skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
To some extent, I let "failure" weed things out for me. Kind of like the story (about Reddit?) where the founders walked out of a law related class to go have waffles and realized they didn't really want to be lawyers. If you just can't keep your hands off the new project and it takes on a life of its own, that is telling you something (though what it might be saying is that you just like doing the fun parts of the job and don't want to buckle down and get through the crappy parts of it -- so beware you don't misinterpret what it says). On the other hand if it seems like a great idea but you would rather "go have waffles" (so to speak), then it probably needs to be someone else's baby (or not live at all).
Getting good grades is only worth it if the professors judgement of what you need to learn is more accurate than your own. Considering that a) your professor probably has likely very little real world experience and b) your professor has no sense of your own personal interests, goals, and strengths, self-directed learning is almost always the better option.
Nothing against multiple manufacturers, but 30 models per manufacturer??? That can only confuse the buyers. I for one am completely sick of intractable product choices.

I can only guess it is some MBA induced pricing scheme that leads to the product multiplicity. It's supposed to fool buyers into choosing the next higher priced model (by adding features one at a time), and make it difficult for them to compare models.

If the manufacturer doesn't know how to make one good phone, maybe they should just quit.
> For a start, we have to ask why the legal power exists to seal records in this way

That is exactly the key.

The fact that a government can put itself above any sort of public inquiry for 70 years is completely counter to what any respectable democracy should stand for.
In Germany it costs 2000€ if you buy it "subsidized" through the operator. That is not cheap. On the free market it seems to be around 650€.
Mozilla really needs to step it up. TraceMonkey is still way behind V8. They need to do something to get competitive with Chrome in terms of performance, or there's no possibility of ever switching back for me. Chrome is always 2-3x faster.
This looks even worse for Pachauri, the chairman of the IPCC:

- The scientist that made the glacier claim now works for Pachauri - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherboo...

- A possible motive? "Pachauri ... may have raised millions of dollars for his New Delhi institute on the basis of the totally bogus ‘glaciergate’ claim by the IPCC that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035" http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2010/01/23/ipcc-h... (Walter Russell Mead)
Emesene 1.6 su Ubuntu
Then users shouldn't use patent encumbered formats.

Blaming the user is not a strategy the results in good software. I contend that it does much to hurt the cause it it supposed to promote. You're also blaming the user for something they can't control: the format of the content they're trying to view.

Moreover, it isn't simply a patent-encumbrance issue, as Mozilla's choice has been to equally block other patent-free formats. It's Theora or nothing. Read that again and then tell me it's all about freedom.

Simple as that.

It isn't, in fact. Most of the video content on the web today is in patent-encumbered formats, specifically h.264. You're saying that users should not want to continue to be able to view the content is already out there.

It is not the place of a web browser vendor to punish users for wanting to use the web normally. In fact, quite the opposite.

There already been enough mess by formats supported by browser X but not Y.

...and Mozilla is demonstrably perpetuating that mess by only supporting a format that nobody uses and nobody wants to use. Meanwhile all major operating systems currently support h.264 natively, all major video sites use h.264, and all other <video>-supporting browsers support h.264. If Mozilla wants to help clear the mess, they're doing exactly the wrong thing.
I went to downtown Chicago last summer, and my reaction was "Wait, this is it? Weaksauce!"

Actually, that's how I react to most American city planning these days, now that I've learned what a proper city can be.
The title reminded me of the sound clip from Starcraft when you play as the Zerg: "Spawn more Steve Jobs!" I mean, "Spawn more overloads!"
Magnetophoretic writing tablets were 3 for $10 at the drug store down the street last week. They don't require any power to draw, display, or erase and I'd guess their contrast ratio is better than the current electrophoretic/e-ink displays.. but the ones I got are cheap knock-offs. The true Magna Doodle has better resolution and contrast.
GMU Speech Accent Archive - spoken audio clips of various accents
I'd like to know how ComScore can tell the difference between a TCP connection from a machine and one directly from a human.
this one?

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/j-spati...
Offtopic for the linked article, but the original O'Reilly article says that digital sales will take over physical book sales sooner than people thought.

I think that's true, judging by my own purchase behavior. I haven't bought any O'Reilly digital books yet, but I have bought a few from Pragmatic.

I now prefer buying technical books in a digital format to overcome the high shipping charges(international customer). And although I can pirate most books, I don't. As long as they provide me with an easy way to give them my money and very few restrictions on how or where I can read the content that I bought, I'll be happy to fork over my hard earned dollars. Music downloads on the other hand, don't provide that and so....

What remains is the feeling you get when you grab a physical book and a cup of tea to enjoy on your couch. You get used to reading on your ebook reader and your phone, but it won't be the same. Things are getting better with different reader designs and I think newer generations will find this less of a problem.
Indeed, this entire article is BS.

The value of freedom of self-expression and openness is universal. These are not "western ideals" that are being "imposed" upon a different society, they are universal rights. The basic notion of simply existing is in fact a form of self-expression, i.e. to be who you are. To not be afraid to say, "I am gay."

Whoever the author of this propaganda piece is, if they were actually genuine in their call for "intellectuals in developing countries" to resist the very notion of truth itself, they could have at least provided the reader with some rational arguments to that effect. To do so would be an impressive feat, so it's not surprising that no such justifications were given.
Precisely.

The history of personal computing since the eighties does have something to teach us about "the power of variety". It teaches us that consumers don't rate variety very highly compared to consistency, software compatibility and -- above all -- price. In the early 1980s there was a wide variety of microcomputer operating systems and hardware platforms to choose from. Today, we are down to two operating systems, broadly speaking -- Windows and Unix -- and pretty much one PC hardware platform, built around commodity x86 processors and their associated commodity motherboards and peripherals.

Commodity PCs grew to dominate the market because they were a commodity, which is another way of saying that they were essentially all the same. For a while you couldn't even get them in a different color; if you didn't like beige you had to go buy some spray paint and mod your own case. If you bought a PC you knew that it would support a standard monitor and a standard PC mouse and a standard PC keyboard and would run Microsoft Excel if you wanted to pay the standard price for the standard-issue operating system.

The major reason why PC manufacturers proliferated so wildly was price, but that battle is largely over: Twenty-five years of price wars and middleman-elimination, aided by the internet, have done their work, and now literally everybody has their hardware built by Foxconn or some other company within half an hour's bicycle ride of Foxconn, and it all costs roughly the same feature-for-feature. It's just a different world than it used to be.
Over-indebtedness and its association with the prevalence of back pain
These kind of automated twitter-bots really don't fit in with my usage of Twitter. They add way too much noise to the stream. I really don't care that gulp 0.1.1 just got released.

Can someone explain to my why you'd want this much info pushed into your stream?
It's Tumblr. That's how reblogging works.
I flagged this.
How did you "scrape" through the black? Just with fingernails?

When you say, "overlay with black", you just mean that you colored over the top with black crayon?

I have several nephews + nieces who might actually want to do this.
"Adams introduced the word confusopoly in this book. The word is a portmanteau of confusion and monopoly (or rather oligopoly), defining it as "a group of companies with similar products who intentionally confuse customers instead of competing on price". Examples of industries in which confusopolies exist (according to Adams) include telephone service, insurance, mortgage loans, banking, and financial services." -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dilbert_Future
Profiling Garbage Collection in Haskell with DTrace
Surely, no real person is going to produce the exact same sound twice. Check the database of previous samples for matches or very close matches.
Viral marketing is, 'regular' marketing can be divided in to two branches, one where people are informed about a product and left to draw their own conclusions, and another - much less ethical one - where marketing is used a means of influencing decisions people make in general.

The latter I have a real problem with.

SwellJoe has already posted Bill Hicks, let me contribute this little gem:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi63rXnuWbw
Well you have to keep the receipts, but you don't have to send them in.
World latest news: 'Bin Laden tape' warns Obama of more attacks
If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

I feel like there have been an increasing number of posts like this: posts that straddle relevance. I find the topic of climate change and the associated politics interesting. However, this type of story comes up in my political and more mundane newsreader. (I don't mean that to sound snotty, but I believe many readers are like me in that regard.)

I come to HN for very interesting stories that get pushed by a community composed of smart people. They propagate good stories that either are breaking news or could have been missed.

I don't think this story qualifies...but I am not sure how to properly disqualify it. However, I think PG's TV news rule is a very good acid test.
Jarod Diamond wrote about this in Guns, Germs and Steel. Excellent book.
Science is progressive. If something turns out to be wrong we can fix it next time around.

Good science. But it's kind of difficult to undo mis-spending of taxpayer dollars, not to mention the economic damage caused by policies based on such mistakes.
Lots of interesting reading on asyncronous computing
I usually don't enjoy this type of bird's-eye view article, but that was a really cool, useful collection of links.
My exact thoughts when reading this, I was playing with a similar device yesterday but it was my daughters Dora the Explorer Magna Doodle... maybe TechCrunch should feature that next.
Chrome OS: Our future desktop experience
How to Encode an MP3 Using Twitter
On Self-Promotion
To give some numbers from my own experiences, I've been blogging for about three years and have 700 posts under my belt. I'm up to 300 RSS subscribers and 400 visitors a day.

It's definitely not a quick fix for any startup, and you might well be better off focused on improving your landing page conversion rate if you want an immediate return on your time. It's been a massive long-term help for me though, both teaching me how to communicate and market much more effectively, and making connections with my readers. Multiple times I've walked into meetings cold and it's turned out someone knows me from my blog, which has been a massive help.

Plus, it's actually a lot of fun!
I am curious to know whether it's a genuine opinion held in China (which may have been formed by propaganda) or a post-fact justification.
I'm aware of what is being said. I'm pointing to the fact that it's Cory Doctorow saying it, not O'Reilly.
"Some researchers have argued that it is unfair to attack the IPCC too strongly, pointing out that some errors are inevitable in a report as long and technical as the IPCC's round-up of climate science."

Yeah, especially if you willfully ignore them when they're known, in favor of a position.

I'm getting the sense that advocacy is playing too high a role in both the science and the policy of climate change. Indeed, advocacy seems to have coupled science and policy into one large system.

I'm also wondering if "climate change" shouldn't even be a phrase in common usage, at least not the way we use it to refer to an accepted direction in policy and earth science.
Great comment. As another big fan I'll see your ambience and raise you some pioneering noise pop:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZWP5pmsRDE
This needs the ability to save to a flash drive and it would be golden. Can't imagine a watch battery could still be enough power however.
There is definitely a very bound on the time that it could take, but one of the advantages of asynchronous is that you can design for the average case, not the worst case. Each circuit forms part of a data pipeline, and with enough data in this pipeline you can guarantee a maximum time limit.

Unfortunately, to match the minimum to the maximum, you would likely have to design your implementation to be very slow. In the constant time case you remove all the pipelining advantages, as you would be required to 'fill' the pipeline.
Huh? Since when does a CA need your private key/passphrase? Any time I've gotten a commercial certificate, I've only had to provide a Certificate Signing Request (CSR). Ahh, it seems the author didn't follow all of the instructions on the page he referenced (http://www.h-online.com/security/features/SSL-for-free-step-...):

'After that, StartSSL kindly offers to generate a pair of keys for the certificate. However, since the private key for protecting one's own server should never be given away or generated by someone else, the "Skip" option should be chosen and the Certificate Signing Request generated earlier should be uploaded onto the server.'

This is a bit creepy. StartSSL is providing a "free" certificate using a process where they also generate the private key & passphrase (unless you're smart enough to realize what a terrible idea this is). That's like the hardware store keeping a copy of every key they cut.
I agree, neat! - I just tried it also on the book I am writing.
I wonder if anyone with some internet prestige can ask MA if he is unbiased in this.

Ie, does he get his comscore access "for free" -- are his stats "accurate" without paying?
Fingernails work, it's what I used when I did this a few times. Your nails just get really gunky :\ Otherwise, a smooth-edged knife works pretty well. Anything with a decent edge, not sharp. Rounded edges don't work.

Overlaying with black is, yes, covering the whole page with black crayon.

So, the steps:

Fill ENTIRE page with colored crayon patches / squiggles.
Color over ENTIRE page with black crayon. Try to make it TOTALLY black.
Scrape off with fingernail / knife / wooden clay tools / whatever.
Hang on the fridge to admire for several generations.

Ultimately, it's a cheaper way of doing those scratch-drawing things, and doesn't require sharp tools and a careful hand to not gouge the paper.
Pro Tip: Reading self-help blogs is not a rare and valuable skill, no matter how good you are at it.
Politically speaking, it won't happen. Global warming is inextricably bound up with the IPCC in people's minds. So much effort was expended on telling everyone that they had to believe the IPCC because it was a consensus of all the scientists in the world (what, you think you're smarter than all the scientists in the world?) that to come along now with "Did we say that consensus? We meant this consensus" can't possibly work.

I meant to post this the last time the subject came up, just for the record: it's beginning to look like the IPCC (and with it, perhaps, the entire issue) has hit its peak.
True but I believe Motorola's aim is to target the entire consumer segment - low-end to high-end. Motorola's own OS was old and outdated, so they're betting big on Android which is why we'll probably see 20-30 devices ranging from $199 to $599 (un-subsidized) all with different capabilities.

Apple's doing really well because they've carved out a niche for themselves. The 18% market share in Smartphone Market equals to about only 1% of the entire Mobile Market. Motorola held a 30%+ market share in the entire Mobile Market not too long ago which is what I guess they're setting their sights on again.

As far as developing 1 phone to rule all: Apple's very uniquely positioned and they're probably one of the only few companies that can pull this off. The ecosystem they've created around iTunes is very powerful.

I've used a Nexus One, Palm Pre over the last few weeks and even though they are fantastic devices I'll still switch back to the iPhone because I have a fantastic Desktop Counterpart i.e. iTunes.
Can anyone point out the interesting parts here? It's been a long long while since i looked at circuit design. Is it the whole book, or a particular paragraph?
I ran into the same problem when I first used StartSSL a few months ago. It seemed like there were some cases where automatic verification would work and other cases where verification was deferred to a human. I believe StartSSL is a small, possibly one man, operation, so you might have to wait a few hours for human verification. Once my account was verified, everything after that was pretty easy and quick.
Hah, yeah, that's everywhere. Much better pictures, thanks!
I've been investigating a similar disappointing performance of that benchmark on my Mac install of 3.6. Turns out that Firebug and Adblock Plus can both double the GC delay time.

Trying to figure out what information to collect to report that in bugzilla right now.
Ah, so I'm not the only one experiencing suffering when having to use Windows. :)

Recently learned about AndLinux [1] and CoLinux [2] -- running a Linux kernel atop Windows. Didn't use it yet but looks promising.

[1] http://www.andlinux.org/
[2] http://www.colinux.org/
Its becoming tougher no doubt and thats why developing scale (users) across multiple platforms early is very important.
The problem is that it is used as an axiom. It is always assumed there would be no music, but does anyone rational really believe that, or is it just music industry rhetoric? You can take the man out of the music but you can't take the music out of the man -- does anyone say something similar about accountants? (I personally think, and have experienced, that it's true about anything people are passionate about).
Yes, but in the meantime, let's have Wikileaks.
Met him at a local music festival in 2001. I gave him a CD of my music and he apologetically said "I might not be able to do anything with it". Nice guy!

[Edit] I didn't hear back from him but that's what he said might happen.
How can you be sure that the people going are HN readers?
I'm a huge fan of Eno's work. This article, however, is 90% adjectives. Did the author just find a thesaurus for the first time, or what?
is there something im missing in regards to this whole public analytics game? Most of us use google analytics. Those are the most accurate stats. If we're interested in making stats public (or a certain subset) like we do with comscore/being quantified, why don't we just make google analytics stats public?

1) Take API for google analytics
2) Make app with api
3) Let site owners choose which stats to make public
4) Stats are public, problem solved.

This is a weekend project that requires funding in the amount of red bull.

*Please please correct me if I'm wrong. This isn't my area of expertise and I may be overlooking some very important things.
Green_Tea_Weight_Loss
> documentation is spotty

True, but we're working on that (and we're very responsive on IRC and mailing lists).

> not enough big projects are using it

I don't think that's true anymore; Digg, Facebook, Rackspace, Twitter, Mahalo, Ooyala, SimpleGeo, WebEx, and others are using Cassandra: http://n2.nabble.com/Cassandra-users-survey-td4040068.html
If you wanted to map asynchronous designs to an ordinary FPGA, I think there would be two major hurdles:
1) Choosing an asynchronous methodology (There are more then one), and mapping that to the LUT. This shouldn't be too difficult, but you are likely to have a high area overhead for this.
2) Getting the place and router to behave as you would expect it to. It depends if the router uses the clock to propagate it's information, although I expect it would NOT.

Getting the asynchronous IP core into a SoC system is not that difficult. You'll have to convert synchronous signals to asynchronous signals and vise versa, but once you figure that out (it's actually very simple) you can plug in the asynchronous core anywhere.

I used dual rail QDI in my circuit design, with a mix of four phase handshakes and two phase handshakes, depending on the application.

Fault-tolerant logic is definitely feasible - I worked on this for one project! The technique is patented by Achronix, but it definitely is almost bullet proof and only requires an area overhead similar to a voting schema.
If one could erase parts of the screen by themselves, a much larger version might be a clean replacement for a whiteboard. Perhaps a few colors would be required as well. And, the ability to save images. Now, it'll cost $3K.
I rarely use checks anymore. However, the IRS will accept a check but not a credit or debit card. They are kind of dinosaurs in that regard.

(Though there is a way to pay them with a debit card through a third party for a small fee.)
HTML5 video and codecs
It's a whole book.
Except that getting good grades often has other benefits -- e.g. making it easier to win scholarships, get into grad school, and impress employers for internships or immediately post-college jobs.
Agreed. It doesn't matter why you're doing it. Hijacking existing ads is a dirty tactic.
Have you seen Adam Curtis' documentary "Century of the Self"? If not, I'm pretty sure you would like it. I'm only partway through, but it's already filled in a number of blanks for me as to how we got where we are. (Edit: to be specific, the stuff in part 1 about Edward Bernays and the psychoanalytic roots of modern PR is riveting.)

I mention it because your distinction between two types of marketing is fundamental to the series, which is the story of how the second type was discovered and triumphed over the first.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8953172273825999151&...
I think a lot of the worth of HN is in the analysis by the intelligent people who roam these virtual halls so even if the story is mundane I often learn a lot from the people who follow climate science and politics much more closely than I.

I do agree that the 2nd or 3rd story on <highly regarded panel cooks the climate data> has diminishing returns but I don't think a mundane/popular media story should be grounds for disqualification a priori for the afore mentioned reason.
Hopefully this has some advantage because those plastic sheet things are awfully cheap, e.g.: http://toyday.co.uk/shop/party-bag-toys/magic-drawing-board/...
The US situation after the Second World War, obviously.
One of his other projects thats pretty ingenious.

http://www.michaelv.org/projects/labs/wireless.php
Wikipedia : The Global Times is a daily Chinese newspaper produced under the auspices of the official Chinese Communist Party newspaper, the People's Daily, focusing on international issues.

Yikes ! Communist-endorsed BS !