long experience--that many learners can attain a higher intellectual level in mathematics, perhaps because of his flexibility as a teacher: "Students have no shortcomings, they have only peculiarities. The job of a teacher is to turn these peculiarities into advantages."
Why You Need to be in Silicon Valley
When you're out on a job interview and they ask you "Are you interviewing with anyone else?" or "Do you have any other offers?" or "What's your current salary?", what are the answers you give? Would you always answer these questions completely and honestly?
You can meet all standards (http's 404 error) and still have links on the error page.
This is interesting, but I see it as an example of social competition rather than conditioning. If I may hazard a guess: the sales team are all within earshot of each other, right?

People (and especially salespeople!) are competitive. When someone uses your software, how often the bell rings is a signal of that person's success -- a status symbol. Once one person starts using the software, everyone else will want to show off their success as well, so they adopt it as well.

My prediction: if the salespeople were separated, the bell would become an annoyance and they would disable it.
That's a cool workaround, but is an exta $27/month actually unjustified? How much time is lost when people are trying to contact you, and can't, or vice versa?