skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Statistically, flying is far safer than driving (apologies for not having boating data). The numbers are a few years old, but a quick search dug up the following:

http://www.crashstuff.com/driving-or-flying-plane-vs-car-acc...

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/04/18/the-miracle...

http://www.meretrix.com/~harry/flying/notes/safetyvsdriving....
It just launched today and got featured on TechCrunch, a predominantly male publication. Give it time! :)
The One and Only True Monty Hall Paradox
fast forward: there is one person who is producing all our food and one person who is producing all out clothing. they trade with each other and the rest of the people have nothing to offer in return for food.
Thanks dpcan. I had a hard time figuring out whether to show episodes airing today as the next episode or last episode. So, I made some changes related to that yesterday and this bug was a result of that change. I have changed it back to show an episode airing today as the "next" episode.

Long story short - this bug is addressed now.
Is Password Protection Enough?
Anonymity of Chatroulette is key. This is weak.
A valid point, and not something that is the front of a graduating senior's mind.
I fail to see the use of CSS frameworks (and yes, I have tried most of them).

Honestly, in my experience:

- The time you invest in learning the ropes of that framework would be better invested in properly learning CSS. I wouldn't say this of any framework in any language, but CSS is easy and, contrarily to what I constantly hear, it isn't that hard to master.

- Once you know CSS well, it's much faster to convert a PSD by hand than trying to make it work with your framework. The more detailed the actual design, the more this applies.

- The only pseudo-framework that actually boosts styling speed is leveraging a well-maintained css reset stylesheet.

Keep in mind that this is coming from somebody that knows CSS well... I understand why a framework sounds appealing, especially since we have a lot of them on the development side, but in the case of CSS, it is total overkill.
I don't want to be matched up chatting with friends (I can do that anytime) and I don't really want total strangers (it gets creepy and dirty). However, this could be great if it connects you to friends of friends. You could then spend the time figuring out how you two are connected.
The thing shoots off like a bat out of Hell.

Mind, I'm not terribly familiar with RC helicopters - what do more familiar folks think of the performance?
The TED conference is owned by a charity which they run the TED Prize and the TED Fellows programs.
In this scenario, if there is only one person providing food, at that point it becomes economically viable for individuals and consumers alike to produce food, and fill that void.

You didn't include it in your comment, however it is important to note how much each producer is producing. With economies of scale, it is likely both producers create enough goods to exceed the demand of either consumer. Rationale being if "food producer" became efficient enough to put all other food producers out of business, they likely can feed more than just the clothing producer.
Google Buzz Indexed on Google and Yahoo -- Google Responding to Privacy Concerns
That's odd. I even opted in for Buzz but never created a public profile due to privacy concerns, and my chat status updates aren't be posted on Buzz(although when I looked in the linked sites dialog to see if it should be, I noticed that while Google Chat status updates were not linked, Picasa and Reader were(conveniently, I don't use Picasa and I use Reader exclusively for reading), although it said that they would not be actually linked until some further step was taken).
Comfortable high-tech subsistence farming is around the corner. Efficient local renewable energy, RepRap machines, domestic robots... it's going to be a very interesting century.
How do you comment on something so heartfelt and meaningful other than to say I'm very sorry for his loss but deeply grateful that he shared this.
Apple to wrap digital books in FairPlay copy protection
If technology advances to the point where one person can make enough food or clothing for the world, then surely each person can manage to make their own food or clothing.
Exactly!

It's not like it is really that complicated to make it work from there... If you think it is, learn CSS properly (i.e. stop cutting corners!).
The progression existed, but it was for the elite. Most people didn't spend so many years in school when they were going to work on a farm or join a trade where they would be apprentice. The idea that everyone should go through 12 years of compulsory age-based schooling and then ideally through college and into an office is fairly recent.
Bill Moyers interviews David Simon:
http://video.pbs.org/video/1134533920/
The wealth distribution within a given first-world society is certainly changing, with bigger amounts of wealth going to the top 1% etc. That's mostly due to the fact that well educated and connected knowledge workers are able to utilize globalization to a greater extent than your regular mailman. But that's not necessarily for the worse. Even inflation-adjusted wage stagnation need not necessarily be bad, as you mostly can buy more with your money today (reduced prices for electronics, basic necessities etc.) than in the past.
> I think having people be transplanted away from their families and friends for a 4 year hiatus to focus on learning is a crucial part of becoming a well rounded person.

If someone asked you how to educate a society and this was the answer you gave, they might think you were crazy.
Very cool. Anyone know how much one of these prints runs for?

edit: "A single-panel — 2-square-foot — monochromatic image typically costs $1,500 to $2,000, while color images cost $3,000 to $4,000, he said."

http://austin.bizjournals.com/austin/stories/2009/03/23/stor...

(that was almost a year ago, I wonder how much costs have come down since then.)
This is a touching piece of writing. I think anybody who has lost someone close can relate to this. It is tough being pulled between continuing and mourning. You never know what to do, and no matter what you do you're no closer to the one you lost.
Plays-For-Sure is almost dead. Even the Zune doesn't support it.
Try using a Zune. From my experience, it's one of the best UI/navigation in a media device.
I am down-voting him because, after two centuries of automation, the unemployment rate still hovers between 5 and 10 percent. In short, his ideas have no basis in reality and he makes no attempt to justify them. It is simple internet pop economics, and the world has too much of it. Not down-voting people like this is what leads to politicians getting away with ignorant demagoguery on economic subjects and a population too ill-informed to call them out on it.

Sure, when the singularity comes things may be different. But if that is his case, then he should make the argument. The parent comment is just noise.
Excellent essay.

Over the past few months we've discovered that my mother has inoperable cancer.

I know the feeling. As do many others, I'm afraid.
Equating gold to cow manure according to the principle that only that has value which you and others think has value is ridiculous. It ignores several thousand years of history during which gold = money. The question is: Why? Because gold is relatively, but not extremely, scarce; it cannot be manufactured; it is durable; it is easily divisible; and sufficiently small amounts are valuable enough according to the above factors so as to make it practical as a portable store of value.

Since these traits, at least on planet earth, endure regardless of the various cultural and economic trends which overtake economies from place to place and from time to time, gold is insulated from the shifting winds of human whim like no other substance on earth. THAT is why gold has = money for thousands of years. No store of wealth based upon GDP or legal tender laws can compare because all such stores of wealth are transitory, and given time, will fail.
The agricultural model is one of regional self reliance, where cheap consumer goods aren't shipped in from places where people work for a very few of your society's dollars. When you keep things local, the standard of living rises for everybody and you get a more egalitarian society. Shuffling people and resources around usually ends up widening inequality gaps among different classes and different geographic locations.
What about knowledge workers? They're a new class of workers. There is no AI good enough yet to replace a book author, a marketing manager, a lawyer etc. Will they ever be automatable? Probably. But who knows which new class will emerge after the knowledge workers..
It's been a worry for a long time, and it's always been false.

And therefore it will always be false?
Yep, with interviews it's about the five P's - prior planning prevents poor performance. In the design world the interview process is heavily centered around your portfolio. So I recommend students show their portfolio to as many people as possible - teachers, advisors, friends, strangers - to (a) get their feedback and (b) learn the best way to talk about their work. Eventually you figure out the best talking points that people connect with.

The application process itself has to be methodical. I don't think in this climate you can shotgun your resume/portfolio out there and see who responds. Hiring managers have too many good people to choose from. The approaches need to be custom to the company/firm you're applying to, and memorable. Otherwise you'll never stand out. We got 1000+ resumes once for a job ad...and we're a small company. So many applications look the same - the unique and different ones caught our attention.

I like your three tips of what you need to communicate about yourself: a) smart, b) gets things done, and c) would love more than anything to work for them.
If things do get that bad, that gold is the only store of value, we're screwed anyway.
Understanding The Significance Of Weak Ties In Your Professional Life
What's possible with Django's ORM on non-relational DBs
If by any change you've programmed a lot in Java, you have a fair chance to be able to keep the language. Just stay away from anything that remotely sounds like enterprise or uses XML and you'll be fine. I also personally prefer Apache Velocity instead of JSP - easier to learn, too.

About client-side programming... good CSS takes a while to master. Many people will probably disagree, but if your goal is to make something relatively fast, you may want to KISS and use a table or two instead of just divs and CSS.

Also spend a bit of time with JavaScript. It'll bring a fair amount of benefits for a relatively modest investment.
So I've yet to create a Google public profile but I just saw a very disturbing "feature" related to Buzz. To make sure that I was safe from Buzz, I enabled it and unfollowed everyone it automatically made me follow, then turned it off again.

But then I went to my Google Reader page, and my "People you follow" list was now completely empty. Google has hooked up sharing between everything with Buzz, and that's not cool.

Wow. I'm starting to wonder if I should also start looking for alternatives.
Tired old statistic: in the 1700s, 90% of American workers worked on farms. But because of automation, today only 2% of workers do and we are better off for it. We spend a smaller percentage of our resources on producing the food we eat and can put those resources to other uses. Also, it is not true that 88% of people are unemployed.
"... As a non-Greek European, however, I'd rather Greece was in fact bailed out because if Greece collapses, my own economy, which shares a currency with Greece, goes along with it even though there is not all that much wrong with the financial practices of my own government (I'm Dutch). ..."

And that highlights a point many underestimate - the interdependence of finance. What cuts are made to Greece will hit other areas of the EU. Where else?

"... If anyone feels a populist fury that requires retribution against Wall Street then the course is clear: don't bail Greece out. ..."

The populist fury should be over the "bail-out in the US" of Wall St. Greece is pretty much as far from the centre of Western financial influence as you can get.
I'm the author of this piece. For what it's worth, I had a pretty good experience in our educational system. I excelled in high school and was voted most likely to succeed, graduated with honors from Johns Hopkins, then went on to form a tech startup which I sold at age 32.

What I object to is the design of the system and particularly to the denigration of sense of place.

I should point out that I have a series of articles in mind to write, and this particular article was something foundational that I needed to get out in order to make some later arguments.

Ken Ronbinson's label of "agricultural" model for education is perhaps less than ideal, particularly because it creates associations with pre-industrial economics. I think perhaps what he means is something more like "organic" education.

Thanks for all of the comments; wish they were directly linked to my blog so others could more readily benefit from them.
Eat Local… Meat
No, I mean, if it is indeed the case that the total number of jobs displaced by automation exceeds those generated by it, I have no particular take on how to handle it.
Guns, gasoline and leather pants (Mad Max,Fallout,etc) are where the smart money is now.
Yeah, unless you have gold, which you will, given time, without question be able to convert back to usable wealth.
From a microeconomic perspective, the specialization of labor undoubtedly allows us to maximize production, yet from a macroeconomic perspective, I think you're right.

I know Marx is beyond dated, and that it's only permitted to speak of him using hushed tones in serious conversation, however, in Das Kapital one of his fundamental arguments was that the long-run problem Capitalism is destined to face and ultimately lose to will be the problem of over-production. Which sounds counter-intuitive, as how could over-production possibly be bad? His argument is interesting and worth studying for itself, even if it is mostly outdated.
Just had to post a comment to say thanks. Even the archives on searchyc is good enough, but this will surely save me a lot of clicks. Cheers.
I love my Android but I have to say I'm impressed with Windows 7.

I have a Zune and I dig the UI a lot. Adding XBox Live games is definitely a big plus. The games give it a big advantage over Android.

Apps will again be key and this is where Microsoft strengths lie. Microsoft has the best developer tools on the market and they have legions of engineers on the .Net platform.

My only worry is that it may be a year or two late for Microsoft. I don't really want to count them out because of what they did with the XBox versus the Playstation.

However, the phone is a tougher market. It would be harder to convince people to switch phones. Phones are much more personal than gaming consoles.
Different bits of it were at different times. In Europe middle class kids started going to schools in the late medieval period. Whereas college was for the rich roughly till WWII.
I haven't looked at the code yet, but I've been curious how they do this. I am not a mathematician, but my understanding is that the affine transform only lets you scale, rotate, and skew the whole image at a time.

Is the page curl effect some kind of custom non-affine transform? Or am I missing a simple way to do this using a single linear transformation?
Wouldn't a zero-defects approach work better from a PR and a human perspective?

Part of the reason driving seems much safer to most people is that usually they have agency and are in control of the vehicle and can make their own decisions about weather conditions and likely traffic patterns. Whereas in a plane they are giving up control to someone unknown.
To be in debt is a way of life. People buy things on credit long before they have the money to pay it off.

Like, say, houses? Or a college education?

The problem isn't debt, per se - it's reaching a level of debt that can't be easily serviced by future earnings. Debt/credit is useful to invest in assets that return benefits to you over the period of paying the debt off. The ability to make these investments are a cornerstone of why the West has been so successful over the past 3-400 years.
A key point you are missing is that unless Uscan machines require fewer people to support then they are not cheaper than the people they replace. Automation tends to replace 1000 jobs with 100 jobs which pay more per person but less in aggregate. The general rule is (New Jobs) * (Pay) < (Lost Jobs) * (Pay) with the difference split between the consumers and the owners of the company.

Now society should become more productive, but many of the workers are going to fall into more general and less useful professions. EX: We don't need vary many farmers today, yet we produce far more food than ever. IMO, this suggests the introduction of basic welfare state funded by the increased prosperity. But we can also just waste the extra productivity with a huge military, increased litigation, and a truly massive prison system.
Here's Marshall Brain's response:

The conventional wisdom says that the economy will create 50 million new jobs to absorb all the unemployed people, but that raises two important questions:

What will those new jobs be? They won't be in manufacturing -- robots will hold all the manufacturing jobs. They won't be in the service sector (where most new jobs are now) -- robots will work in all the restaurants and retail stores. They won't be in transportation -- robots will be driving everything. They won't be in security (robotic police, robotic firefighters), the military (robotic soldiers), entertainment (robotic actors), medicine (robotic doctors, nurses, pharmacists, counselors), construction (robotic construction workers), aviation (robotic pilots, robotic air traffic controllers), office work (robotic receptionists, call centers and managers), research (robotic scientists), education (robotic teachers and computer-based training), programming or engineering (outsourced to India at one-tenth the cost), farming (robotic agricultural machinery), etc. We are assuming that the economy is going to invent an entirely new category of employment that will absorb half of the working population.

Why isn't the economy creating those new jobs now? Today there are millions of unemployed people. There are also tens of millions of people who would gladly abandon their minimum wage jobs scrubbing toilets, flipping burgers, driving trucks and shelving inventory for something better. This imaginary new category of employment does not hinge on technology -- it is going to employ people, after all, in massive numbers -- it is going to employ half of today's working population. Why don't we see any evidence of this new category of jobs today?

I don't find some of his examples (robotic scientists?) particularly persuasive, but the idea that many low skilled jobs will be destroyed while few high skill jobs created... seems at least plausible to me. That this has never happened before isn't a particularly good argument why it couldn't happen in the future.
Terms of Service Generator
MeeGo - The fusion of Maemo and Moblin
This goes through historical examples of when machinery that automated jobs did not actually, over the long term, create job loss.

His position is that that will be the case forever... but he doesn't actually prove it.

I think his assumption is that since it's happened with steam engines and industrial looms, it'll happen again with robots and the internet?
There are other things you need to learn beside what's in books, like how to live on your own, be responsible for your actions and so forth. Living away from the nest can be helpful in learning these things. I don't understand why this would make you "crazy."
4. Hiring people. It costs a ton of money, takes a lot of management, and there's plenty of red tape/employment laws/unemployment insurance/etc.
My point is that though automation "costs" jobs, it simultaneously reduces the cost of production (e.g. the production of financial transactions, here). Ultimately the benefit from more efficient production is a rising tide that lifts all ships. It would be hard to argue that reversing the industrial revolution and returning to cottage industries would be a net benefit, even though our current production levels would require 10-1000x as many jobs.
Raising money for StackOverflow
One in a million is next Tuesday
Two Dozen Carriers Worldwide Unite Against Apple’s App Store
It's always possible that a major catastrophe will destroy our economic system, but its far more likely that we will either limp along or improve. I remember the same fears in the seventies, and the concomitant buying of gold, at the same time as the price of gold spiked to $800.00. Yes, the economy was turbulent, but that's not an indication of imminent total meltdown. In the past year the price of gold has been at record highs. Why this encourages scared people to buy is beyond me; the most likely scenario is that it will go down in value.
Searching for "cancel google" brings up http://cancelgoogle.com for me. Looks like a mix of legit, fake, and non-native English speaking responses...
"... To anyone interested in such events I would highly recommend "The Black Swan" The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. ..."

I always manage a chuckle when I hear "black swan" used to describe a rare event. Where I am, a black swan is the norm.
"according to sources in the publishing industry."

Who?

Of course, we'll never find out who, whether or not this is true.
http://s.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/terminal01/2010/2/2/12/...
You're actually reimplementing some parts of Ruby that already exist: http://ruby-doc.org/core-1.8.7/classes/UnboundMethod.html
Jeff and I started out with a goal for StackOverflow of changing the way programmers and system administrators get answers to their questions on the Internet, which was deeply broken. In 18 months we’ve accomplish that

Have they? Whenever I have a question the first place I turn is Google, and I usually find my answer on a site that's not stack overflow.
it's pretty surprising how prevalent `clear: both` is. yes, it works, but you're putting presentational code in your markup more than you need to.

let me put it in simple terms for people:

you probably don't need to use `clear: both`. almost all of the time, you can use `overflow: hidden` on the parent element instead of `clear: both`.

(the exception of course is when you've got elements with negative margins that would actually be hidden with `overflow: hidden`)

edit: relevant link - http://www.quirksmode.org/css/clearing.html
They could feed everyone but why would they? The rest of the people have nothing to offer in return.

The reason why competing food manufacturing would be impossible to start in the era of absolute automation is that you need the machines to do that, in other words you need the capital. Who in their right mind would provide capital to manufacture food for people who have nothing to offer in return?

I'm stretching the argument here, but only to illustrate the problem that I see - automation satisfies needs and thus destroys jobs tied to satisfying those needs. I see only two ways out of this - create new needs (which we've been doing successfully so far) or exert the power of the state to take the products from producers (progressively heavier taxation).