skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think this study is skewed simply by the fact that these people knew they were being observed and that what happened in their lives mattered to enough to be studied. How much does that weigh into one's happiness?
I don't know about that. If a justice is to make judgements that make sense the participants in a society then it would help if they themselves are aware of the status quo of that society. Otherwise their judgments may be right in some philosophical sense but will alienate people from the law in a way that does tremendous damage.

Judgments should not only be 'right' they should make 'sense', and some of the language in the decisions indicates that not all of them are in touch with the world as we know it to the extent that they should be.
This article has a few weak points.

First of all, not everyone at Harvard is going to law school or pursuing law in any manner (including graduate students there).

Of my friends who attended Harvard, surely some have moved into the finance field but I think part of it is that it is one of the few fields that can (and will) compensate and challenge them properly. Others have gone to work for Google and Microsoft. Others have gone into consulting firms and others have struck out on their own and ran their own consulting firms and companies. By no means is it a clear pipeline that funnels everyone over.

From MIT I see a lot of people going into defense related areas, and not Wall St (more so than Harvard).

And while some Harvard (or any) undergraduate students have little experience at 'life' or getting things done, just look at last weekend's ROFLCon for an example of what a handful of recent Harvard undergrads can do in their spare time.
Creating Awesome Users [video]
OK this guy Alan Skorkin is trying to write "controversial" blog entries - presumably to help promote his services. Well and good. But this is just re-posting the efforts of others with no value added as far as I can see.

Yesterday, as I recall, it was a rather silly attack on JavaScript.

"Nothing to see here" as they say.
A New Search Engine: Timmp
I especially am looking forward to use files stored on my DropBox in other Apps (Like Air Sharing or Goodreader).

It's a nice way to get around the clumsy synchronization via iTunes.
In a very similar vein, have you seen the amazing wood machines from http://woodgears.ca/ ?

He has a binary adder: http://woodgears.ca/marbleadd/index.html
Vendor prefixes are important because different browsers implement work-in-progress specs differently. Theoretically (or practically, such as with border-radius), given the same value, browser X will implement it vastly different from browser Y.

Edit: rebuttal posted http://kilianvalkhof.com/2010/css-xhtml/css-vendor-prefixes-...
Because they wouldn't be 'sexy', a good terrorist attack plays the media as much as any other factor (number of people wounded/killed, timing and so on).

Killing people, especially in batches of 50 or so (sorry, that's not meant rude, just being analytical) is easy.

Doing it in a spectacular way ready for media consumption is very hard.

Terrorists have a real problem here. If they decided to simply butcher their way through humanity we'd have a much bigger problem.

See Algeria for what that world could look like.
because it pays?
I remember a class at CMU where they used a Bluetooth based system.
WRT patents, let's not borrow trouble, there's no sign that Oracle will get ugly in that way and they have a lot to lose if they start a patent war with the open software world.
Halliburton tries to patent patent trolling itself
I wonder if they are going to make students wear gold stars next?

This isn't high school, Northern Arizona University, grow up.
Maybe this could be the way out of this patent nonsens ?

Patenting patent trolling by one company devoted to this, so that it could devote it's own existence to troll patent trolls.

That would a delicious and pure irony.
Another reason this could happen: Your friends have allowed facebook to scan their accounts and facebook remembered that your friend sent you an email before to the address you're now using to sign up. No scanning of your account required.

I'm pretty sure they do save email data of non registered "users" because I was invited to facebook a few times. There was nothing strange on the first invite, but every consecutive invite had other additional friends of mine, who are too "waiting for me" to join.
Yes, you are right, they are selling something based on providing a partial solution to a very small piece of the problem, and something like that ought to be able to produce stats.
The linked site consists of one paragraph surrounded by ads.
Clojure in Clojure is something that Rich has started thinking about. Turtle Clojure ("It's turtles all the way down") to bare-metal as it counts for this (Linux, Xen, whatever) will follow that.
I think that this is a very important point. The only reason you need to license something is if the law prevents you from acting without a licence.

However, if you are processing the video in any way, or shipping software that does, then you will need a patent licence, won't you? In this case, the license terms could impose appropriate terms (eg. "we will license the patent to you in return for $x for every file you send over the web").

Licensing an encoder might also come with extra terms in the EULA (eg. "if you give us $x we will let you use our h.264 encoding software but you must also agree to pay MPEG-LA $y under these extra terms").

So essentially the whole system can be enforced purely via contract law, non-withstanding the dubiousness of the validity of some EULAs.

This suggests to me that a Rapidshare-type site would not need a licence even though people can use it to send h.264 video over the web. However a Youtube-type site would, because they are doing h.264 processing themselves - and a licence could come attached with additional terms.
Denmark hotel guests cycle for supper
shii did not write it
Link to the April 2010 ACTA document (PDF) http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2010/april/tradoc_1460...

Courtesy of Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agree...
spinvox.com
In an interview between Miyamoto and Iwata the genius of this first level is discussed

http://us.wii.com/iwata_asks/nsmb/vol1_page4.jsp

"But if you avoid the first Goomba and then jump and hit a block above you, a mushroom will spring out and you'll get a shock. But then you'll see that it's going to the right so you'll think: "I'm safe! Something strange appeared but I'm okay!" But of course when it goes against a pipe up ahead, the mushroom will come back! (laughs)" ... "At that point, even if you panic and try to jump out of the way, you'll hit the block above you. Then just at the instant where you accept that you're done for, Mario will suddenly shake and grow bigger!"

It turns out they panned it so you cannot avoid picking up that first mushroom that makes you big. They expected the first players to see it as an enemy, so they wanted to trap you into picking it up and then showing you that it made you more powerful.

Barely anyone notices that this was forced, but now everyone takes it for granted that the the mushrooms are good!
Sutton is famously (and probably falsely) known for answering a reporter, Mitch Ohnstad, who asked why he robbed banks by saying, "because that's where the money is."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Sutton
Interesting read. I wonder what the author thinks of personal debt. From where I'm sitting it seems like massive amounts of personal debt are the problem. I don't think my grandma had any credit cards a car payment or a mortgage costing her about a third of her take home pay.

Hard to come out on top when you are spending 5 - 30% more for an item than inflation says you should thanks to interest.
This was posted last night: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1319865
Did you ask questions?

If there were too many students to ask questions, I agree. In that case, you might as well be watching a video lecture at your own convenience.

I find the ability to ask at least an occasional question during a lecture, however, a big part of the value of taking a college course.
"The problem is that if you don’t build anything you cannot possibly innovate--you cannot innovate if most of your economy is service--or anything other than manufacturing."

Quoted for disagreement. (Was this posted for disagreement?) I think plenty of HN participants know that innovation is possible in service industries. They have seen it done, because they have done it themselves. That means wealth-creation is possible in an economy based largely on services.

After edit: Upon a bit more reflection, it appears that the author of the submitted article has had an extremely poor education in economics.
What My iPad Is Teaching Me
EDIT: LOL, I get down-voted on this comment along with the parent who said they will be paying for their child's college soon and likes this system? That is comical. You, who through the first stone, are one of those people that must have structure and rules imposed on everyone because you have reformed and you can only feel in control by abiding and making others do so. You, yes YOU, made my day.

I have a feeling the other HNers will override your foolishness.

...and now I regret voting you back up.
Well, if they're sane enough to fix this (not requiring the opening of a "formal service case") for all hardware bought before March 16th....

I suppose we will be able to judge the likelihood of their success by if, how and how quickly they fix this.
Pause your Web History- break Google Maps
And how would this improve the web experience? (considering you can do similar stuff with canvas as well...)
I'm not quite sure the author justified tacking 'And Why Microsoft's Still Evil' onto the title. I suppose one could make the argument that 'soulless company' (author's words) equates to 'evil', but if that's the case, then the author should have spent some time arguing why Microsoft is soulless (instead of simply asserting it as a universal truth). As it's written, everything after the ellipses in the title feels more like link-bate than a genuine representation of the posting.
Less hand-waving, more economics: http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=4954
EFF vs. Facebook: Part 2: "Facebook's Connections"
The underlying technology can be used for purposes other than checking class attendance. As some of the concerned students note in the article, they could probably construct a record of students locations on campus throughout the day. Not difficult to imagine an administrator somehow abusing that information.

If the RFID had an off switch, that might mitigate this concern. (Would be frustrating, though, if you forgot to turn it back on before class and thus did not get credit for attendance.)
Just make sure you leave them in a good state where someone else can pick up after you.
This article mentions other standards that are managed in a way similar to H.264 such as bluetooth, USB, Wifi, etc... As far as I can recall, there hasn't been much consternation about whether or not to support any of these in Linux. Can anyone enlighten me as to why there is such a line in the sand with respect to H.264 from the perspective of the open source community and not these other standards? Are the terms of the H.264 a departure from what these other groups have done?
Entrepreneur Survival Guide: Motivation, Courtesy of Uncle Nikolai 
"I tattooed 'survive' on my hand the night before I went away to prison.
And I did. We do what we have to do to survive..."
I just voted you up, because I agree. Sorry I was a bit randy this morning.
That is suggesting the school will add RFID scanners on other places than doorposts in classrooms. Certainly that is evil, but it also isn't the case as of this moment.
> I never found lectures to be particularly useful anyway.

Nor I. You and I are not the norm (evidence: we are on HN).

But I have taught in a community college in rural/bluecollar area where the only hope that some students had of breaking out of their apathetic, educationally-clueless family/community was to have instructor(s) who mentored them - that is connected personally.

Being present in class was not sufficient for them to transcend the crippling effects of their upbringings. But it was the first (and necessary) step for those without other mentors in their lives.

[ Apologies for any arrogant sound in the above. Calling it like I have seen it. ]
UFC 113 Live Stream UFC 113 Online Free Replay Video
The lectures were unfortunately too big to ask questions.

Ultimately I found that to learn effectively I needed to try applying the material to problems, try to solve the problems, and then use questions to overcome any sticking points I was having. I'm not sure it can really be done effectively in anything but the smallest of classes.
The best way for people in civilized societies to defeat terrorism is not to live in fear, and to keep on advancing rationality and freedom.
Oracle is definitely showing itself to be a bunch of scumbags, but I'm not sure they're quite that stupid. Attempting to squeeze OpenJDK would almost certainly call off the long-held truce with IBM, who has their own (admittedly unpopular, relative to Sun's) Java implementation.

Starting a patent war with IBM is like starting a land war against Russia; you might be able to hurt them, but in the end they will destroy you.
It's so slow.. According to hackermom the 14Mhz Amiga could do this at 25 fps, any idea why this is so slow on modern computers?
Agreed. They haven't mentioned that, but it appears some mid-level execs are all too eager to hit their targets, sacrificing long-term viability for their yearly bonuses.

We can make them behave by showing they have more to lose than us.
In a different genre of music, I find I keep coming back to Joni Mitchell's most successful album, Court and Spark.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Court_and_Spark

I especially like the track "Help Me," a big hit as a single.
Beware that you don't get classed as having a US business presence, that could cost you dearly.
In order to "keep on" advancing rationality and freedom we would first have to start advancing rationality and freedom. Both are in short supply.
Volcanic ash recommended telephonic solution
Indie music mogul: The net's great for us
edit: that should have been 'of' not 'for' in Portrait of Jerry Jackson.
Really? wow
Floating point ops used to take a while. A 16Mhz Amiga with a floating point co-processor might have had one of these:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_68881

Yeah, 16 Mhz ==> 160 KFlops, if you believe wikipedia. Supposedly the i7 has a peak of 79 GFlops. Sure, you can't get all of that performance out (either then, or now), but 79,000,000 / 160 is a bit larger than 143.

You used to measure the number of cycles an integer multiply costed, in the dozens or hundreds. Now it takes 1/4 of a cycle. A factor of 10,000 might be a fairer number
America as Jack Nicholson...code red on all of us.
I have a hard time believing that the same country that spent an entire day watching a tin-foil balloon float around because it thought a boy was inside wouldn't have a total media freak out over a 'terrist'-linked mall shooting.
Ah, so this explains why even Final Cut Pro doesn't let you use the produced file commercially. It's not the web streaming you're paying for, you're actually paying (again) for the encoding. Even in the rapidshare case they know that you've not already paid to encode it commercially, and nor has the uploader, because they don't offer that licence.
It really is more like if Sony or Microsoft took Nintendo's original design and added their APIs on top of it.

If Sony or Microsoft actually designed Mario the character would be overly muscled and bald like Gears of War or Infamous.
Beware the social media guru with more guile than knowledge
it's my identity, though. real or otherwise.
I was also at Harvard in the 90s and was a physics major. I ended up in strategy consulting. The article is pretty much spot on, but I would add one more factor - it's a lot of fun to work with really talented people; thats one of the reasons people go to consulting/banking/law school. I interviewed with research labs and aerospace companies (areas I was interested in) and interviewed somewhat on a whim with strategy consulting firms (as the article points out, it's hard to miss them on campus). The people I met at the consulting firms were all really sharp people. The folks at some of the other places were uninspiring. So, I went to the consulting firm, and for the year and a half that I did it (before coming to my senses), it was easy to overlook _what_ we were doing, because it was great to work with people that challenged me creatively and intellectually and to solve hard problems ("hard" and "useful to the world" not being necessarily correlated).

This dynamic creates a nice positive feedback loop. Once you have a high enough concentration of sharp people, it's easy to get more. Good startups leverage the same phenomenon.
-Nusrat's 'Sanu ik pal chain na aawe'

-4th movement of Beethoven's fifth

-Procol Harum's 'Whiter shade of pale'
Weirdly enough, when I was younger I thought 'No Woman, No Cry' was saying to a man that he wouldn't be miserable once he got rid of a bad woman, rather than a song from the point of view of a man who is comforting a woman. I guess you could read a lot into that.
Maybe it's not quite so bad; here's the beginning of one of the more interesting comments (http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2007/11/03/the-best-way-to-pre...):

"Dave Brown says

"JP, If you take the long view I’d argue that there is an equivalent to Moore’s Law in software. This law is that each year it becomes slightly easier to create a service that does something for a customer...."
Next thing for Ubuntu to learn
Tell that to Apple.
The only way to change the state of the patent system is by legislation; the system operates in the only way it can given the current laws. Judges do their best to interpret these law. Lawyers execute the will of their clients. "Inventors" seek to protect their inventions. Patent inspectors attempt the impossible task of evaluating the uniqueness of claims.

It is possible that the Court will change its opinion on the patentability of the ideas that concern us, but it is unlikely that they will not just rock but overturn the software patent boat. Even if we as individuals dislike software patents, wealthy companies clearly see them as an investment worth protecting. If you care, you need to speak out, and in a way that says it is in not your's, but society's best interest for the status quo to change.
All possibilities with only two characters is still <1000 combinations. At this sort of small number I'd take a guess and say that it would be quicker to use a slightly less efficient algorithm and let the Python internals do the processing on lists than to iterate at Python level.

The reason is that internal Python operations are orders of magnitude faster than a looping construct where the loop is written in Python.

So I'd have a set for the allowed word list, generate a set of permutations and then ask Python for the intersection, rather than iterating through the permutations on the fly.
The spelled out tutorials are a necessary consequence of a free-to-play model with lots of competition. If I pay $50-100 for a game, I will spend the time to learn it. If a free game on facebook is complicated or confusing there are 100s of others that will immediately satisfy with no learning curve.
But it's not about misunderstanding. We've all been on the Internet long enough to be able to slog through 1337speak and poor spelling and grammar, if we have to, with probably 99% understanding. However, it takes longer. As it is with capitalization--it doesn't prevent overall understanding, but it does slow it down, at least a little.

That said, maybe that's acceptable to you. Maybe you're going for a certain aesthetic.
An entire day yes, but it very rapidly disappeared from the public consciousness. And it didn't change the behavior of government in the slightest (no anti-balloon legislation passed that I know of).
Microsoft launches 'Spindex' social aggregator
The link leads to: Sorry, this story is not available.
It's really not about what you as an individual find attractive, but what the vast majority of people find attractive. We all have our preferences, and design is a somewhat subjective thing, but the best designs will resonate with the highest percentage of people, and aid in the functionality of the site too.
Pumpkin Pie Recipe
Draft Of Privacy Bill Introduced... And Pretty Much Everyone Hates It
503 error. Move website to a reliable host?
I'm not sure that the country spent the entire day watching that particular event. The cable news stations did.
It's only a matter of time until they all start in Number 10, with Cameras setup inside etc, televised 24/7, and the public vote them out one by one until the winner remains.
At my university we had to sign off on a sheet of paper for each class to document we were there.

How does carrying around an RFID improve that? One could simply carry the chip cards for his buddies to class or to protest the system just wrap all chip cards in tin foil and claim the system obviously failed. This is much easier than learning to fake signatures.

Apart from all that, as a student you should be mature enough to decide which classes you have to attend and which ones you simply study for on your own.
Coralized link: http://www.hiwiller.com.nyud.net/2010/04/29/if-mario-was-des...
At that point, the good work ethic is to say "look, this isn't working. What can we do to part on good terms?". It's a lot better than saying "screw you guys, I'm going home!" :)
File under your tax dollars (not) at work: "paid for by federal stimulus money"
I've been increasingly wondering about this, and I'm not sure I agree with the article.

Schneier asserts that "It's hard to sneak terrorists into the U.S.", which is hard to swallow given the essentially unchecked flow of immigrants coming across the Mexican border every day. Why would a terrorist fly into a major US airport, when he could just as easily fly into Mexico and then walk across the border (carrying as much cargo as he liked). Think of the vast drug shipments that cross this border, and then tell me that sneaking across a small suitcase of biological agents would be difficult.

I also disagree that "small attacks aren't enough". If you and 9 of your friends coordinate to roll grenades into 10 elementary schools in 10 different cities, I can assure you that you'd make headlines, and bring daily life to a standstill as parents refused to send their children to school.

It's also increasingly bizarre to me that terrorists would target airports or airplanes at all. Airports are the one place where security is most concentrated. Practically speaking, blowing up a plane is probably the most difficult option you could choose if you wanted to kill 300 people. Why not pick one of the other myriad unguarded 'soft' targets where people gather?

Either terrorists are incredibly stupid, vanishingly small in number, or both.
They started a series on Security Now! focusing on the basics of computing (starts with this podcast: http://twit.tv/sn233). I just listened to that and then saw this entry for a half adder (which they talk about implementing in the podcast) so I thought I'd link it here in case anyone was interested.

Does anyone else have some good resources about the basics of computing? We studied logic in one of my college math classes a bit, and learned how to implement the basic math functions (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division) in binary, but I've forgotten a lot of it at this point and find it really interesting. I'm specifically interested in the EE side of things, since I don't know all that much about it (they talk briefly about how a transistor actually works in the podcast at a high level, but I'd love to get a solid reference on this stuff that went from low-level up to the higher levels).