skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The n-back task is a working memory task that has been correlated with increasing fluid intelligence in one paper.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-back
I'm not sure what you are arguing here. What would a world look like without simplification? You want people to remain in complete ignorance until they are judged at some point to be "ready" to learn the complete truth about something? That seems like an absurd viewpoint to me.

Besides, your comment ignores the fact that people, in the absence of explanations (right or wrong) will make up their own model of how things work. That model is just as hard to unlearn as an incorrect view they may have been taught by an instructor. In fact, they are probably harder to unlearn because they are based on the persons own experiences.

All learning involves correcting and building on earlier concepts, there are no "tabula rasa". What is important is that people confront and integrate their own preconceptions as part of learning.

The National Academies Press book "How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School" is a good, accessible introduction to these concepts. It's on the web at http://www.nap.edu/html/howpeople1/.

This is a relevant passage: "A logical extension of the view that new knowledge must be constructed from existing knowledge is that teachers need to pay attention to the incomplete understandings, the false beliefs, and the naive renditions of concepts that learners bring with them to a given subject. Teachers then need to build on these ideas in ways that help each student achieve a more mature understanding. If students' initial ideas and beliefs are ignored, the understandings that they develop can be very different from what the teacher intends."
"You just don't get it" is the new "magical", isn't it.
Do you have a vision for your startup?
Whoa! I remember trying an experiment a lot like this when I was in high school with a girlfriend that was really into psychology. She would go onto my bookshelf and place a book there that was new or should be unfamiliar to me and then we measured how long it took me to find a different book that was familiar to me. We thought having a new unpredictable book on the shelf slowed down the search. I now think our methods were bogus, but there was undoubtedly something that caused the new book to stand out when I was looking over the bookshelf.
The difference is that that a bound stack of paper is a requirement of the media. Monks 500 years ago didn't get together and decide on how to enforce their copyrights by carefully designing the "book experience".

The media of software does not suffer from the physical limitations of bound paper, but we somehow are ending up with an inferior product anyway. Why? The monks in our case are greedy and want to be able to control what we buy, because they don't like all of the effects of publishing in the media.

So our monks are doing the equivalent of folding a page of the book, and then asking police officers and courts to please bonk anyone who shares books with a corner folded over.
Tell HN: Affordable design for startups
Just an offer for startups, who usually have tight budgets but need good design.

I offer web design and development services at affordable rates. My portfolio is at www.mediarosh.com Just email me at mediarosh@gmail.com with your requirements and budget.

NOTE: Please dont take this submission as spam. I'm sure a lot of people will find this info. useful.
Tip: Don't put vinegar in your rice cooker if it's got a metal pot. The vinegar will take the metal off the pot and into your rice and make it taste metallic.
Let me put it this way: How do you think Apple has become as big and successful as it is today, despite always releasing products that are technically inferior (ie. Mhz/megapixel/megawhatever) and often more expensive than the competition? Could there me more to a product than the hardware specs?
Undercutting By One Copper – Auction House Campers And Botters
I actually don't use cream, but I noticed american people like it better. I usually do one yolk per person plus a full egg.
But the point of the technique is not that the specific experiments shown are known beforehand to be superior, but that it allows you to perform arbitrary UI experiments on on every piece of software to find out which ideas are good and which not so.
If you like netcat, look at socat(1). It does everything nc(1) does and more.
This false meme is one of my pet peeves, nice to see a typically restrained takedown from the Economist.

The comments are good too.
It is the default method to scrape on-screen keyboards meant to prevent phishing attacs.
Ask HN: which bike would you recommend
something for daily routine in the central park
For how much? Doesn't mean much without that info.
IPad lines around the world
A new Windows? Please supplant the old one.
Would it make more sense for Microsoft to go tabula rasa, and create a completely new OS - replacing the Windows moniker, or would it be better to place this new OS next to the current Windows, offering two radically different Operating Systems?
ZeuAPP - downloader free soft for Win
Exactly, the problem is that I, as a hobbyist, can't scratch personal itches by writing and giving away little programs that run on such a device.

Most of the software I ran on my first few computers was freeware, downloaded from BBSs at 2400baud. The barriers to entry for hobbyists to get little itch scratching programs up on the app store at $0 makes it not even worth the effort.

And the shame of it is that the iPad is the perfect kind of hobbyist platform, small, constrained, knowable. An organization putting millions of dollars into a piece of software for it isn't likely to make something really that much better than one or two teens banging out code in the bedrooms over a few weeks.
I'm in my forties, I buy every gadget, have 3 phones, 2 digital SLRs, derive most of my home entertainment from the internet and generally feel lost if I can't get online. I have a friend who's 28 who doesn't have a cell phone, doesn't have internet at home, and basically feels that life online takes away from life offline. So there's at least two anecdotal data points.
Chrome OS is intended to run on hardware not entirely dissimilar to the iPad (get rid of the keyboard, put in a touch screen), with similar types of on-line connectivity.

Chrome OS will be to the iPad what Android is to the iPod.
Why Your Favorite App Isn't yet Available on the iPad
How to Write an Effective Press Release for Lead Generation
If you are determined to take your company to great heights, then here is a tool for you - “Press Release”. This gives a big push to an effective Lead Generation and to grab the attention of your potential customers.
How many people pre-ordered one of these without ever touching or seeing one?

Oh right, lots. That's how Apple became big again. People buying stuff sight unseen.
Not for me. I used to keep written lists, but got sick of forgetting them at work or having them fall apart when I was caught in a rainstorm.

I used "I Want Sandy" for over a year, and was visibly upset when "she" went away. I got accustomed to my to-dos being as accessible as the nearest web browser, email client, or even SMS device. Today, I use reQall on the web, through their voice number, over AIM, and through its BlackBerry client - whatever's most convenient at the time.

As you can guess from the two I chose, to-dos work best for me when I can rattle off a sentence in natural English and have the system figure out where & when to file it under.
This article is paywalled for me. Flagged.

A summary would be nice.
It's said by people who did not immediately understand that the iPhone would be such a huge success even though it was obvious to people who understood technology. These people now think that the iPad is the same thing even though people who actually get technology realize that it absolutely isn't. People commenting need to reflect carefully on their own ability to judge new tech.
Iwant iwant ipad (a limerick)
A long time ago I read that someone applied a statistical test for language to human DNA. They found that DNA which codes for proteins failed the test, but "junk" DNA passed.

I'm sure there's a mundane explanation, but it was fun speculating about what it might say.
Guidelines for Writing Spanish Essays
While learning a new language it is imperative for the students to write essays in that language. Essay writing help the students to learn the language better. Similarly if a student is learning Spanish, it is essential that he learns how to write Spanish essays.
Right, it's not meant to replace a laptop. I currently own both an iPod Touch and a Sony eBook reader. An iPad could easily replace both of them and its price is actually pretty much just the sum of the prices of the two.
"First great depression"?

The "first" great depression had the Dust Bowl, mass migration, people starving to death right in public, shantytowns popping up everywhere, and 25% unemployment. The "first" great depression had a 30% decline in GDP.

When was the second great depression?
His _Patterns of Software_ is a wonderful book.
I don't think most of the millions of iPhones and iPods that have been sold were purchased by people who buy Apple products on blind faith.
Google Launches the HTML5 based Gmail app for iPad
The current iPad is just a start. Just like the original iPod was a start and the original iPhone was a start. Apple is already hard at work rolling a bigger snowball with the iPad foundation.
Let him fight it. He is preaching to the choir. The only audience he is reaching are the techies. Techies don't like closed systems (mostly) but the general public could really care less.
Man, I came here to post the same thing. So delicious.
Yes. There's info on exactly what everything is here:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Ordnance_Survey_Opendata#...
The population increase route to recovery
An open letter to the people of the world
Why not Android on a tablet? (Or, to put it another way, why does Chrome OS exist?)
Reddit's Best Life Hacks
Agreed, as soon as Apple announces something all rational thought appears to go out of the window even amongst many respected commentators who should be making rational arguments.

I love Apple products but the consumerism disgusts me. I find it difficult to even care about the iPad at all because I know in 6-months another version will be out with a bigger hard disk and some new gimmick I'm told I'm not supposed to do without simply to increase my data usage on the device so I'll later upgrade to the next model with the bigger hard drive (iPod Nano).
The iPhone was huge because it was such a huge leap and unexpected departure from previous phones. It created awe and generated desire from the moment it was unveiled. It was obvious to those who get tech that the iPhone would be huge.

People who underestimated the iPhone are now overcompensating by being bullish on the iPad because they fail to understand that these are not the same thing. The unveiling of the iPad did not engender any of the feelings of awe that iPhone's did. Apple unveiled the worst tablet device they possibly could have. It was completely predictable. Every usage we've seen of the iPad has involved someone contorting his body to accommodate the device.

The iPhone offered a users things they didn't think were possible with a phone, and these were things they clearly wanted. The iPad offers users nothing they can't do using a laptop. It is an attempt at forcing a style of usage onto users that is clearly undesirable.

People will try to hype this thing and pretend they like it for as long as possible, but one can only sustain a lie for so long. This will be the end of the aura that Apple has been building for the past decade. It is clear as night and day.
Yes you can access an sd card (search the apple.com for iPad Camera Connection Kit) and no you don't need to run vim on the iPad.
Set up an rsync daemon so it doesn't have to go through SSH.
For every iPod and iPhone they have an AppleTV or Mighty Mouse where the magic just doesn't take and everyone buys something else instead.

And the Sansas etc. had caught up with the iPod by the time they brought out the iPhone, Android has caught up with iPhone in time for the iPad. They better hope it's a big hit because Android, Chrome OS and Meego tablets are all coming soon in time to be evaluated carefully by the kind of people who don't buy first revision Apple products.
That seems like exactly the kind of thing that Apple wouldn't do because it's too geeky and niche and distracts from the product vision even though the hardware and software are probably all there already.

Then again, I'm kind of shocked that you can get a physical keyboard for the iPad, so we shouldn't rule anything out. I'd expect this feature first from someone else though.
Make things like stew, soup or chilli in large quantities and freeze individual portions for later.

For a quick meal, try stir fry: quick, tasty and nutritious: http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/pork-recipes/oriental-por...

More importantly, learn to embrace/enjoy cooking. I love taking half an hour to unwind and cook something really fresh and tasty (and I'm a student). I'd recommend Jamie Oliver's website for recipe inspiration...

Cooking with fresh ingredients ticks all the priorities and doesn't need to be slow, there are plenty of "20/30 minute meal" type books, might I suggest something by Nigel Slater: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Real-Fast-Food-Nigel-Slater/dp/01410...
Wooha, where to begin;
I did my thesis on neuroeconomics, one of the best resources I found was on Squidoo http://www.squidoo.com/neuroeconomics (a lot of ads)

If you are generally interested in the topic of improving your brain, the top site I found is http://www.sharpbrains.com/

pretty good for understanding the brain's effect on behavior is http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/

Those 3 sites are already quite a lot. If you decide this is not enough, just mail me, I am happy to help.

PS: lecture from berkeley http://webcast.berkeley.edu/course_details_new.php?seriesid=...
I wonder if this will fit on a Valentines Day card...
Some relevant/related papers:

#Original paper: Alink, Arjen, Caspar M Schwiedrzik, Axel Kohler, Wolf Singer, and Lars Muckli. Stimulus predictability reduces responses in primary visual cortex. The Journal of Neuroscience: The Official Journal of the Society for Neuroscience 30, no. 8 (February 24, 2010): 2960-2966. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20181593.

#A relevant paper: Alink, A., W. Singer, and L. Muckli. Capture of Auditory Motion by Vision Is Represented by an Activation Shift from Auditory to Visual Motion Cortex. Journal of Neuroscience 28, no. 11 (3, 2008): 2690-2697. http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/short/28/11/2690.

# An interesting paper to HN: Alink, Wouter, Valentin Jijkoun, David Ahn, and Maarten De Rijke. Vries. Representing and querying multi-dimensional markup for question answering. (NLPXML-2006): 3--9. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.129.....
Youtube Trick-Now You Can Access Video When Removed
So, you agree that competitors would take part of USPS's business. That's all I claimed.
Club Penguin
Thanks for the advice on redirects; I'll do those post-haste.

As far as the site content and navigational structure go, does anyone have any comments? Thanks brianlash for the compliment - I do wholeheartedly stand behind our product.

A big issue is that of conversion. Our jump rate is about 70% right now; it was 80% before the switch to Wordpress, which is a good sign. Still, our conversion is ~0.1% currently, I would estimate.
1. Two multinational corporations staffed by highly sophisticated investors came up with a contract. One corporation then enforced the terms of the contract.

How evil.

4. The "qualified investors" knew that the contract might obligate them to pay out large sums of money. If you bet money on a horse race, you better plan for losing.

On the other hand, Goldman (and everyone else) did not expect gigantic AAA counterparties to go bankrupt. If you bet money on a horse race, you might not plan for winning but then having the track going bankrupt.
I don't know if it will be a hit or not, but I started becoming uncomfortable when the biggest touted "feature" in the keynote appeared to be the number of people's credit cards that Apple had on file. That didn't sound like a typical Steve "bicycle for the mind" Jobs thing to repeatedly dwell on. Certainly doesn't excite me as a gadget consumer.
Out of Debt Tips and Tricks
If you've started a "practice startup" before your real startup... What was it and how did it help you?
Aside from the inaccuracy of the title, it's also worth noting that the law referred to in the article was enacted in 2007 under Pres. Bush.
Because with small screens and underpowered chips web technologies can't cut it right now for many tasks, hence Android. This will become less and less true over time, and bigger screens, faster chips, new tech like WebGL and Apple convincing the public that a tablet doesn't need to be the same as their old computer all help it happen faster and make Chrome OS more compelling long term.
Funny. Also completely intentional. Nothing says "no worries, relaxed" as much as having your legs up.
I would really like to see the effect of attention span increasing drugs on these types of experiments, for example what happens when you give the low performers Adderal or Vyvanse? does their performance improve? What about drugs that expand working memory like Provigil? Is there any research on this that you (the HN collective) recommend?
Ever tried to catch a ball? in the case you succeeded you "remembered the future" Correct when I am wrong, but this article said nothing other than, we can estimate where an moving object will be in a few seconds. As far as I understood the abstracts of eagleal's linked articles, the describe that by tricking those pattern recognition abilities of our brain we can create optical illusions.
I'm suggesting to start small. Hello World small. It's easier to build on successes than failures.
Thanks for tracking down a link. I'm terrible at remembering references.
Didn't we have threads just a couple of days ago about the cons of putting your feet on your desk? Yeah: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1235791
Web Laureate Classic: "Zivity: a positive proclivity for exciting activity"
blink 3 times for right click ;-)
Life hack for increased productivity: limit yourself to 3 links per day from reddit.
spatial mapping is in fact a really useful way to memorize anything. It works because it engages multiple parts of the brain at the same time creating a stronger memory.
The main things I have noticed after using it for a couple of weeks:

- Unlike with Bing, I didn't switch back to google after a couple of days

- The results often include more relevant pages covering the same topic, whereas google seems to try to return the one best page about a topic. If you are researching something rather than looking for something, Duck Duck Go is better.

The second thing is what has so far kept me at DDG.

One feature request: Please allow "!g" to work at the end of the query and not just at the front.
That was really stupid.
The work is irrelevant it should just be the ideas that matter. The judge should have been asking himself two things 'did these two brothers come up with the majority of the ideas and designs that make facebook what it is?' and 'did Zuckerberg maliciously take these ideas?'

If I came up with the vehicle designs for a new low-mpg hatchback and show it to a few people at Ford and then magically Ford has a car being released that fits my designs to a T then yes I'm fully entitled to compensation for it regardless of my ability to implement it. Someone else is always better posed to implement an idea, if we reinforced that attitude then we wouldn't have anti-monopoly laws and anti-trust cases going.

Copyright doesn't protect ideas, so obviously these two brothers had design documents and other corroborating evidence otherwise a judge would have never heard their case. Obviously the judge thought that beyond a doubt that Zuckerberg's relationship with these two brothers suggests beyond doubt that he took their ideas and plans for implementation to form his own website.

Essentially the judge looked at it like "If Zuckerberg hadn't defrauded these two gentlemen, they would have been the founders of Facebook." This is why they were awarded not only money but a minority stake in the company (I believe they have to go back to court to agree upon how much their stake is worth, which will be their ability to implement vs Zuckerberg's).

When you look at cases like this you have to realise that a million crackpots claim to have come up with the great idea before someone else did. These two brothers likely not only have documents proving it, but their relation to Zuckerberg and the fact they allegedly hired him eliminate the majority of the crackpot criteria. Judge's rarely waste their time on cases like this, so the brothers must have had a really good initial case to begin with to even get the Judge to look.
>> This tells us that it is a really good platform, and that you enjoy it. It doesn't tell us anything about openness.

True, but look at the picture of getting people/kids into technology, hacking, programming, a device that inspires them to write apps, and lets them do so, is way better than a device which is super open, but doesn't inspire kids to write code...

>> Except those copies of OS X that come on the iPhone and iPad.

You want to write code and compile it ON the iPad??!? You need a mac to run XCode and your mac will have it for free, and you can download updates for free. Not sure what else you'd want Apple to do.

I don't agree with the bulk of your post, but totally respect your differing opinion. I guess only time will tell what the Apple/Andriod/?? future looks like. In the mean time I'm happy with my technology choices, and hopefully you are too.
If intelligence really is text-based, why have college lectures?

Not a rhetorical question by the way, I'd genuinely like to know if anyone has evidence for the information-richness or otherwise of audiovisual presentation.
Can you give an example of relative meaning? I get that language is contextual based on relationship, not position. In other words, the connection between symbol and meaning is fixed in relation to other symbols but the descriptions change based on the perspective of the speaker. Think of it like a family tree. Position is fixed from birth and meaning is derived from position. the only thing that is relative is description.

I guess you could be talking about semantics, or the use of a small number of sounds to produce an infinite number of meanings, but that seems like a discussion of speech or typography.
On The Value Of Fundamentals In Software Development
You can as long as you use the factory fitted radio.
"A recent study by the Pew Research Center, an American think-tank, found that internet users aged 18-24 were the least likely of all age groups to e-mail a public official or make an online political donation."

E-mailing public officials is a decent point. However, I don't necessarily think you can hold them not making donations against them. The 18-24 age bracket is probably one of the poorest as well.
I tend to agree that intelligence is text based and that touch is great - I have a sony reader touch and I absolutely love e-ink. Why? It's not luminescent!!! I can't go from a luminescent screen doing dev work all day to reading another luminescent screen for fun.
"intelligence is text-based" is a very over reaching statement. But the idea that touch based computing favors analog input, I think is dead on.
An old article, but a great read. Tying together writing and programming Lisp is insightful and if I could extend his ideas a little: writing using a light weight but very powerful tool like Latex seems similar to programming in a Lisp environment that may also be powerful but after a learning curve, the language and environment stay out of your way. Writing with Latex seems that way to me.
One in a million
Apple Purchases Another Processor Design House