skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The combination of IMAP and MIME are hard.

Yes, we could be happy with the status quo. But I do believe that one of the things that's holding up innovation around email is the lack of easy access to data. Proposed exercise: Write a script that downloads and displays your Twitter feed. Then write a script that downloads and displays your email. The email exercise will take you an order of magnitude longer.

Spam filtering isn't the problem you make it out to be. I get more spam in my Facebook inbox (mostly viruses) than in Gmail. If you're hosting you're own email or are using a sucky provider, that's a different story.

Email will be hard to replace long-term anyway. I doubt your bigcorp employer really going to let you send work-related Facebook messages. IM is a fundamentally different protocol with different use cases (think async vs. sync, fax vs. phone).
I guess I can understand why they don't want to fund games, but, correct me if I'm wrong, aren't they the largest grossing category in the app store?
A digital meter doesn't have a spinning dial, it reads current a different way. It is able to transmit its readings in several forms, bnoth through a display on the front, but mainly they were designed to allow remote meter reading by the power company -- drive by, instead of having to actually look at the dials.

A smart meter is a digital meter but that can intercommunicate -- over a network -- either with the rest of the electric grid system, or even with devices inside your house.
Replace "corporations" with "witches" and you'll see it for the Mediaeval superstitious ranting that it is.
I like the concept. There just need to be more people using it :).

The one thing that nagged me was the popup when you click on any of the actions that kiki is doing. I was expecting it to take me to that activity's page right away so I could navigate to teach/learn/practice from there. The "Excited?" popup felt a little jarring.
Would love to hear your thoughts about how to improve my proposed design. My email's on my HP in case you want to do it offline.
GMAC Originations, Losses Rise | Mortgage Insurance and Loans
It might make more sense in e.g. European markets where electricity costs 3x as much per kW/h.
VNC Viewer for the iPhone
Well, I am the guy that lives at the author's house. We are saving over $100/month as a result of the reductions we have made. I agree with your general position, but there's at least a niche market out there, and growing rather fast, actually.
Part of the reason MS isn't growing is that they have colonized the desktop to such an extent that innovators look elsewhere for opportunities. If MS could successfully open source windows, it might create an explosion of innovation on the desktop (or probably in integrating the desktop and the web but still). Of course, I doubt MS could handle losing the license fees at this point.
AFAIK the WM only indexes 6 months after publication, part of their agreement with Amazon.com.
> meant to incite.

Which is mostly what you'd expect from a site like mises.org or anything else that is highly political in nature.
Yeah, it is long polling. I could be misinformed, but isn't the problem with web hooks that you might not have ports open and could be behind a firewall?
Won't this increase the demand for college education, thus allowing colleges to raise their price even higher?
everyone goes apeshit crazy for iphone devs and one guy offers up his portfolio and we downvote it?
Hm, good point. I forgot about that.
can you give me an idea of some tools? im pretty passionate about this space.
I'm not a lawyer, but this is my understanding (I'm in the USA):

On bail - suspects are presumed innocent until proven guilty. The idea is that someone accused of a crime can free themselves until trial, with the bond money used as an incentive to get them to return to face trial. Well, there's also the incentive that they will be hunted down by bounty hunters if they flee.

This has two benefits. The accused can mount their best defense, fee from the confines of jail. The other, which is probably most important, is that the government can't just jail someone for a long period by accusing them of a crime.

The use of money for bond is imperfect, but it seems to work. Bail is set with the amount varying with the severity of the crime. Severe crimes (such as murder) can be refused bond, forcing the accused to stay locked up.

For those who lack the means to post the full bond, there are people who sell bail bonds -- in other words, they will post the full bail, if you pay them a percentage and a fee. The understanding is that you show up for court, or they will use civil suits and bounty hunters to get the money from you and put you in front of a judge forcibly should you flee.

The "accepting money to mould policy" part? Wow. Our lobbying system in general in the US is a mess. I honestly have no defense for it. If I was in charge, I'd place much stricter limits on lobbyists.
Lawyers are trying to get HeavyInk.com to suppress a comic book
I think your analysis is right on and I think this case is very much a matter of principles vs pragmatics.

The symptom is plainly that people and groups of people (corporations) with very deep pockets have vast access to and influence on all levels of government, and influence is a zero sum game so that comes at the expense of the mythical "average" citizen.

The Fair Elections Now Act is the most direct and obvious way to mitigate that corporate influence.

I think that it also undermines the freedom of speech of those who have influence.

So, the extent of my understanding/analysis at this point is that essentially what we are looking at is a decision between the welfare of American democracy vs the principles upon which it was founded.

I know the hard-line libertarians will decry me for that sentiment claiming that the two never diverge, but I don't see how anyone can deny a) that the corporate influence is disproportionate to the numbers it represents b) rarely aligned with the interests of the population.
An useful augmented reality software
I get the feeling that you have no idea how science works, or what he's saying.

He's not saying that the 3rd law is faith, he's saying that you take it on faith. A statement of faith is one that rests on no proof or evidence. Someone who has either wouldn't be giving a dickish answer like "um, 3rd law" or "GTFO", they'd be busy explaining.

The most important part of science is questioning and attempting to falsify current theories. He has a legitimate question, answer it or be quiet.
It's related to the arguments by Hans Herman Hoppe that monarchies throughout history have on net demonstrated better long term decision making and planning than democracies. A hereditary monarch has some level of incentive to optimize tax revenue over generations. An eight year politician has only incentive to ensure reelection.
That's clearly false. A really simple example is antitrust legislation - if MS (or any other monopolistic organisation) were able to remove regulation on monopolies, you can be assured that they would, and that the effect on our society would be dramatically negative.
Another one of those conservative anti-deficit articles that would have been very timely if it appeared before the war started, but of course it appears after the war and the incredible amount of money it is costing us.

Why did I never hear conservatives decrying deficit spending during the Bush years, when deficit spending ballooned. No, then you had conservatives talking about how the deficit does not really matter.

Now it is too late, the cat is out of the bag. We need deficit spending just to keep the damn economy from collapsing, and no politician will have the guts to just exit the wars.
And again, I don't see why that's such a huge improvement. IMAP is clunky and weird, but it's not rocket surgery. If there was a huge market opportunity for someone to write custom mailoid gadgets using IMAP, clearly it would have been done already.

A better protocol will only be "better", analogous to, say, the Mac (c. 1990) being better than Windows 3.1. While true, compatibility pressures aren't going to allow someone else into the market simply for being "better". You have to be transformative, and this isn't.

And in any case what's killing email isn't the lack of apps, it's the lack of authentication and moderation.
Why does it matter if a variable name is longer than it should be? As long as the code is legible, who cares?

I assume the author isn't saying that all variables should be named like "i" and "j" (and those examples are bad ones since they are well-known conventions), but that a variable shouldn't be named any longer than is needed to convey meaning.

Ok. Why even make this point? Programmers should err on the side of too long rather than too short. And, whenever possible, use the conventions of the language in favor of their personal philosophy.
You rarely need to use IMAP directly, though: most email apps are fine using a library that manages the details of the IMAP protocol under the covers, and presents a more sane interface.
I think the minimum wage argument was weak, but he's basically right: young people have a whole bunch of problems to look forward to.
I think your comment on the $250k proposal is wrong.

The US has a population of, let's say, 300M. In any year, let's say 1/60 of that many -- 5M -- are just turning 18, which is when Bowles proposes handing out the money. (He's not proposing to give that much to everyone all at once.) So the annual cost is $250k times 5M, or about $1T. There's no $56T up-front cost.

Now, $1T/year is an awful lot: it's about 1/4 of what the US government currently spends in a typical year. It's about what the US government currently spends on "defense". It's hard to see where the money could come from. On the other hand, it would completely obliterate poverty in the US. On the other other hand, it's very convenient for a lot of people that there is poverty in the US; without poverty, no one would work for very low salaries, which means a lot of things that are currently cheap would become more expensive. (You can generally recognize countries with less income inequality because low-end goods and services cost more.) On the other other other hand, it does seem like it would make entrepreneurship much more widely accessible.

Bowles is a very smart guy. The idea may be crazy, but it's unlikely to be stupid.
Your analysis is spot on until your last sentence. Not only do you misuse the word statist in a structural sense (government statist is redundant in this context), you incorrectly apply it to Lessig's politics. You're points are valid without your last sentence and I hope you'll get rid of it.

I'd like you to explain how these political positions of Lessig are statist please:

* Reduced legal restrictions of copyright and patents

* Citizen funded campaign finance

* Increased government transparency and accountability

Clearly he believes the sovereignty of a nation lies with the people, not the government. So again I ask you, without agreeing or disagreeing with Lessig's politics, can you clearly explain why you believe politically Lessig is a statist.
There is a basic flaw in this article that confuses 'perpetual motion' with 'over unity'.

The difference is subtle: A perpetual motion machine could in theory be constructed, and will continue to move as long as it's components don't wear out due to particle decay or some kind of impact. It simply means that a machine will continue to move.

The cleverest pseudo perpetual motion machines are very hard to debunk, some of the more intricate ones rob the earth of a little bit of momentum to function.

A 'real' perpetual motion machine (one without external energy input to overcome the inevitable engineering issues) has never been constructed but can't be entirely ruled out.

An 'over unity' machine produces more energy than goes in to it, and is an engineering impossibility.

For years I've had this up:

http://web.archive.org/web/20050113055344/http://www.greenbi...

But sadly no takers :)
The abuse of the filibuster for one senator to stop a bill is actually a recent parliamentary invention. There's no constitutional mechanism for the filibuster, it's based on senate rules which are adopted every 2 years.

Historically, 40 senators could prevent debate from being cut off but they would need to all occupy the chamber and actually be debating the whole time. See Strom Thurmond reading the phone book on the senate floor during the civil rights filibusters, for example.

But that took a bunch of time, time you could be at fundraisers or hanging out at home or whatever. So they made it easier over recent years, with the result that the current Senate filibusters more than twice as much as the last one, which itself filibustered more than historically, etc.
The blog article is from a Libertarian, not a conservative institution.
Freemium results in terrible games
Another thing is that "embrace and extend" tends to lead to monolithic, dead-end products. You can only cram so many useful features into a closed desktop application before in becomes a nightmare. This prevents you from doing the sane thing - producing a bunch of small modular tools. A lot of the good coming out of the web is just a product of not having to start with context of an application competing with other existing applications.
It is not codified as traffic law. California traffic laws encourage you to follow the general speed of traffic, but only if that speed is legal vis-a-vis the speed limits. If you speed, saying everybody else was speeding is technically not an excuse.
Don't expect Symbian to lead an open source revolution
okay I think it's not the right place and the right moment. Why not create a new thread for iphone developers seeking for work and iphone apps managers seeking for developers?
When you invest and buy local, you support your community and the people around you which often improves your community. It's easier to see or find out how the thing is made or how the money gets used. So, it's less likely you'll find lead in your toys or find a 14 year old picking your fruit. You are also closer to where whatever it is you bought is made and the people/company in which you are investing, which can mean fewer transactions, less taxes, less regulation, and overall less government and corporate involvement.

Locally produced food is the most obvious, practical thing to buy because it is fresher an tastes better which should be compelling enough on it's own.

I'm not saying don't trade, I just think we should think about what we're buying a bit more. As Fugazi said, "Never mind what they're selling, it's what you're buying!" Heh.
Hardware level trojan is relatively hard to develop.

I mean, it depends on what do you mean as a trojan. I think it is entirely possible to create a hardware trojan that sends some packets somewhere. It'd make a neat DDoS. :-)

Less likely is a classic trojan that gains control over your machine. Do not forget there are many layers between the userland and the hardware (eg, drivers, the network stack etc.).

It is a completely different story if evil Bob created both the hardware and the driver...
No, then you had conservatives talking about how the deficit does not really matter.

Are you sure they were conservatives, and not just Republicans?
But cars, power tools, and firearms have significant potential for severe bodily harm.

Computers, assuming you're simply using the machine and not trying to stick objects into the power supply, don't. It's ridiculous the fear some people have of simply using a computer.

I remember a line from some short-lived sitcom Tony Danza once starred in. Speaking to his new computer, he says, "You look like a TV, but you're not a TV. You're an evil TV." There's an anxiety and apprehension with computers that, IMO, exceeds the bounds of rationality.
What's a college degree really worth?
Except that the Mises Institute and (I believe) most Austrian economists are anti-war:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_von_Mises_Institute#Miss...

The Institute characterizes itself as libertarian and expresses antiwar and non-interventionist positions on American foreign policy, asserting that war is a violation of rights to life, liberty, and property, with destructive effects on the market economy, and tends to increase the power of government.
Today's post is not bad. Recently he started again to post interesting stuff, although is lot of theory and no more 30 days trials.
I don't see this as Conservative as much as it's Libertarian (See the anti-War on Drugs part for example). From that stand point Libertarians have always been vehemently against not only the war in Iraq (http://www.thegreenpapers.com/Vox/?20030310-0) but in many cases the one in Afghanistan as well (http://libertarians4peace.net/). Libertarians in general are non-interventionist in regards to foreign policy.

So I think your criticism is misplaced here
> Also . . . I totally understand the desire to keep (non-earth-shattering) performance differences out of the discussion. After all, one doesn't use Ruby to write realtime systems in the first place. The performance of its implementations is simply not impressive. If I've chosen to use Ruby for something, I've already thought about the performance implications and decided that the performance penalties of Ruby as compared with something like C (or even Perl) are not limiting factors for the particular task I choose to tackle. As such, it makes sense to say "Please tell me about the syntactic and semantic value of Lisp macros, rather than the performance benefits of a Lisp implementation over a Ruby implementation."

Well also Lisp macros are more comprehensive. Ruby can only make DSLs that look mostly like Ruby. In Lisp, you can literally drop in a new parser if you really want to. In fact, the default PLT Scheme DrScheme distribution has an Algol implementation that is basically a macro set (with some special features).

This allows you to inject whole new programming paradigms into your code. If you need a special kind of OO, you can easily create it. This is actually incredibly-hard-borderline-impossible to do in Ruby. Especially when you get into anaphora injection and complex closure manipualtion.

> You did, however, get into a little more explanation this time, which is good. I just wanted to point out that your disbelief at the notion that someone didn't achieve enlightenment based on your previous comment seems a bit unwarranted.

I had the same reaction this morning when a teenager asked me, "Okay so I get pointers. I get what they are. But they don't see good for anything in the real world." If you find this offensive or dismissive, I apologize. I am simply saying that I think you and I are operating at entirely different levels of abstraction, and bridging that gap is difficult for me.
Some good reading on HN today. Thanks for posting this.
"former vp at microsoft"? "press release junkie"? tell me, where does the contradiction lie?
"This IPv6 traffic is mimicking classic end-user
bandwidth shaping," Levy says. "It's not machine driven;
it's human eyeball driven."

I would be very interested in know how they can make this distinction.
I think that's it. A recent discussion on reddit[1] mentioned that energy actually weighs something (because of e=mc^2), so the energy required to lift "1kg" of energy would be exactly equal to the amount of energy that dropping it would produce.

[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/awi5k/what_is_the...
Aaaah. I didn't know you'd get the money back for showing up in court. Why not just fine people who don't show up then?

I'm not suggesting you put all suspects in jail.
Young people today will most likely become the first generation in US history not to surpass their parents' living standards.

I've seen this phrase, in various versions, in lots of places over the past few months. Is this a new proposition, or was the idea floated (incorrectly) during the Great Depression or the 1970s oil crisis/stagflation downturn?
"Young people today will most likely become the first generation in US history not to surpass their parents' living standards."

I sat in on a talk that Frank Luntz was giving last night. Everyone else in the audience was 40+, well educated, all at the top of their fields. When Frank asked them how many thought their kids would have a better standard of living than they did, only 6 of the 120ish people in the room raised their hands. Frank's comment was, "If you're all in the top 1%, imagine how the rest of America feels right now."
If by conservatives you mean libertarians (Austrian economists tend to be libertarian), you only have check out Peter Schiff or do a search on mises.org to hear the "decrying of deficit spending".

Also, you may want to check out some more articles on mises.org to fully understand what deficit spending does to the economy.
> I've used Lisp quite a bit (in fact, I did almost all of my first significant programming in Scheme) and even with that background, I've never bought the claim that Lisp gives you some huge practical syntactical/semantic gain over Ruby's already extremely expressive and extensible syntax. I guess I was hoping to be swayed.

Ruby's syntax is hardly extensible at all. All you're doing is changing the default scope with instance_eval and producing objects with the right intermediate behaviors. You can make some neat little DSLs with this trick, but it's not a real extension to the language.

For example try making the classic anaphoric if in ruby. Can't be done without resulting to cheap excuses like "Well it's a block argument."

It also frustrates me that people have thousands of objections to the pros people put forward for lisp, but no real objections except for an argument about parenthesis that's not even really true anymore. Prefix notion maybe? Oh no your arithmetic is slightly jumbled, everything else is exactly as you use it.
You know damn well that's not useful. "Here, read through every single thing this guy wrote. The proof's gotta be there somewhere, I figure."

No, of course, there's no proof for anything in any soft science, so there's the answer. The only good experiment would have to be on a grand scale: give everyone 15K a year for free and see what happens. My guess: An increase in the velocity of money, since the whole thing is basically a devaluation.
This is my guess as well, although to really address his point you have to answer the question "why would it."

He seems to assume that energy doesn't have any mass. It does. "Converting" energy to mass is a misnomer--you're really just converting one form of energy to another, one of which may be stable enough last as "matter" but both of which obey the same laws of gravitation. Transferring the energy up the tower requires energy because the energy has (is) mass.

Note that the E=MC^2 equation is for rest-mass rather than total mass, while a mass in motion has something more like E^2=M^2*sqrt(C^4+V^4). In a different inertial frame of reference objects will appear to have different mass, although I forget if it's rest-mass or total mass. But the point is, in order to get up to the top of the tower, some of the rest-mass will have to be kinetic energy, which gets converted to potential energy as it climbs and back to kinetic energy as it falls.

If you try to beam the energy up as light, this manifests as a Doppler shift in the light frequency (I think this has been observed experimentally). If you send it up with electricity, I think you have gravitational drag on the electrons. In the case of a drive shaft whose axis is parallel with gravity... well, that one actually stumps me. I guess you'll have to work through the relativistic effects. It's probably something really subtle, like that the (slightly) different gravity at the different elevations slows time by different amounts, resulting in a different rate of rotation and therefore less energy out of the top than was put in at the bottom.