skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There are three ways to tackle the human costs of computing.

1) Make the things humans have to do easier. UI/UX

2) Reduce the number of things humans have to do. While all modern hardware can calculate the same things (are universal) they have different security models which can affect how much maintenance the user has to do. Take capability based security, an old idea implemented in hardware in the IBM AS 400. Languages (E, Joe-E) based on it are currently being touted as a way to reduce the risk of malware infection, even if malware does get on the system it can't do much because the language VMs operate under a principle of least privilege.

If we are changing the Arch for performance (e.g. fleet) and can't make use of the performance with standard software we may want to change it in this way as well, to take advantage of the system.

To give a concrete example of how computer architectures can be changed for the better. If windows had capability based security at the low level it could pass bits of memory to the user land process by sharing a capability that gave it write access. Then the user land process could populate it, once it had finished and the kernel wanted to read it, they could revoke the the writeable permission. This would prevent this sort of attack

http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=1331025

See this for an intro to the philosophy

http://www.erights.org/talks/virus-safe/index.html

3) Make the computer do the work for the human. Yes this is mainly an AI problem, but it also an architecture problem. If you want the system to manage things like your graphics card drivers for you, you have to make some decisions about the hardware. Which programs are allowed to try and manage the graphics card drivers, how can the user communicate what she wants in terms of graphics card drivers in a way that the computer will find unambiguous.

So yep, UI and UX, is important but it is only one possibly angle of attack, and not the one I'm interested in. Because people are doing fine work on it, while the others languish a bit.
Speaking as an ex-(21 years and counting) pharmacist, the job of the pharmacist is not to count pills; it's to make sure that your doctor doesn't poison you by accident.

The pill-counting is mostly done by dispensers. The knowledge about medication side-effects, prescribing guidelines, drug interactions, and the messy rest of it? Not so much.

(Note that I missed out "dealing with insurance companies" because the NHS -- I'm British -- doesn't involve that step.)

((NB: I am an ex-pharmacist because being good at that job requires a peculiar combination of obsessive-compulsive detail work and total lack of imagination about what happens if you get it wrong. And I lack it.))
That's a painfully old brainteaser. The answer: He was playing Monopoly.
Make Your Own Stickers
Reddit search...

Ok, I am just kidding :). Its hard to vote on donations like this because I am sure they could all use some help, so I only voted for the countries and causes I am more aware of.
Ask HN: How can I control an inkjet's motor?
Just for kicks. Oh and fun and profit of course.
I hope for the same. The Bespin project by Mozilla is also interesting in this space, they've built a text engine based on canvas. They target code editing but at least they're solving a (very important) part of the same problem.
This is correct - I was referring to using JDO.
I buy lottery tickets occasionally (few times a year). I have few 'justifications' for that:

* The money goes to charitable purposes. So if I don't win, I have given money to charity, which is kinda nice.

* Somebody always wins (eventually). And hopefully she/he will be bit happier, at least momentarily.

* It is actually possible for me to win. Even a small chance of winning is a lot more than zero possibility.

Overall from my perspective it seems a net positive for a few dollars a year. Of course poor people spending tens of dollars a week is quite different matter, and bit problematic.
you could peek at their e-mails to detect some pattern. if you don't "feel" like it's automated, you can delete their accounts after X days or send reminders.
I think the word "multitasking" gets way overloaded in these discussions. In this case, it's not that people are happy that their other applications' processes aren't continuing to be preemptively scheduled by the kernel. They're happy that all iPad apps always take up the whole screen. There's certainly a cost to that, but many feel there's a benefit, too.
the conclusion of the linked article that people are still poor because they keep on buying lottery tickets is naive and condescending.

Indeed. It is difficult to understand the mind set of the poor without understanding the screaming room: http://rortybomb.wordpress.com/2009/12/03/persistence-of-pov...

With that shift in perspective, a number of behaviors that seem irrational start to make a lot more sense.
Huh?, how's this easier than adding a package entry to the depends-on form in an asdf-file in CL?
I think the Apple fayboyism may be coloring some of these statements. The idea of a touch-screen tablet is hardly new, and many people, myself included, have been waiting for someone to develop a device like the iPad for years. Look at all of the hype that surrounded the CrunchPad announcement, even when we rightly assumed it was vaporware.

Apple isn't really an innovation company. They're great at executing on ideas that no one else has yet turned into a viable product, which puts them on the cutting edge. But they've never came up with something entirely new and created demand for it where none previously existed.

And I can find plenty of points at which the iPad falls short of my tablet wish-list, but that didn't stop me from getting one.
SnapScouts - Crowd Sourcing Crime Prevention
If you can implement Etherpad via Wave, I think that makes it "bigger" by definition. At least in terms of the size of the problem-space.

And "better" doesn't seem fair to determine, either way, until their Google work ships.
Exactly. Setting up a conventional gateway and merchant account takes weeks at best, complete with several contracts, credit check, authorization forms, and several rounds of changes to your website if you're taking payments online.
This is the first time I've seen the UN use social media before. I wonder how fast this can grow? If they were really smart, they would also put ads on their site, and use that money to pay for food. They could at least link to sites that let you donate to charity, or sites like http://thehungersite.com that use their ad revenue to donate rice (1 cup per impresssion!). That alone would probably make a huge difference.
We (Braintree) have no contracts and no termination fees. Merchants can leave whenever they want and for whatever reason without penalty. Some of our sponsoring banks unfortunately have cancellation fee language (that we don't control and are trying to get removed) but we provide an addendum to every customer that states they will never be responsible for any cancellation fees.
If it is supposed to be irony, I didn't get it either.

This sounds to me like the tabletop game lawyers, who have always been litigious given their money making scheme is selling miniatures worth pennies for pounds, stepping on the shoes of the MMORPG. Then again afaik the MMORPG has turned into a flop.
You're being too specific about the task you need the designer for. Designers and those who seek them, must have this thing called a "vision" that allows you to see the value of your potential designers and they will get to understand you better.

But no one really does that sort of thinking when they think of "design". So, the concrete solution: Go on twitter and ask designers to read a description of who you are, what you do, what you like etc. And offer some cash for those that design a cool site that's coherent with the description you put for yourself.

Of course there's no magic trick that works for everyone so TIAS!
I used to work for a company that did this. Rather, they had moved on to advising people who did this. Cashflow brokering is sometimes a sensible business for actual businesses, eg you have $1M in firm orders and need some cash today to fill them.

But I feel the same way as that guy about most lottery winners. Being rich really is a habit of mind that you can't learn overnight.
Not Python specific but languages that regularly interface with C code are often troublesome on Windows because the library writer assumes Posix functionality is available or the library depends on Unix libraries that are at best badly ported to Windows.

Haskell is one language where i encountered that too often, whereas Clojure's Windows support does not feel second rate. The portability of the JVM and Java's libraries combined with a joyful functional language like Clojure is very attractive.
Imagine the counter-story: "High Frequency Trading companies made millions during stock market crash."

They knew they would make a lot of money once the market rebounded - they always do. They make money when the price changes, not if it goes up or down. These firms were probably trying to prevent the PR storm that they caused it.

Even though they could have possibly made it worse by pulling out, they would much rather that be the story and gain support than making a lot of money and being on the other side of a pitchfork mob.

Side note: Either way this doesn't mean that they don't control the market with such high volumes. Getting rid of HFT would almost require waining their volume over time to help transition to a completely new liquidity system.
Please don't use URL shorteners.
This is a very readworthy slide from the CTO of freiheit and the project:
http://www.slideshare.net/smartrevolution/how-a-clojure-pet-...

I'm curious about the "how to get rid of Eclipse"-part. How do you "Go to implementation" and "Find usages" in Clojure without a 7 key-combination in Emacs? I would love to take a Clojure-IDE for a spin.
I took it to be an educated guess, not a statement based on hard data.
I said the following in the reddit thread but don't know if anyone read it. Award $5k to ten "help-the-world" projects ($3k would probably go towards organizing everything). Spread the word via reddit/xkcd/HN. Sorta like the Pepsi-Refresh contest but more open and social. Let each of the 10 project owners do a reddit IAMA and keep the online community updated with their idea and progress. Allow them to share videos, photos, and post guest entries on blog.reddit.com. Let reddit/xkcd/HN users vote on all the submitted projects and select the top 10.

If $5k seems too low, then maybe have five $10k projects or some other mix. In a way, this would be a gift that keeps on giving.
Ask HN: Do you ever show appreciation to a site by clicking on Google Ads?
I've been thinking about the merits of this type of action. It seems that in engaging in this type of behaviour you're diverting a portion of someones Adwords expenses to someone elses Adsense earnings with Google taking a nice sized cut. It seems unfair to the person running the Adwords campaign. But it does seem like the simplest way to quickly acknowledge someones work by sending them some Adsense revenue (even though it's peanuts). Any thoughts on this type of behaviour?
And of course, the LINQ version returns an IEnumerable<TResult>, while the List version return List<TResult>. You could chain a .ToList() there to make them equivalent (if needed).
Iron Man 2's Secret Sauce: 3-D Printing
Adam Lisagor is indeed a wonderful character. If you like him, you should check out the podcast he does with Merlin Mann and Scott Simpson, You Look Nice Today: http://youlooknicetoday.com/
Where are you getting that quote from? They don't run Python on the JVM.
Meeting the guidelines is a piece of cake. Proving it is like disproving that invisible dragon in Carl Sagan's garage.
HTML5 etc. isn't starting from scratch -- the idea that Adobe has had extra years to refine their algorithms compared to potential competitors is pretty nonsensical,
What I try to do is this:

If I enjoy the site, actually take time to look at the ads for something I'd want to learn about more. Then I'll click an ad. Sure I could just go clicking randomly, but that would be charging the advertiser for no value. At least this way, it's a win-win.
write your representative (US) https://writerep.house.gov/
So based on the feedback so far, I have decided to do a rotating co-host every week - starting off with HN users.

I have three HN users that have said they want to co-host, so that takes care of the first three weeks (provided we can get our schedules to mesh).

Let me know if anyone else is interested.
I think that's just a stance to further his ploy of promoting his new clone of a four year old webgame.
Braintree has gone out of their way to help my company out, they are extremely startup friendly.

My customer service rep at Braintree handles regular billing inquiries and has also helped me with some coding issues - that speaks volumes in my book.
What's killing the news business: A belief in corporations.
How a site's look affects traffic patterns and revenue is an incredibly complex and well-researched nebula. For example, Marissa Mayer talks about how a couple pixels of whitespace and subtle differences in color shades drastically affect traffic on Google.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x0cAzQ7PVs <<= (I think that's the talk)

I don't buy that un-categorically "if your website looks BMW-fancy your visitor is going to assume BMW-pricing". Rather than opining one way or another about what look is "right" for sites, I'd be interested in the process of finding that look.
US Patent Office affirms i4i patent - rejects Microsoft challenge
It's most likely not nefarious. The combination of your email deliverability and people's laziness will mean that a lot of people probably won't click the activation link.

How are you sending email? Are you using AuthSMTP or something like that, or are you just doing it straight from your server? Is your SPF record correct? Have you tried a Port25 scan?

You're not an average web user. For a lot of people, checking email is a separate activity from web browsing. If they use Outlook, they have to open a completely separate program just to use your site. They don't have GMail open in a separate tab at all times.

I would wonder if you really need people to activate their account that early in the process, but I'm not that familiar with how your site works.
8 Websites You Need to Stop Building (comic)
Comparing TOI with Pluggd.in is a terrible parallel. TOI (Times of India) is world's largest read english daily with very high reputation in the country.

That said, I do agree with you that Indian Gov have had some past cases of overspending. But when things like 9/11 (New York) and 26/11 (Mumbai) happen, it's the Government we blame first. India is shifting towards a massive (given the population) National electronic ID infrastructure, security is needed.

Moreover, creating an OS is hardly a significant expense in a country's budget. After an event like 26/11 and given the fact that India is about to host multiple worldwide sporting events in next 1-2 years, this hardly looks like a waste.
Just to clarify, we at Recurly will gladly return your credit card data to you (in a secure fashion) if you decide to migrate away. I've been burned before by Authorize.NET holding my business' credit card data hostage and I wouldn't wish that on anyone. We'll be posting more on this shortly.

I'm really happy that Braintree is pushing this forward. I've seen it hurt several companies when they need to switch gateways or merchant accounts.

Isaac
Recurly, CEO
Thanks, we are happy if this can help.
An inkjet uses a stepper motor. You'll want one of these:

http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_i...
First off - good for you for realizing that a decent design goes a long way in promoting your brand/product..

Check out http://sortfolio.com by 37Signals. Good designers are hard to find and even harder to contract. Good designers that are somewhat affordable are probably the hardest to get work from. It's just the nature of the industry. There's a lot more demand than supply.

Keep trying and don't give up. You will eventually find a good designer willing to work with you.

EDIT: Please make sure to have a concept ready for them - a quick mockup in Fireworks or Photoshop. Otherwise you will have a hard time finding anyone. Most designers take your mockups and make them look good. They do not start from scratch with a blank canvas unless you expect to pay a lot
Yes. Not sure what more to say.
"You can now use SVG and MathML inline in HTML5 pages, without XML namespaces."

Thank reason.
I have been seriously considering going the Bespin/canvas way myself. I wrote http://bulletxt.zetabee.com/demo using a bunch of textarea tags but having seen how well Bespin works, I think it would be much better to code it on canvas. It would work much better across all the different browsers.
Actually, I had email on dialup in 1997, and you could download a modest amount of single user's email, and refresh newsgroups, in about 4 minutes flat.
Despite Previous Equipment Failure, BP Says Spill ‘Seemed Inconceivable’
independent of this article making a very good point, i appreciated the grouping of 'java applets' with html5 as an example of 'cutting edge' tech on the web!
How is Python deliberately and comically crippled? I'm honestly curious.
No, they wouldn't. All that they'd compete on is perceived payout. In other words, if you have private competing lotteries, they'd optimize the heck out of the feedback loop explained in the article, ruining people's lives even more.
List of unsolved problems in philosophy
Nassim Taleb didn’t cause the crash | Analysis & Opinion |
I'll pick talented and available.

For the personal homepage, I really like what Rafa did at http://rafaelcorrales.com/

You are right, I don't need much. Just someone to help me clean up a Tumblr/Posterous theme and integrate my different online presences plus Disqus.
Please critique my new app: reminderer.net
I wrote this app because I wanted an easy way to 1) develop new habits, 2) burn important facts into memory, and 3) track long-term goals. I would like it to be useful for others too. Please tell me what you think.
Business 101, if incremental costs are low, go for higher volume. The incremental cost of selling 1 more copy of the game suite are basically zero. Cents or perhaps even fractions of a cent. Thus, it makes sense to ignore per-transaction revenue and concentrate on total revenue. If you're able to make 2x or 10x as much revenue even though the per customer revenue is smaller you've still made more money at the end of the day.

Indeed, you've made more money and more people are using your product (many of them paying less than they would otherwise).

In business terms this is called a WIN/WIN situation.

(Consider all the products which used to be expensive but are dirt cheap today. Do you think it's "disgusting" that you pay your ISP a minuscule fraction of what you would have paid per byte per month back in the dialup era?)
I really enjoy the collaborative editing functionality, I wish there were native apps with the same thing. Or at least that their collaboration approach was closer to the google one than the "handle version sent by e-mail" variant.
I just registered there to take a look at the activation email that gets sent. It looks like the link is wrapped to two lines - Gmail handles those kinds of links correctly, but some mail clients don't.

Do you have a way to shorten that link up some?

(I know you can copy & paste the link, but my experience has been that users will try clicking the link and if that doesn't work they give up.)
How to use a semicolon.
I think in hindsight we can broaden this argument: human beings do not have the capacity to understand most dynamic complex systems sufficiently to engineer any particular macro-level outcome, and should instead focus on optimizing specific micro-level components to produce the desired micro-level results.

Considering the increasingly common failures of risk-aggregation systems in a number of contexts (not just economic: look at the cascade of failure that triggered the 2003 East Coast Blackout), we should be increasingly conscious of this as technological improvements allow us to act unilaterally at increasingly large scales.
I always wondered why fume hoods don't have a grating and pull from the bottom as well. Seems like there'd be a great many situations in which this would be handy.
Don't worry, I am not being rude :)

Of course I don't expect anyone to work for free. I am willing to pay the fair price.
A lot of businesses would like to have the problem this bakery is facing :-) I don't think Groupon has an upper limit of customers, they should add this feature.

Also, I'm wondering if they offer analytics advice (for a small fee, of course) to their biz customers, e.g. for this type of deal in this location, you are expecting to get on the average N customers.
This plane never ceases to astound me.

It was so fast the standard evasive maneuver when it was shot at was simply to increase speed. There was just no missile that could catch it.

During flight, the plane would heat up so much from friction that it would expand significantly–as a consequence, the plane leaked fuel on the ground, since the fuel transfer system only fit together right at 600 degrees Fahrenheit.

Truly a marvel of human ingenuity.
I try to treat clicking on an ad as an upvote to the story. If I can find something which seems interesting to click on that's another plus.
Since there are many HFT firms, no individual firm stands to gain by pulling out and avoiding a PR storm.

This was risk management, pure and simple. The exchanges were likely to break orders (which they did) and broken orders hurt HFT.
http://www.budind.com/
http://www.boxenclosures.com/
http://www.polycase.com/

Polycase is carried by Allied (www.alliedelec.com) and has some inexpensive, decent quality plastic boxes for around $3-4. I thought of those immediately after reading your post.
If you miss the flying toasters, you can get a Quartz Composer screensaver that imitates it for free from http://uneasysilence.com/toast/ .

The only thing that bothers me is that the toasters don't fly in quite the same pattern, but it's a darn good recreation otherwise. Puts some retro vibe into Snow Leopard.
It didn't sound like it from your post, but that's a lot of rejection. Feel free to check me out at joshuarichey.com
What do you think is a fair dollar value I should put to these things above?
Any speculation on a release date?
How to put Facebook on a privacy lockdown
Cybersecurity buzz could be a bubble
I had a problem where a few real friends wished me HB on or around the correct date. Another example of friends revealing your information. ;-)

Seriously, though, there is a problem with friends not understanding the medium and privacy concerns. If someone does not display their birth date, it may be a clue they don't want it communicated in that medium.
An interesting read, though some of the things that supposedly "saved" it seem like a stretch.

I was born in 71 and I remember when I was a kid, fascinated by space, how the Apollo program was still fresh in people's mind and wondering what would come next. It's too bad that 30+ years later I'm still waiting for something to surpass it.
Nope - it's Adam Lisagor (@lonelysandwich), one-third of the You Look Nice Today podcast (http://youlooknicetoday.com/) with Merlin Mann and Scott Simpson.
I guess in asking my original question, I'm curious about peoples thoughts on the morality and ethics of this type of behaviour. In particular I'm curious if anyone is strongly against this for some reason I haven't thought of?

EDIT: also if people do this alot and there is a strong morality issue or legal issue it may mean that there's a need for this type of service (tipjoy ver. 2 perhaps)
How to save the news