skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Thanks, that at least puts the heat off my name popping up again.

Maybe we subconsciously adopt the style of the person we reply to :) ?
Setting Electric Car Charging Standards
Japanese car makers Toyota, Mitsubishi and Nissan have teamed with Fuji Heavy Industries and Tokyo Electric Power Company to form CHAdeMO association for standardizing charging methods for electric vehicles. Check this post for details.
Well, for one thing, I much prefer telling jacquesm he's wrong as myself! :)
Anywhere that uses the same password for their phone system as their website is limited to alphanumeric because you can't type ,./:;'"[{]}\|-_=+ on the phone.
Hey hey, two guesses each :)

Now I have to add my third from the list: nostrademons.
If you take time off long-term due to illness, you will get paid either the amount of sick pay that's listed in your employment contract, or Statutory Sick Pay, which is about £80 per week, whichever is higher. You might also qualify for state benefits – housing allowance etc.

You can claim statutory for 28 weeks, but your contract might allow more than this. After the 28 weeks, you switch entirely to the benefits system until you are fit enough to work again, but your employer doesn't have to take you on again after this.

My father was long-term sick, and was paid at 100% pay for 6 months, then 50% pay for a further 6 months, which was part of his contract. His employer extended the 50% pay to a total of a year out of goodwill.
I think of 100 cool things to do with this, which merely means you've done a good job putting it together.

One little nit-pick which is more just a technical note is that you shouldn't plop the same javascript into the note elements for each note. The note div (and all siblings there of) should share the same code and event listener using their position in the dom or their ID to identify them.

It doesn't necessarily change the functionality but one thing I've learned in working with large web applications with a lot of javascript is the least you have embedded into the page, the better.
Any way to drop the login until the users has experienced the product
Your users actually showed great foresight, I think. There are good reasons to avoid "intelligent" or hubristic interfaces: http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/07/wolfram...

Summary: "intelligent" interfaces will always fail for trying to solve a problem (the Chinese room) which is un-decidable even for a human mind, and so the future will use dumb, reliable interfaces (until we can figure out telepathy). Corollary: users shouldn't be blamed for not wanting to trade reliability for "awesomeness". Read the article, it's worth it.
Thanks for pointing this out. Our problem now is that even with reserve requirements, banks can use securitization to expand the money supply infinitely: http://arxiv.org/abs/0904.1426 . Reserve requirement aren't normally the binding constraints on banks, but they might have helped prevent some pathological situations in the past. The rise of shadow banking has shown that they are no longer a sufficient constraint.
I am aghast that people would think I'm not a native English speaker. I hope I'm numbered in the "few." Disclaimer: sometimes Windows handwriting recognition makes a real hash of my post without my noticing.
Hmm, anyone else actually installed this?

The concept is great but I am assuming the app is just "get it in the appstore quick". It's a little frustrating to use because:

a) it "loads" almost every screen (for a few seconds)

b) the push notifications dont go into the app automatically, they have to be loaded again when it opens. Which on 3G is a bit slow... :D

But cool concept anyway!
Treasure Seekers: Follow the Ghosts Game Download Free
Good idea :) It's only a quick hack so far, that sort of stuff will definitely be moved out of there!
According to an EMT I know, the job is intense but not stressful. There is excitement when you race off to the scene; the minute the patient enters the ER it's not your problem anymore.

He says he could never deal with a job like IT, where you actually think about work when you go home.
Being Fat (as a Startup) Is Not Healthy
Each item on this list is largely unrelated to the others.

1. turn on your 'slow queries' log. read it. tune it down so that it becomes more sensitive.

1.5 add indexes. use 'explain' to figure out what is slow about your slow queries. Indexes can quite often make those things less slow.

2. buy more ram. Buy a dedicated server if you have to. This is cheaper than you think. Make sure you replicate it somewhere, of course. Ram is many orders of magnitude faster than disk. Many, many problems just go away with the application of sufficient ram.

3. if your load is mostly read-only, replicate up a few read-only slaves. (when I setup webapps, I connect to two different database servers; a readonly and a read-write. At first, I point the dns records at the same server, but this makes it easier to split when performance requires it.)
In South Africa the law mandates that you have a separate pile for both those:

You get 3 days a year of family responsibility leave, e.g. death of a close family member, having to take care of a sick child, etc.

You get 6 weeks (which translates to 30 working days if you work 5 days a week) of sick leave for every 36 month cycle.
This is much better advice than the "3 categories of password" the GP mentioned. Actually, 3 categories plus derivation is good ;-)

The other day I was glad of that. I bought a game, was asked to create an account, typed in a password at the site; then received a confirmation email with the password in plain text - which probably means they are stored in plain text, not to mention left lying around in mail archives. Just a matter of time until one of those sites gets hacked and their DBs circulated.

(P.S. I did write them a polite note suggesting not doing it, and they seem to at least have stopped sending passwords in email; I don't have much hope about their storing hashes. Probably plenty of others less blatant but just as insecure ...)
This is definitely more a post about complaining about their job. Long hours, stress, and health issues can be applied to any job.

I'm going to resist the urge to plug my company's IT management to make his job easier. (Although I kind of just did).
What I was doing was just using asterisks around things, like this. I don't know of a separate quoting markup for HN, like reddit has, though I sometimes still slip and put > in front of quoted lines.

I suspect (without evidence) that it is still more efficient to plan for livable distributed cities instead of commuting an hour and a half per day.

Oh, I don't disagree that it's more efficient, in terms of energy. I think that people mostly value other things more than efficiency, though. People don't seem to like living next to factories or office parks, unless those spaces are themselves transformed into beautiful areas like parks, but doing that raises the cost of construction considerably, negating much of the efficiency advantage, I'd expect. Basically, the only (non-forceful) way to make a lasting change in a situation is to improve people's lives in their own estimation, and if they currently would rather spend an hour commuting than live near offices or factories, you'll need to spend some time seeing what could be changed about living near offices or factories to make that happen. Good luck! :)
Anecdotal, but it generally goes against my observations of family and friends. Blackberry users are not typical phone users, my sister has one but she wouldn't be able to tell you what an operating system was - if she can receive calls and email without the OS getting in the way then it would be fine but I'm sure she'd prefer to keep the current phone as this requires no additional learning effort. If you're not a gadget fiend then why change to get functionality that you already have?

Non-smart phones have predictive text, or at least every mobile phone I've ever had has including my current Siemens A50 (!) which uses T9 I think (yes I've used newer phones it's a quirk that I'm back to this one).
The Turpentine Effect
I'm a little bit surprised and amused that people continue to be surprised at what horrible things humans are capable of doing. I mean, nearly all of us went to high school right?
You were #50 on my list.

If I modify the parser to take case into account you jump up to #16.
In South Africa you are legally entitled to 3 weeks a year of paid vacation (annual leave), which translates to 15 working days if you work 5 days a week. Your employer may legally reject any requests for paid vacation time and tell you when you're allowed to take your vacation (or even force you to take it at a certain time), although exercising that right may not always be wise.

If your employer keeps rejecting your requests for taking leave for a certain period (not going into the details, let's pretend it's a simple rule of 6 months), you are entitled to take the leave without their permission.

The vacation time doesn't have to be taken consecutively - 3 weeks is just a general way of saying 15 working days. If your normal working week is 6 days, you'd have 18 working days of annual leave.

Now's your turn to treat us like space aliens. How does it work in Japan?
That (in theory) sounds pretty awesome to me. From an employers point of view and an employees point of view.

How does it work in practice?
I don't know about the article, but if I click on another HN article and end up on a page with Posterous trying to get me to sign up? I'm going to go running screaming into the night.

A few times was okay, guys. I get it. Everybody has to advertise. After about 10 or 20, if I haven't signed-up, I'm not going to.
Being tortured by being trapped in the pool and/or in houses without toilets?
Warning! These notes are unsaved, click _create_account_ to save your notes.
You call in sick and take a day off. Problem is, there's no such thing as a paid "sick day". You have to use up one of your regular vacation days.

On the other hand, if someone's got a bad case of cold but still can work, they will come to work.
Of course you need apple and ms internal developers to dig into their source code, because you as a developer can't.

On the other hand, i can debug through every aspect of my android program right into the whole framework and see what is happening. Yay, open source.
The Fox News trope in the opening line sets the tone that this is not journalism, but an opinion piece.

> "To date there have been security concerns and questions identified around mint.com."

Journalism should avoid using "there have been" or "some say"; such phrases signal that what comes next will be an unattributed pot shot.

The first attack is on the zip code requirement. "Presumably this means Mint.com ... will not be able to effectively send you email and text alerts."

On the contrary, this FUD statement was preceded by an attributed statement from Mint: "Mint.com requires your Zip code ... to determine the time zone in order to send timely alerts." If you don't give them the right time zone, your alerts will be no less effective, you just might find them more inconveniently timed.

As for the more complex assertion about categorization, that's because business names are local. A business named "Scissors" might be a tailor in my zip, and a salon in yours. Of course it will be hard to correctly categorize when the locale is unknown.

Interestingly, when I reached the end of the article, I saw this reason was clearly provided by the employee, but not mentioned in the article.

Mint wrote that the ZIP "allows the Service to provide you with accurate automated categorization of your spending by improving our ability to identify merchants both nationally and locally."
I’m a little worried about this opening up new opportunities for political brinksmanship. “If the Majority Leader wants my vote to renew the law against dumping toxic waste into the harbor, he’d better let me get my way on the farm bill.”
World wakes up to digital divide
10 biggest tech stories of the year 2009
The swastika sign is somewhere between a religious superstition and a cultural thing. There are folks who believe that if they don't do that sort of thing it's a bad omen and there are folks who do it only out of respect for tradition.

Having an elder 'inaugurate' something is mostly a result of the "respect for elders" ethos in Indian society. This sounds pretty benign, and in many ways it is a good thing, but it has its downsides. I know people in my generation who couldn't (wouldn't) get married to someone unless their grandparents approved the person!
Consider a bicameral legislature where newly elected representatives serve a four year term in the lower body. Their sole responsibility is the review/renewal of existing laws. Every law must be renewed every four years.

After completing their term in the lower body, the representatives graduate to serve a four year term the higher house. Here, they are entrusted with the power of making new laws.

Elections are staggered (similar to the US sentate), so every year one fourth of the members are elected, one fourth move up, and one fourth retire. This way, the chambers have institutional memory and transitions are smooth.

Both houses have the power to change the legislative topography of the nation. Because newly elected representatives serve in the lower house, when citizens vote to change the direction of the country, the first response to public opinion is the removal of existing laws. Only after serving a term in the lower house can laws be added.

To make this kind of system successful, there might need to be a legal review process that demands small, unbundled laws. Or perhaps a simple word count like @derefr and @mseebach suggest.

I guess the fact that we even think about this stuff pretty much means we're geeks. =)
From Pairwise and Digg to Plancast #SXSW Edition
In many states, there are laws along the lines of: 5 or more unmarried women living under the same roof constitutes a brothel. Hence, most colleges are running brothels.
So basically everybody struck out. Most likely due to sample size.

There's an interesting lesson here that probably says something like the coolness of the tool used has no direct relation to the usefulness of the conclusions provided.
Latest facebook password reset scam warning
I want a vacation desperately... not just to use vacation time, I want to go somewhere and completely forget I have a job. The last 3 times I've tried taking vacation time I've been called to fix an issue.
No, I had a limited amount of time to get this done so there are lots of other things I could have tried.
2500 words on the subject of brevity in programming
Red5 support for Chatroulette Script is coming
As it stands, the State of California has a bureau that uses software to ensure new laws do not conflict with existing ones.
Lots of truth in this.

I've been "in IT" for 15+ years post uni, and nodded all the way through reading this (It's true that these things creep up on you).

Very recently our startup got funded (a modest Angel round), and now I can honestly say that I'm much less stressed than I have been in a very long time... I have more time for "me".

Sure, I work 80+ hours a week - but I do it on my schedule, so I can go bushwalking, fishing - have the odd random day off, and spend a few hours each evening with my family.

I think the dangers of IT can be "managed", if you have the flexibility (or discipline) to do so.
Then you probably have another smartphone then i have.
Just yesterday i was meeting friends (4xiPhones, 1xMilestone/Droid, 1xNexusOne) and the good nerds we were, people wanted to check out the newer Android phones.
The 4 iPhone guys agreed it's on par.

You probably notice responsiveness differences beyond the level a normal person recognizes :p
In fact, when you say you have a variety of smartphones on your desk, i guess you are working on a daily base with different handsets and have a very keen sense for this. And as i don't have numbers to back my statement up i'd say it's a difference in those handsets 95% of users wouldn't recognize. ;)
Too bad the author is such a poor writer. He probably has some interesting things to say. But I tuned out once I encountered multiple syntax errors in the first paragraph.
Partners in law firms are co-owners. When the year's profits are tallied, they divide them amongst themselves.
Latest Facebook password reset scam
IMO three things contribute to higher superstition.

1) People are more religious, even in the younger generation. (Having said that, it is important to note that religious != fundamentalist for most young, educated Indians. At least in my circles, religious folks will 'pay respects' to any place of worship they pass by including churches, mosques and temples of various types.)

2) Education in America involves a lot of critical thinking. In many classes you are specifically required to challenge an author, debate and you are encouraged to contradict the teacher. There is almost none of this in India. To me, this is something of a tragedy. I went to a small, secular school with excellent teachers (relatively speaking) and I can count on one hand the number of teachers who encouraged debate in class. It doesn't help that many 'good' schools in India are run by religious organizations like the Catholic church or religious trusts.

3) Until not too long ago, luck was a big factor in success in India. Opportunities were few and far between. When efforts are de-linked from rewards, I suspect many people start subscribing to superstitions.

Edit: I thought of one more reason: 'Respect for elders' really means 'disagreeing with elders is rude' in India. Put together with a much closer knit society, this means that your elders are going to chide you constantly for disagreeing with them, and pretty much going to take it as a personal insult. Suddenly it becomes very hard to develop independent beliefs. I was fairly lucky growing up in a family where we had all manner of debates, including on religion, but I believe that's pretty atypical.
I'm really sorry to hear this. No one deserves to have burnt out at 22. I hope you are able to exercise your body and relax your mind and get back to good health. Please try jogging / other exercise. They say it works really well in terms of building up an energy reserve. I need to do it, too!
Don't trust that Web Address
Well I work with them in the sense they are test beds for our phone forensics work.

But in fairness I have used pretty much all of them for extended periods as my work or social phone. Still going with the iPhone as the cleanest user experience :)

(but I realize opinions differ widely)
I wonder if by accepting the challenge, it indicates that the "guru" believes his own bullshit. That's even more scary/pathetic than thinking he's just a fake.
http://www.cracked.com/article_18458_6-subtle-ways-news-medi...
Viacom responds on YouTube lawsuit
Conspiracy is a very broad legal net. It doesn't take much to conspire to commit a crime, and in doing so you've just committed a felony. In this case, the programmers weren't simply writing code to specifications they were given--they were conspiring with Madoff to help him hide his fraud. This is illegal.
I've thought for a long time that we should have a cap on the size of the body of law - say, 250,000 words. This would accomplish sunset indirectly. If someone wants to pass a new law and the body of law is already at the limit they'd have to push for something to be repealed first.

As a downside, though, this might lead to obfuscated and confusing laws as legislators try to fit as many ideas as possible into few words, rather like code with lots of three-way operators.

As we're all subject to all of the laws on the books, even though no one could possibly read or understand all of them, this would be a much more fair solution.

The Icelandic example has, in effect, a similar cap. There can be no more laws than the law-speaker can remember. Capping the size of the body of law would be more like the Icelandic example than sunset provisions. Also you wouldn't have to worry about important laws, e.g. murder, from expiring because no one noticed.

[edit - moved from top-level comment to this thread]
That's not a new kind of evil at all. I'm not sure that new kinds of evil are even possible.

The idea that we need a separate law for every conceivable circumstance in which a kind of crime could be committed seems weird to me. Torturing people is already widely illegal; the kind of people need not be specified in law.
Where is the dummy account link, I can't see it?
Xbox 360 getting USB storage support: more 360 Slim evidence?
Why would they have to change it for an entire year? Maybe it's enough to test it for 1 day, or 10 minutes for all I know. If it improved clicking rate and revenue by 9%(+-1%) and after 1 year they've got $1 billion of revenue, then you could say that 8~10% of that billion likely came from Magic Blue.
Anyone know a good Mint alternative for the UK?
Strategies to Protect Against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks
Yeah, I think thats fair to say. Also, being Canadian and not being in Toronto or Montreal, doesn't help much either, or it can seem that way sometimes(at least from experience with the startup I work for).
> Daddy was a cardsharp. Couldn't have a relationship to him if you didn't play. :-P

Funny :)

My family from my dads side was pretty large, and my grandfather decreed that the kids got their pocket money on Friday, and after that had to play cards, mandatory.

So, naturally the pocket money became part of the game, and all my aunts and uncles got to be pretty good at playing cards.

When I was 15 or so I stayed over for a week at my grandmothers house (my granddad died long before that), and in my innocence I asked her if she wanted to play cards with me.

I should have probably realized what was about to happen when she suggested giving me the opportunity to make some money.

Long story short, don't play cards with old ladies that can count two full decks, I was happy to go home with my clothes ;)
Google may exit China on 4/10
Personal finance: What external risks Affecting the Rate
SocialJitney hosted a workshop on How to make million dollars from an iPhone app
SocialJitney Inc specializes in developing applications for its clients and then providing them a complete consultation on how to monetize them through various techniques.
I'd take point one much more seriously if it said "their milk" instead.
One of the mitigations to this is to create a PIN that's unique to a telephone number you've associated with your account.
Cool little app. Check formatting on long notes-- I notice that if the note text exceeds the box, text gets hidden under the save button while typing. Also, after closing a long note, the box does not expand to accomodate a long note, and the text spills across the boundary of the note box.
'Gradually' as in over the course of 20-40 years?
> I wonder why.

My take on it : The level of chaos in India is extraordinary. It is ubiquitous: the traffic, the government, and the sheer number of people being the top three things that come to mind. On top of this, the justice system is defunct. In such a situation, prayer comes naturally. Faith and arbitrary belief are mechanisms to alleviate the stress and restore mental order, to lend a semblance of "reason" and rhyme to the working of a world that seems so arbitrary and cruel. They dull the mind but they act as an antidote against the external chaos.

I would guess that a sense of security and control over one's life and religiosity are anti-correlated, in any country. I would suspect that the poor, the indebted and the very ill are more likely to be religious.