skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Austin bus system is $2 for a day pass (unlimited riding for 24 hours), $8 for a for a 7 day pass and $28 for a 31 day pass. $300/month is a bit low for rent, but for $500 you can have a nice 1 bedroom, $350-$400 you can get a reasonable studio in a decent part of town.
IPad shows missing Flash support in Apple promo video
I just started last week and can I ever reiterate the calf-screaming bit.

I think that's fascinating though. Until just recently I never even touched on how weak my calves must be. Now I'm hoping to learn the depths of it.
Having done both J2EE (at Sun) and Rails as well -- there is an order of magnitude increase in productivity. No question.

Many (not all) java web shops have difficulty putting out functionality at a rate that they need to in order to survive. Java is not the language for the web.
Depending on how technology costs come down, potentially cheaper than helicopters and maybe even patrol cars.
Plus... it's naive (IMHO) to consider iPad 1.0 as a static target. With the Release Event behind them you can safely bet they are working on rounding out expanded features for iPad 1.x, 2.0, etc. And (reliable or not) as the following AppleInsider article suggests Apple has probably held back additional features and target audiences:

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/01/29/apple_to_targe...

If you try to predict the long-term success of iPad based on 1.0 you just don't get it.
I will draw your attention to Apple's own slides, where they place the iPad between the iPhone (and smartphones in general) and a MacBook (and personal computers in general). They are undoubtedly interested in selling all three for some time to come.

Will it supplant personal computers for some people? Sure. It just means that personal computers will have to shift to doing what they do best even better. It might drain a lot of life from the netbook market, but that's about it.
Could you please elaborate on ergonomics? Exactly what is causing the neck problems?

Personally I am using much less monitors, but I am very interested in ergonomics of it.
Comcast acknowledges bittorrent speed-throttling as a mistake
An In-Depth Look at the User Experience of iPhone Safari
Samsung F480 Tocco Unlocked
Samsung F480, extremely good-looking portable receiver designed for its fans and lovers through awfully beautiful seem and dissimilar functions. Fashionably slim designed F480 packs in EDGE and GPRS connectivity, built-in music player, FM radio.
Anybody else get a kick of the 'Oracle/Agile' bubble on slide 41?
Pandora, Last.fm, etc. are other good examples where at least one process in the background would be nice.
Marketing a product is about knowing your audience. You have to make certain assumptions.

For the vast majority of computer users out there, the ability to have email, chat, or other "social" interactions pushed to them is taken for granted. I think she has a very very good point.

Of course the author is writing from their own viewpoint, and I think her observation is fairly valid.
To me, developing an infrastructure for energy and developing vaccines are both long term goods.
Clever title. In my experience, in a practical sense, tries tend to be very memory intensive with only a marginal increase in speed over other alternatives like simple hash lookups. However, this is a very interesting and more typical use-case for a trie. I've always like it better than using Hamming distance which still seems to get recommended in undergraduate texts.

Oh, and I glossed over the perl code, until I reread it and realized it was sleep code. First time hearing about this language...interesting.

http://sleep.dashnine.org/
Copy & paste some text from this article. Notice anything funny?
Psychology of Survival - don't give up
I've purchased Windows 3.1, 95, 98, 2000 and XP. I'm finally at peace with that now that I know that part of the money has gone to people really who need it.
I agree. Bill is saving tens of millions lives. I am disappointed that Marciovm'sfirst reaction is to judge Bill's great effort and criticize him as a person who just want to get good names. This certainly isn't true. Even if it is true, it is not important/relevant because he is still saving millions.
AtD uses a lot of memory but this technique made a difference speeding up the spell checker. For things best done with a hash lookup, we use hashtables. This is what we're using for generating edits still (I wrote most of this post in August 09, finally finished it today).

[Edit: I wrote Sleep :) I don't promote it much but it's been with me for many years and I've applied it to a lot of problems including the NLP in AtD]
I have been coding on a tiny netbook (with emacs in full screen mode) for the past few months and I LOVE it.

I now think that needing more than a 9" monitor is a code smell.
That is such a paternalistic thought. Their lives are their own, they are not ours to protect or to give up on. If we want to help those societies, the best thing we can do is to help their economies, which indirectly is the best possible way to avoid more people dying unnecessarily in the future.
Rapper Mogul Birdman Unveils Indie Oil Business
Possibly. I think it's the difference between a plain BST and an AVL or Red/Black tree. More work for some gain but ultimately the data has something to say about whether it matters. I think this scheme would certainly balloon the logic for generating edits for a word which is the whole purpose of this post.
_why on Ruby Metaprogramming
You're right - such massive population interventions (for the better) have little precedent, so there may be some consequences that we're unaware of.

But I think you can improve lifestyle in two ways -- increase income like you mentioned, or decrease costs. It's possible for technology to bring costs down. And when costs come down, a $100 income can buy the lifestyle that $300 used to. So even if you depress wages, you can still win by depressing costs even further through technology.
Ask HN: PHP SPL, do phpers use it much?
I was curious to know if people are using the SPL to help manage their data structures?

If so, how much are you using and what do you use the most?

If not, why?
I'm also surprised at the complete lack of connectivity between an iPad and an iPhone/iPod/iPod Touch. It would seem to me to be a very "minority report" type of situation, with a larger device for regular use, and a simple set of gestures to swipe some data over to your iPhone for on the run portability.
You're obviously correct. You are also 3 sigma out in your understanding of the issue.

The response to bad science should be in the same dumbed down language that the bad science used.
Bootstrapping out of corruption, low faith in the state and minimal social infrastructure is a really hard problem. Public health, education, workforce capacity, the rule of law, and economic productivity are not separate problems that can be addressed in isolation. The problems are interdependent and really, really hard to solve. Pretending otherwise does a disservice to the people doing something to help.
Doesn't PEP 20 say that there should be only one way to do it? :-)
Thanks for the input.

Was trying to emphasize Creating Online. Updated the headline to "Build Customizable Database Apps. Online."
(For those who may read this after the change : the earlier headline was "Create Database Applications, Online.")

Will see how I can improve the image or provide an alternate one. Suggestions welcome.

Agree. Made the walk-through link more prominent than before.
You can't sit through an econ 101 course in college where the effects of minimum wage aren't thoroughly discussed as being negative.

It's just a fantasy to suggest that it isn't harmful to marginalized workers like minorities.
You've misunderstood Matt. When he says "This may increase productivity..." he means vaccines preventing disease will increase productivity, not that his mothers death will increase productivity. He assumes people will take care of their mothers and thus lower their productivity.

He's making the same point. This is why you will probably be down voted.
This might be because at most schools there are no cuts to the cross country team.
Redrawn Electoral College Map With 50 Equal Populations
Ok, I guess I deserve ad hominem if I hinted at it.

I grew up in Brazil and that makes you more cynical then growing up in California. When you live in a place like that, you learn that just because something sounds good doesn't mean it is.

I'm also a graduate student at MIT working on cancer nanotechnology. When not being provocative online I spent all my hours in lab developing tools for oncologists to detect cancer earlier and treat it better. I have a patent from my undergrad research at Berkeley for a needle-free drug delivery device that is moving through animal trials to hopefully make injections less painful for people (even kids - think of the kids!).

I also spent a ton of time making the MIT Clean Energy Prize into a national organization, to help students across the US get access to capital and mentorship so they can start clean energy companies when they graduate.

Is that altruistic enough for you?
Give the man a prize.
Rather than re-implement this it might be better to use an existing library. In Python, I've used pylevenshtein:

http://code.google.com/p/pylevenshtein/

However, I've found the Jaro-Winkler distance to be more useful than the Levenshtein. You can find good implementations for Jaro out there as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaro-Winkler_distance
It's terrible. It gets hacked often and it's pretty slow. The outdated support of php is pretty horrendous too. Who's building anything that supports legacy php 4 these days?
Why is 3-D Secure a single sign-on system?
Chill out -- marciovm is a great guy. Regardless of which side you're on, it's a healthy debate to have.
I disagree. You can see the repercussions from that in things like the Global Warming stories where everyone at HN collectively cringes when terms like "scientific consensus" are tossed about.

There's no short-cut to good science and dumbing it down fundamentally diminishes it.
Honest people still care about facts and science.
best quote in the piece:

It's too early to make guesses about the success of this effort at the IETF, but Paul Vixie, well known as the original author of the BIND DNS software and no less for his strong opinions, set the tone in a message to the IETF DNSEXT mailing list. "if we're going to add client identity to the query, can we do so in a more general way? i'd like to know lat-long, country, isp, language, and adult/child."
Deep Crack used specialized ASICs. The breakthrough is that these general-purpose (reprogrammable) FPGAs are actually faster.
This is fantastic news. One suggestion though, I would rather spend majority of that $10B in training, building the infrastructure, etc. so that 3rd world countries can produce their own vaccine/medicine/etc.

it's sort of like the old Chinese saying: Give a person a fish, and you feed them for a day. Teach a person how to fish, and you feed them for a lifetime.
Proof you can't listen to the commentators and the haters. You must continue to work on your product with extreme focus. It's easy to armchair criticize things, but hard to deliver. So... deliver. - golden words
This is for image. Their foundation causes great harm indirectly by investing in incredibly evil corporations exploiting and bribing in the third world. And their "voting rights" play is a joke, they are far from significant on any firm (from what I remember, it wasn't the case when the press investigated again; I wouldn't be surprised if they ever voted on any of those evil corporations.)

Just read the first paragraphs of the original investigation:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gatesx0...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_&_Melinda_Gates_Founda...
It is NOT paternalistic. So if you come across someone on the road and he is bleeding and dying. Will you help that person? Or will you think that he is bleeding and dying because there is violence is this society. So we should stop violence first so that no one will get hurt and die. For this poor person you come across, just let him die till he runs out of blood. It's just not right.
> I now think that needing more than a 9" monitor is a code smell.

I agree with this for most simple coding tasks, but when profiling, debugging and looking at documentation I think that more screen real estate is necessary.
Hindsight is 20-20. I wonder how many on this forum would have said the same thing about iPod as these guys did.

I resisted the iPod b/c of it's closed system for many years. That's what I didn't like about it when it came out but eventually my resistance was eroded. I broke down and got one and haven't looked back.

Today Apple has become the dominant player in tech when they used to be a niche player. It still amazes me. There is no Pepsi to Apple's Coke. Google could be it but they seem to be wavering as of late, pun intended.
How to Fall 35,000 Feet—And Survive
Awkward? It seems almost hostile.
I don't mind continuing to discuss the iPad, but really? We've had the exact same commentary posted in at least five different articles on HN. If we want to talk about the iPad, fine, but I don't see why there's a need to keep having articles referencing how much people hated the iPod when it came out. The points been made. We can criticize, condemn, laud, all we want, now we just have to sit back and see how it does.
Nice to have a post that deals with the concrete details of what the iPad is today, not what it may become. I agree that some of the UI elements look shoehorned in from the iPhone interface, and running iPhone apps on the device just wasn't going to have an elegant solution given the resolution-dependent UIs.

But the revolutionary bit is the multitouch/lack of mouse pointer part. The iPhone was a gentle introduction to this new paradigm. It'll be interesting to watch how people catch on and how quickly other companies adopt it — not to mention how Apple handles its patents around this stuff.
Sorry to say rude things here. But alecco, you're such an ignorant person. How dare you saying or linking to such lies for these kind of great attempts to save millions of lives.
First of all, I was not referring to any conspiracy at all, it is simple business and benefit analysis unless you believe in idealistic and humanitarian business that only care about human well being(I am not saying they do not exist either).
Second, the mercury and heavy metals that fish you eat might contain are not injected into your blood and small amounts if any gets there.
Third, "According to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, childhood diseases decreased 90% between 1850 and 1940, paralleling improved sanitation and hygienic practices, well before mandatory vaccination programs. Infectious disease deaths in the U.S. and England declined steadily by an average of about 80% during this century (measles mortality declined over 97%) prior to vaccinations.".
Once again I am not forcing you to believe in what I believe and made conclusion based on what I have read and reasoned so please do not attack me as an enemy of humanity I am just voicing my opinion and believe I have a valid argument. Though I like when people tell me that i am wrong, otherwise there will be no arguments and learning.
These algorithms solve a different problem. They calculate the edit distance between a string A and B. The algorithm in the post finds all strings B within an edit distance N of string A.
Are you arguing that the Gates Foundation can create the greatest amount of good in the world through lobbying and political spending in the U.S.? I think the Gates Foundation has it right: e.g. rather than relying on lobbying for educational reform, it is trying to innovate new methods of teaching and teacher-feedback which - if successful - will improve the education system with new methodologies rather than political ideas.
What Stops Population Growth
http://ryandaigle.com/ is also a useful resource. As is irc.
He helped to bring cheap personal computers to hundreds of millions of people, I doubt he needed help sleeping at night or needed his legacy protecting even before his unprecedented philanthropy. I feel the "Microsoft is evil" meme lacks some perspective, even when you consider their biggest misdeeds in the most negative light possible (i.e. crushing competition).
I'm not terribly convinced by this argument. The author sets up a distinction between achievements and metagames but doesn't really hold to it.
Introducing: Readability 1.5
Looks like this is the TED version of his blog post at sivers.org: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=668197
It's already in your self-interest to be healthy. This is simply re-aligning the doctor's interest with your own. Financially speaking, it's in most western doctors' self-interest for you to be perpetually diseased. For example, doctors are often found receiving kickbacks for prescribing medicines or running certain expensive diagnostic tests.

How different would our system be if doctors had cause to participate in your wellness? Encourage people to stop drinking soda, to negotiate bulk gym memberships for all his clients, have a monthly newsletter full of healthful recipes, have a staff person call every few weeks and ask how you've been eating, exercising? Invite everyone on the newsletter to events like hiking, bike riding, nutrition classes, etc?

When you call her up and have questions about improving your lifestyle, diet, and exercise it's suddenly in her interest to spend time with you and give you expert information.

Suddenly doctors everywhere would change their positions on some political issues: AMA would push for better food quality laws (how about restricting hydrogenated oil and HFCS like nearly every other 1st world country has done?). We'd have a better chance to replace sugar and corn subsidies with more healthful alternatives.

Wow; this would be huge... and it'll won't happen anytime soon. Too much money is being made perpetuating the problems.
It doesn't matter as long as the amount it costs to maintain the roads is collected in fuel taxes.
37Signals covered this or something similar: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2087-smart-pasting-at-the-new....

Tynt (http://www.tynt.com/) was the "culprit" in that case and looks so here.
In case anybody else doesn't see it immediately (it took me a couple of tries) -- the 'funny' bit is that it automagically appends "Read More: <link>" to your selection.

I haven't pored through their code, but I already know that my initial suspicion (binding CTRL+C with JS) isn't accurate, as right-clicking -> copy also appends it.

It's interesting at the very least, and I don't know how they're doing it. Anybody have an idea?
It's not limitless, but scientific testing has shown it can handle much more than you are imagining.

I'm not sure how the immunity conferred by the vaccine differs from that conferred by the live virus. It is probably just as good, but what if it isn't?

It doesn't differ at all. All vaccines are made of live-but-weakened or dead versions of viruses. Your immune system doesn't realize that, and reacts as though it's being attacked. The "hard" part for it is concocting antibodies for the virus it's discovered. And that, naturally, is the beneficial effect of the vaccine, because the immune system doesn't easily forget how to make that kind of antibody. Vaccines work because the immune system reacts the same way to a weak or dead virus that it does to a live, strong one.
"By leaving out two features ..."

If you introduce a product with distinct features X, Y and Z, then you'll sell that product to everyone interested in it and who require X, Y and Z.

If you introduce product V1 with only X, you'll get the X people, and most of Y and Z people will sit it out.

But then you introduce an upgrade, V2 that includes X and Y. Now you'll sell to some of the Y people. But also, some of the X people will buy it again, to have the full experience of X and Y.

Then introduce V3 with X, Y and Z. New customers, and a percentage of repeat customers who have now bought the product two and three times.
I think the burden of proof lies with the person claiming things that nobody has seen does in fact exist.
With the announcement of the iPad, and the claim that it's "the best browsing experience you've ever had", I thought it would be interesting to take a closer look at what makes the web browsing experience on the iPhone so great. Especially since the iPad version of Safari seems to resemble the iPhone version much more than the desktop one.
Careful what dictionary you use...my /usr/share/dict/words has things in it that might not be polite/acceptable to suggest.
Agreed that Joel has a great office. But you can't move your whole office with you when you need to collaborate closely with other people.

In building some of the V2 houses we figured out that having a door (that you tend to leave open all the time) directly behind you wasn't a great thing. The new ones have the door offset to one side so there's no "over my shoulder" feeling and it feels more private. To get light we have three much larger windows now, an opening at each end on the roof line and two skylights in each.

You can read about our design session with door placement here:
http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/software-quality/r...
Danish Parliament Sets Rules for Open Document Formats
> (top1: IM/Chat, 2: Graphics Editor, 3: Putty/Shell, bottom 4: FTP/Explorer, 5: Text Editor, 6: Browsers).

The mental cost of task switching probably takes a larger toll than Alt-Tab-ing.

> She practically kicked me out of bed and told me to find my 6-LCD X-Mas gift.

;-) Probably because you kept whinning and talking about it and she got tired of it.

> I've always been anti-laptops because come on, how can you even compare a 3 or 6-LCD setup to a laptop with a tiny screen, tiny keyboard, and crappy batteries.

I am also in general anti-laptops but for a different reason -- keyboards. As long as I can fit 2 80 column code windows in my emacs I can work fine, but not if the keyboard is crappy. That is why I spent a little extra and got a thinkpad -- it has one of the best keyboards and an integrated trackpoint (nipple) mouse. Between that and using emacs I don't have to lift my hands from the keyboard at all.
Music visualizations? Or electricsheep?
Gotta get that LOC count up.
I would still think a doctor could make this work in an individual practice. I would love to have a doctor like this.
Earlier submission of link to Atlantic blog discussion of same map:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1072375
In fact, your initial suspicion seems to be correct after a (very quick) glance at the code. They are handling both of those cases separately.

http://tcr.tynt.com/javascripts/Tracer.js
Wow, very similar to the app I'm working on right now (though mine is based on Django). Glad to see that other people are doing the same stuff, hopefully that means it's worthwhile, right? Good luck!
Two things:

1) Are there any studies that support the "making people healthier would be a net loss to many societies" claim I keep seeing? It's one of those things that sounds like it makes sense, but no one really quotes any credible sources.

2) I would be utterly shocked if he did this to make himself popular in the US. You may put your own money elsewhere, but he's really a pretty smart dude who seems to do a great deal of research before making decisions. It's a little childish to write it off like that.