skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Ten years ago, the average household received five pieces of mail every day. Today, it receives four pieces and by 2020, that number will fall to three.

... And it would receive much less than that if the USPS wasn't mostly a delivery network for spam.
7 performance tips for faster SQL queries
IMVU Memcached Usage Per Node at 150K Requests/Second
This reminds me of routergod: http://www.routergod.com/

Fake celebrity essays/interviews about technical topics.
Both parent and parent^2 make fine points, but it misses the point of this research. It's primarily to enable HCI research -- so the ability to modify interfaces on the fly is a good thing. User customization of interfaces is another application, but I don't think that is really the primary use case.
Or if he is your boss, you better adjust (would that mean the trans-gendered would have to change again? Or is that a double violation?)
Ask HN: Web designer who codes, or designer + front-end coder?
I'm trying to hire a web designer right now, and in my ad I specified that I was looking for someone who had a strong aesthetic design sense AND who knew had to code (HTML, CSS, hopefully a bit of JS, etc.).

Most of the responses I've gotten are from designers who can mock up designs in Photoshop but can't / don't really code.

Am I being unrealistic in my quest for this person? Should I instead try to find a designer with strong visual skills and pair them up with a front-end coder who can implement their vision?

I also have to confess to a personal bias, that a designer who can't code is just a graphic designer pretending to be something they are not -- and that a true web designer who understands the medium will know how to code it up themselves. I'm not sure this bias is valid though.

I'm just curious if any of you can share your experiences with web designers in this regard or other opinions you might have on the subject.
39 cents? It hasn't been that since ~2006. They currently cost 44 cents:

http://www.usps.com/prices/first-class-mail-prices.htm
I just want to say you're right. For some reason the up arrow is gone and I can't upvote you. But you're right.

If I am reasonably bright, I am capable of learning if I work hard. I don't have an excuse to fail. Period. There are reasons promising people fail -- they realize, perhaps, that they aren't going after what they really want, or a serious external crisis occurs, or they feel entitled because everyone used to tell them they're smart -- but as long as I am aware of, there are no excuses for falling into those traps.
Good luck. Generally how much is equity given away in such a deal? i.e. a seed round where you have an intermediate demo but not any customers or monetization yet?
Insulint bastard.
PS3 Pull-Back Hurts Inexpensive Supercomputing
ye its probably one of the only ones that spam is a good thing for it.

I would say 80-90% of the mail I get is spam.
I wouldn't call it a small amount of extra screen real estate, it has more than 5x the number of pixels that the iPhone has.

Heh heh. That would make for a funny "multi-tasking" experience. Four original-sized iPhone app tiled beside each other.
I think this is pretty cool. Somewhat similar tools have been used to cheat in MMOs where a library would recognize and interpret the pixels and you'd write scripts to manipulate the underlying platform.

This is actually extremely flexible and could be used not just to decorate a user interface, but to provide a programmatic /scripted/ interface into an application that doesn't traditionally provide an API.
Ok, after so many ppl explained why iPad is cool/suck, am i the only one who truly dont care at the moment and prefer to wait a bit to test how ppl will adopt it?
Part two of the interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=eubdKflIVoQ
But if you're stuck dealing with a pig, it may as well be a pretty pig.
My guess is that this is the patent:

http://www.google.com/patents?id=ff4OAAAAEBAJ&zoom=4&...

It looks like the patent covers a process for inviting to connect with users or "friending".

I can't believe that anyone hadn't done that before 2001. But I can't quite recall any in particular.
This is, as we say, a solved problem- check YouPorn.
I'd love it if the live BBC channel streams would also supply a Flash alternative. Though I'm not too hopeful as they seem to be a lesser-known sideshow at the moment.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcone/watchlive/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctwo/watchlive/
The real loser here is netflix. 17% increase in delivery time and not a damn thing you can do about it. Ouch.
Ask HN: How do you solicit "known people" to play a role in your startup?
I was just looking at the Venture Hacks AngelList application and noticed a field called "Social proof." This field is labled as important and asks for "known people" in a company's industry that are involved with said company.

How does an unknown founder go about soliciting "known people" to play a role in their startup? It seems like a chicken and egg kind of problem.
Writing  an successful 1000 Word Essay
Very often, as part of the academic process in many colleges, students are asked to write a 1000 word essay as an assignment. Almost the first thought that comes to every students mind is an alarming,
considering that those 44 cents will get a letter basically hand delivered from Key West Florida to Barrow Alaska. Still a pretty good deal.
Maybe that's ok, since in the future most of their customers will probably want to watch everything online (through them) anyway.
You don’t sit it down in your lap, the screen doesn’t come up and block reality- it’s something you pick up and hold. And, like a book, you can simply put it down.

A wonderfully concise way of putting the key difference.

It’s the first Personal Computer- good for hanging out in the living room, terrible for ‘real’ work. That’s why it’s fantastic!

However, this misses the mark. It's only a matter of time before we iron out the kinks and such interfaces are used for work.
Honestly, how difficult would it be to just make it a simple customization option in the Appearance preferences? Left or right orientation.
> Imagine UPS/DHL/FedEx's profits if they went from deliver-on-demand to deliver-to-everywhere-regardless-of-demand:

But UPS and FedEx already have something similar that occasionally leverages the USPS for the final leg of delivery. The FedEx version is called SmartPost.
I just wish Cisco would fully support IPv6. Their regression of the protocol on their routers, firewalls, leaves something to be desired. But, I guess regression requires users - chicken/egg thing.
Awesome. I never saw why the mail system should work longer than the normal working week anyway. Hopefully the UK will go the same way sometime soon. The threat of having mail turn up on a Saturday (that you might need to wait in for) isn't worth it.
It'll be interesting to see what claim language emerges from reexamination.

You can think of each individual claim in a patent as being a separate "infringement checklist." For a given claim to be infringed, all the elements of the claim must be present in the accused product or method, either literally or in the form of an "equivalent."

A claim is like an AND statement: If any element in a given claim is missing from the accused product or method (and a substantial "equivalent" of the missing element isn't there either), then that claim isn't infringed.

Note, however, that the several claims of a patent are OR'd together -- you might not infringe claim 1, but you still might infringe claim 15. All the patent owner needs to prove is infringement of a single claim.

(This assumes that the accused infringer doesn't prove that the infringed claims are invalid. In over-simplified terms, if the AND statement of a claim returns TRUE when applied to the prior art, then THAT claim is invalid. [Proving obviousness is a more-complicated analysis.])
Popular Science+ (Popular Science magazine on iPad)
Oh god, not another one.
> To predict first weekend performance, they built a computer model, which factored in two variables: the rate of tweets around the release date and the number of theaters its released in.

Oh so this is to predict how well something will do after it's already doing it. The prediction markets work well before release. The only use for studios with this data is how widely to market/distribute the movie and any results from Twitter come after said marketing/distribution (and is likely actually a result of it).
Very true. It's very informative yet very terse, and contains fun personal touches. Thanks for the link.
'The iPad's killer app is chilling out!' That's exactly what I think.

I can picture this thing being passed casually around the living room so that family members or friends can look at photos or check out something on a webpage ('look at this!'). You can't really do that with a laptop, and it's not very appealing with a smartphone. I can imagine it becoming a staple of the lounge just like TV&remote or newspaper.

Also I can see many workplaces adopting it to kit out their practices/garages/surgeries/kitchens like Star Trek... iPads bolted to the walls or mounted on stands etc.
Good point! However, those spammers are doing some good because they're paying money to stamp their mail, which goes to employ mail personel, etc. For that reason I feel good when I throw away credit card letters while saying "Dear greedy creditor, No I don't want your raping fees, but thank you for paying money for me to throw this letter in recycling."
I've been designing for 11+ years, as well as learning code (HTML/CSS/Javascript/JAVA/ROR). I do consider myself a ui designer first, and a developer second - but that hasn't stopped me from trying to learn as much as possible so I can build my vision (nothing is more satisfying that designing what you want, and then making it work - front end and back end).

That said, people like me do exist - more so as entrepreneurs though. I have met a few designers who know at a minimum HTML & CSS though. I wouldn't even look at designers who don't know that much.
Why It’s Stupid to Pay Kim Kardashian $10k for a Tweet
Not really, I see mail as a temporary problem. If Netflix Streaming contained all the top titles, I would use that almost exclusively. There really would be no reason for mail, it's slow and inefficient.
It's just too bad that routergod stopped updating years ago.
How I Beat a Facebook Stalker
I'm not saying it's a bad deal, just that the OP hadn't actually bought a stamp in a long time (or at least realized the cost).
Nonsense, I have various everything-machines that can "transform" into either work computers or personal computers, depending on what I want them to do ;)

Still, I want one.
I agree. I think netflix has made it quite apparent that they are looking for instant streaming as the model for the future. They already have aligned their website to feature the instant streaming over their mail service, they have teamed up with the gaming consoles to enhance the instant streaming experience and it sounds as if they have made a way for the iPad to have instant streaming.

This change might hurt them in the short run, but I would think Netflix would love to be a streaming only company!
I watched this in its entirety earlier. If you're familiar with Ries' work on Lean Startup the last year or so, you won't get much new out of it, but it is probably the best single "This is what we do, this is why we do it, this is how you can get started RIGHT THE HECK NOW on it" I've seen yet. It would be a great thing to show someone if you're trying to get, e.g., buy-in from management.

My favorite quote: "60 to 80% of features do not change customer behavior." So painfully, painfully true.
"[USPS] fiscal 2009 year-to-date net loss is $4.7 billion"

http://www.usps.com/communications/newsroom/2009/pr09_066.ht...
I don't get it. I am routinely subject to silly, unfriendly, inexplicable () policies and restrictions when dealing with private corporations. It sounds like there's supposed to be some conservative message here about the superiority of the free market, but it falls flat.

Actually, such polices are usually quite easily explained by the simple logic that there isn't any money in caring too much about edge cases.
In the parent to my comment was this sentence: "New users have no idea how powerful it is."

That reminded me of this quote from Star Wars Episode VI: "You don't know the power of the Dark Side."

Which reminded me of the bumper sticker or T shirt: "Come to the Dark Side. We have cookies."

Which led to my comment: "Come to the Dark Side. We have buffers."

Buffers isn't important, except as something Vim has that can substitute for cookies.
>If I'm eating at my desk, don't touch my food.

>If there's cake in the breakroom, have a piece, but leave your Tupperware in your car.

People actually do that? Where do you work?

>If you get upset in a discussion with someone else, don't raise your voice, don't yell profanities, and most of all, don't slam the door or throw anything.

If one of the last two happened, that's when I'd leave for good. I've seen people get upset and even raise their voices, but if it ever got even slightly physical, I think I'd have to go. It's just too easy for an object to hit someone "accidentally." The last thing I need is a red Swingline stuck in the back of my head.
Selection Guide for cholesterol-lowering drugs
Upvote for you, for awesome effort.

But your demo confirms for me all my suspicion about bubble cursor. Hang out at the midpoint between three bubbles of all different sizes and it just seems incredibly unintuitive to me which one is highlighted. Yes it makes small things easier to click on (sometimes much easier than gigantic things), but as I said above, I don't think that's a good thing because of all the buttons that have functions that can't be undone. You mentioned making buttons that do not do things that you can't undo, but how would that work in a save dialogue box, or when you've just typed up an angry email you never intended to hit send with?
You could always email the author. Often times academic code is slow to be released because the types of things that tend to be thought of as required for software release (documentation, install help, bug fixes, coherent code organization) simply aren't there. The reward system set up by academia doesn't place value on those types of things, so it takes a long time to get them done in your free time. The result is people are hesitant to release their code because they know it will likely be difficult to put to "real" use without heavy refactoring.

Just my 2c.
That money didn't come out of thin air.. It results in higher fees for their customers which means the customer spends less with other companies who then don't hire people, etc etc.

Using your logic it would follow that email spammers are doing some good because they're using bandwidth (jobs for everyone from Cisco to ditch diggers) and create a market for people to combat spam. Stimulus!
Get a ticket how? Because you let your dog crap openly on the street while a cop was watching? What kind of disincentive is that?

I live in the police state of New York City, and yet on my block alone I regularly have to dodge between 4-5 piles of crap every time I walk down it. Not even by the curb, right in the middle of the sidewalk.

In fact, I was kind of surprised Zed got so worked up about SF fecal matter. Although it seems like there's slightly more human excrement around in SF, the shit-factor in his previous home is pretty competitive with SF.

Or maybe Zed wanted to assert passive aggressive dominance against SF by 'talking shit' about it (yow!)....
In 10-20 years I question whether there will be a Netflix. Already cable and tv companies are moving in with On-demand movie rentals. While the film industry will fight the decline of physical rentals tooth and nail eventually they won't have a choice.
Are US Postal Service Forever Stamps a Good "Investment"?
I honestly had no idea that mail was delivered on Saturdays until I got a Netflix subscription. I thought there must've been some sort of mistake when I saw "For Saturday: Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen", but when I checked the mailbox that Saturday, there was mail in it.

I still only check the mail on Saturdays when I know a movie will be waiting for me.
When the government decides Facebook is "Too Big to be Patent Trolled" I think some of the little guys who got eaten alive by business process patents might just fly their airplanes into the patent office or court building!
I think streaming is _one_ of their products for the future, but I'd bet blue ray dvds are also a significant growth area both for them and the movie studios. There's going to be a war before those studios will let netflix stream recent releases in HD.
This made me wonder whether it was a good deal to buy "forever" stamps:

http://www.slate.com/id/2166475/fr/rss/
Well you could get a PO box and still have your Saturday movies. Or just use the streams, mail is on its way out.
This wouldn't be such an issue if the postal service operated like a business instead of an institution. Why not commercialize it more? Where are the Coke stamps and IBM Express Mail envelopes? Why isn't the mail truck wrapped with an American Idol promo? Seems like the USPS could be a huge advertising vehicle. Why is this sacred?
Agreed. We tend to site on physical DVDs for awhile, but thanks to the movies available on demand, we more than make the monthly cost worth it.

The other downside of physical DVDs is that often, the discs we received are scratched or damaged beyond usability.
First iPad Reviews Are In - Gizmodo
Aren't these just one line utility methods that a user could write themselves?
Ask HN: Alternatives to Skype To Go?
Skype To Go is no longer working[1], and as far as I know, there has been no information from Skype as to why, or when the service will be restored. I'm wondering whether there are any startup alternatives out there. I basically used Skype To Go the same way you use a calling card, except that it allowed me to call anywhere in the world for a flat fee of US$10/month. I'm aware of Google Voice, but I would rather not use them.

[1] E.g. http://forum.skype.com/index.php?showtopic=581991
http://forum.skype.com/index.php?showtopic=572791
I'm pretty sure they don't expect you to actually complete any sort of task here. World explodes, that's that.
I meant in the short term, however I didn't state that. You're right though, creating a low-maintenance hive (IE one you only have to harvest every few months) would drastically increase long-term profitability. Having to drive around to harvest the honey would likely increase costs on a company, but they'd be at much less risk.

Virtually every farmer has major incentives to keep their own bee hives, they'd be travelling their fields frequently enough to harvest the honey so they would stand to benefit the most for the least of expense.
Because they're too afraid to syndicate their content and deal with a mess of licensing deals.
You can't get HepA from dirty words.

You can get it from having someone's shit-covered feet all over a surface that you eat off of, though.
FWIW we've been running out of oil for even longer than that: "In 1919 United States Geological Survey (USGS) head George Otis Smith even predicted that the nation would be out of oil in nine years." http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/05/0520_040520_...
It's even older than that ;-)

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/ipv6mess...
A bit different from this, but OS X has allowed the editing of nib interface files in any application for years (though that ability seems to have unfortunately gone away for the most part in Snow Leopard, where most nibs are compressed to save space).
It's not the American homeless; it's the San Francisco homeless. In most American cities you definitely won't see shit on the sidewalk as a part of an everyday occurrence.
I saw the chairman of their board speak not long ago, and it turns out the biggest problem is that USPS can't fire any of their union employees, who consistently get awarded UPS salaries + 15-20% in arbitration.
High Tech Startup is a fantastic book that takes you from the kitchen table to IPO.

http://www.amazon.com/High-Tech-Start-Revised-Updated/dp/068...
Good discussion of how the current inflation rate must be considered when determining the present value of investments.
Hire just a designer, than have me do the conversion into HTML/CSS/JS. Soup :)
By pointing, do you mean the soles of your shoes were facing them, or were the feet pointed in the direction of the men in the normal use of the word pointing? If it was the normal use of pointing, how do you avoid having your feet pointing towards whomever is in front of you when you walk? I'm really just trying to get a picture of the situation here.
I still don't see this (the iPad as something for work, I mean).

Does most people's version of "work" consist of setting something down on a table, and then never breathing on it?

This idea of a tablet as a work device has been solved many many many times already and is already extremely successful; it's called a toughbook and it is a wonderful machine. I have guys drop their toughbooks, use them in the rain, use them when their fingers are covered in grease, I've had toughbook get run over, and left in hot cars for a day. There is absolutely no possible way that the iPad could survive in these conditions.

Howabout doctors? Lots of people are claiming that doctors are going to be all over this...why? How is this different then the myriad of tablets that are already available? I've heard people praise the iPhone's interface as some marvel of modern design, but really? I've had mine for about a week and a half now and I cannot TELL you how much I miss buttons that do things. The phone's interface feels like there was a lot of shoehorning to get it to work with only a few buttons. I really miss my blackberry.

My iPhone is great for updating my twitter status and making people laugh by having them sing into the "I am T-Pain" app, but it is absolutely not in any way something that is designed for work.

We'll see, but I think that the iPad is just going to be an iPhone SUPER, and I think that we've already seen why the iPhone doesn't work as a business tool (at least not for the people I've met). I replaced a few people at work's blackberries with iPhones because they begged and begged for them [I talked to their boss and had them set up the iPhone as a sales incentive for them, it worked really well, actually :)] and after about a week they started crying for the return of their blackberry.

My opinion is that the iPad will be the same story.
Hopefully UPS and FedEx will make up the difference by delivering on Sunday.

The only stuff I get in the mail these days is some envelope warning me that I will go to jail if I don't tell the government my phone number.
I keep under my desk about 5 euros worth of folding stool (looks like this:
http://www.amazon.com/Inch-Cushioned-Folding-Stool-Safety/dp... ). Actually better for putting feet up at a
comfortable height.

I imagine that a few of those, perhaps with a printout of your post taped, might be a good investment in workplace improvement.
When I saw the title, I first thought it was another April Fool's joke. Like it currently takes six days on average to deliver something, but there is not enough mail anymore to keep that up, so they're forced to deliver it in five days...

OK, so I didn't have my coffee yet... =)
Thanks.

This story:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1235081

talks a bit about the points you've made. Basically you put a passive delay in that's long enough for people to cancel. It's not going to work for everything though - sometimes you really do want to start a process immediately.

The biggest benefit comes when you've got a large bit of empty space on one side of an object. That space then becomes clickable. In a world with big monitors it's harder to get easy UI wins by putting important widgets on the side of the screen. You could get a similar effect with these bubble cursors.