skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Building a new OS can come later (if ever) - they first need to build decent websites for the houses of Parliaments - see http://164.100.47.132/LssNew/members/memberdebate14.aspx?mps... (JS Pagination hurts my sensibilities - as does the more than occasional broken HTML).

I've written scrapers to gather data from these sites for my website, and besides dealing with the above mentioned issues, I have to constantly beware of not overloading their servers - as an example, simply fetching the next page for each MP listed in http://164.100.47.132/LssNew/Members/Alphabaticallist.aspx without a timeout crashes their servers :(.
> [...] but I agree with a lot of others about the name - they should definitely change it to something easier to spell and say.

Is diaspora hard to pronounce in English?
Yep, that's the one. I've only ever effectively glanced at it, but what I've seen I'm extremely impressed with. It's much more complete and functional than any other component-based programming environment I've ever seen.

Any suggestions on how / where to start, or any links you'd recommend? I see very little about QC online, so I'd be starting at square 1.
Lost in all these borderline hysterical comments is that very few people get bitten by coral snakes - so few - that the remaining stock is expiring on the shelves.

No Demand = No Supply.
Yahoo, Microsoft gain on Google in Search
I've seen a lot of pages where I couldn't tell if it was written by a markov-model or a human. Many of the people who get paid for $1 content don't speak English natively.
Talk to a lawyer too. By posting this you no longer have plausible deniability in the event something bad happens down the road. For example, maybe your client is hacked and an investigation is opened by the credit card company who finds out that you had discovered gross negligence on the part of your client but had not reported it. I'm not sure if that opens you up to the chance of being sued. Somebody might have their identity stolen or the credit card company might want to recoup some costs. Maybe the client turns on you and somehow makes you a scapegoat.

Simply by posting this story, you may have opened yourself up to a lawsuit because an enterprising mind could follow your HN history and what you've posted here, put together enough clues, and find out the vulnerable system. They could hack it. No, you weren't directly responsible for it, but civil law is an entirely different beast than criminal law.
Haven't read it all, but I am just wondering: by now data dumps of people's connections are probably making the rounds in the dark channels? I think sending spam that appears to be from your friends could be a big "improvement", and should be child's play with the data that is already freely available.

Maybe that could become one of the first privacy disasters, when people realize they made their email unusable by publishing their connections.
I think private highways would be better.

The current system doesn't provide incentives for using this resource wisely. Seems there's no restraint on demand when something is given away for free.

If we ran our hotels that way, we'd need to build twice as many hotels, just as we have to overbuild highways now.

And you say blanket statements about this stuff are fundamentally silly? I agree.
The second hospital was a larger hospital in Springfield. The doctors at the first recommended they move him instead of the anti-venom because they said the docs at the larger hospital were more experienced in snakebites, and he was plenty stable. However, according to my mom, their procedures weren't any better.
You should read more.
Eavesdropping on bluetooth headsets with carwhisperer
Seriously, don't poke the yamhead. You'll be sorry.
Also all the newsletters companies feel entitled to send just because you bought a toothpick from them 10 years ago.
La Clojure for IntelliJ is getting pretty good, and is a nice option if you have multi-language application. I did a little work on some of the original code, some of which also survives as the "Clo-Jet" plugin, if you want something lighter-weight.
Where I live, for under $10 the law society runs a hotline which you can call to be referred to a lawyer that can help your specific situation. As part of that referral service, you get a 30-45 minute consultation for free I believe. That's all you need right now. You might want to see if a similar service is offered where you live. See my other post in the thread stating why I think you need to speak to one.
Greece and Spain won't pay back. This was a calculated Risk, and a Lesson for the Banking System. What is happening in Greece, is a very well orchestrated show, to get granted €110bn aid, to avert meltdown.
The only thing Germans can do is:
REPOSSESS 170 Leopard 2AEX Battle Tanks from Greece, and 190 Leopard 2A6E Battle Tanks from Spain.
U.S.A must REPOSSESS 170 F-16 Jet Fighters from Greece, … the rest is gone with the wind …forever …
Greece must stop paying lucrative pensions with borrowed money, reform the free health care system, and cut down, 4 times the military budged.
Greece’s problem is too much debt. Greece has a budget deficit of 12.7% of GDP – meaning that the country is spending 12.7% more than the value of one year’s economic output.
Greece is no different to a serial credit card borrower who can’t pay back his loans. But just like a serial credit card borrower, as long as Greece keeps relying on borrowed money to fund itself, the problem won’t go away. It will just get worse.
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/Greece-in-Default-on-U-2...
But don't worry; the ECB, the Fed or both will print the money.
And all of us will share the pain, with our hard-earned money.
Bad is never good until worse happens.
> I look back at the work I did in college and think "Christ on a bike, I was shit."

I sometimes have the opposite feeling: "Hey, I did so much interesting stuff back then, and learned a lot. Am I still at the same level?"

My abilities may have been lower back then, but I sometimes get the feeling that the rate of progress was higher.
Yeah, but querying it is a pain. And you can't sanitize all input due to its distributed access, so you occasionally get "drop table <x>;" injections.
Not in all jurisdictions. In some places, you can never abjure all of your rights (or responsibilities) as owner of intellectual property.
You still need a volume of stuff that's larger than the thing you want to build. A convenience store sized package would only provide enough material to fab something smaller than the package itself.
Ironic, coming from the CEO of Mahalo.
If you're asking for 10k from strangers, it might be a good idea to give your 3 minute video a couple of dry runs, maybe even (God forbid) WRITE out a script. Divide it up evenly, and each person needs to memorize a 45 second bit and film it over and over again until you get it right.

Obviously, not everyone shares my opinion considering they got 200+% funding in two weeks, but I was wholly unconvinced, most specifically by the "why us?" section - if you can't answer that question instinctively and convincingly, then (again, if I were the one doing the choosing) the answer would clearly be "not you."
disagree. i think few people write as persuasively as Calacanis - his ability to make a case for something and to articulate it is, despite the tasteless self-promotion, admirable.

"Didn't anyone read "Tom Sawyer"? We're whitewashing Zuckerberg's fence."
If we're talking about 100% scientific matters, the reality is that for most active research topics do require a Master's or PhD to get into the bleeding edge.

Now, the reality is that there is a LOT of research that's out there that needs to find its way into the public's hands. There's a lot that can be done by an enterprising person by implementing what's already out there and shaping it into a user-friendly solution.

I personally think the latter is a much more difficult task than getting original research out. It also requires well-rounded people willing to put the effort. This is where anyone with patience and hard work can make a difference.
Ooc now a single command away...
In some countries.
It depends on how you define "more expensive."

Traditional manufacturing processes have really expensive tooling, but then each part is really cheap. Printed parts are always the same price. There's an inflection point where if you're going to make more than a few tens of thousands of things, it's cheaper to make the tooling. But if you're not going to make that volume, printing is cheaper.

Like many things in life, it's all about the best tool for the job.
private control of property does cost something. you need locks and alarms to manage access to real estate just as you need systems like FastTrak and EasyPass.

But daily traffic jams also have a cost and building twice as much road as you really need does too. A massive unmeasured cost.
Technically, it's small demand about to become no supply.

If bureaucracy is the only thing standing between a victim and treatment, a certain passion is understandable. People have a tendency to recognize injustice whether, rationally or statistically speaking, they shouldn't care about it.
Or more generally:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora
They might dual-license it. It doesn't seem like they've put much thought into the design yet, maybe if you just email them they'll give you whatever license you want.
Some more info:
- 25 x-large ec2 instances
- each instance ran mongos, mongod and java loading program
- system averaged 5M "ops" per second over many hours

Average ops per server:
- 3000 inserts
- 25000 updates
- 150000 queries
- 1500 deletes
- 50 getMore
- 25000 command (getLastError)
Having been present at my own dog being put to sleep, I can say being put to sleep can be pretty awful for the animal, too. My dog had terminal cancer, and was clearly suffering, but given the choice, he would have chosen to live. He certainly struggled to live as he was dying.

I don't profess to know what the right thing to do in these situations is, and I am not saying that you are wrong, just that it is not so clear cut as that. Especially if the dog is still having good days (which the essay does not say one way or the other).
No wonder he settled with ConnectU:

Zuckerberg: Someone is already trying to make a dating site. But they made a mistake haha. They asked me to make it for them. So I'm like delaying it so it won't be ready until after the facebook thing comes out.
I'm not ready to cut and run from Facebook yet, but of all the important tech CEOs I can think of, Zukerberg is easily the one I least trust and respect. He's young, has no other industry success, and is way too eager to try to dominate the Internet. It just doesn't feel right.
The reason that there aren't prices is that just like the objects, they're all custom!

The cost to make something depends entirely on the exact geometry of the object, the material it's made out of, and various other bits of overhead of the shop that makes it. Sometimes, the orientation of the part in the printer can matter!

Generally, on average, something that an industrial designer would be making would end up costing between $200 and $500.

But again, this is incredibly price sensitive. There's also a trend lately of people making knock-off materials that cost a tenth of the 'real' ones, and some people use those...

I've literally seen orders of magnitude between sellers on the same part. Some people specialize in getting stuff done really quickly, and charge a premium!
seriously to start just:

1) webcam to take picture
2) 140 character description
3) connect to facebook/twitter (yeah yeah, i know, but let's be honest the people using this don't care. they also want to share)
Yes, but weight isn't what matters, it's volume.
Suppose if two people starts changing the same sentence at the same time, and there is latency of say 1 minute - then after 1 minute the result will be a jumbled up sentence?
I think Apple was the first to get us to do this for them at 40% cut rather than 30%. Both remarkable takes for their subsequent effort.
I'm curious... why is it that so much antivenin was required? If that much is needed, why do hospitals only stock six vials apiece?
Absolutely. My startup went through AlphaLab, and the connections and mentoring was worth quite a bit more than the money, BUT the money did let me quit my job. Which is invaluable in and of itself.
I prefer 'Zuckerpunched' over 'Zucked" - implies a level of underhandedness.

And I think the various items on the list represent different things. Duplicating Four Square and Twitter features is hardly the same level of Zuckerpunching as constantly changing privacy features.
Aren't they called "Office Managers"
John Maeda: Question Everything, But Nail Those Deliverables
I can promise you that I didn't downvote you! Not my style :)

Maybe hard to believe, but the three people I interviewed for the article were really that in love with their iPads. Maggie (QA) actually came to me with the idea for the article, because she wanted to talk about how she was using it professionally. So I got a couple people together that were also using it for work to give their opinions as well. But I do wish now I had tried to balance out the article with more opinions. Another guy at our company came out with a post on his personal blog last week, in favor of the kindle over the iPad, and I should have asked him to contribute to the article!

Thanks for reading though, I really enjoy the feedback!
given the choice, he would have chosen to live

How would you know something like that?
Of course, you're not paying them for their effort. You're paying them for creating a distribution channel you can access, and then the ongoing product development that maintains and grows that distribution base.

Linking it to subsequent effort is like saying a programmer should only charge $1 for all bar the first copy of their program, given how easy it is to burn new dvds.
Ok, based on your comment, I'm going back to read the second "paragraph."
The last paragraph was the point. The first bit is just one of the many stories that could lead you to this conclusion.
Grammar PSA: hyphen != dash!

The hyphen is the key on your keyboard. It's what goes between some words when they're acting as one word, e.g. mother-in-law.

The dash is longer--it's either a long ("em") dash character or 2 hyphens, as I used here--and it's the grammatical construct that acts somewhat like a comma.

And I'm not just nit-picking. It's confusing to use a hyphen when you mean dash, especially when you also have hyphens in the vicinity. Here's the sentence that convinced me to post this:

>I predict a complete heads-up match with
Facebook–Zynga’s now been double-crossed not once but twice by
Zuckerberg.

The characters in "heads-up" and "double-crossed" are both hyphens, but the character between "Facebook" and "Zynga" should be a dash (or 2 hyphens).

Edit: So he's using en dashes, which are shorter, but they are different from--and slightly longer than--hyphens. But it's much easier to tell an em dash from a hyphen than an en dash from a hyphen, and the em dash is proper.

Here's a hyphen, followed by an en dash, followed by an em dash:

-

–

—
Four-Minute Video Introduction to Sass and Compass
And it was disappointing. The best part of the whole goddamn article was the self-promoting opening. The rest was tired, you've already heard this, let's jump on the band wagon, analysis.
I have heard so many different explanations of why planes fly that I doubt that anyone really understands it. There was a memorable moment towards the end of my engineering degree, when after being given yet another explanation of why planes fly a classmate shouted out, "I think we've heard enough theories about whether planes can fly".

Apparently chemists encounter a similar thing when studying chemical bonds - every new academic year you are told that what you learned the previous year was such a gross simplification that it's basically wrong.
Savant for a Day
If you can't find something (perhaps not this story) to convince you that life is amazing and precious that is indeed sad. You need to change your life
I figure 3D printing is still in it's infancy. Sure, it can't do all you can imagine it doing, but that's just because nobody's figured out how to make it do those things. Yet.

Definitely easy to over-hype it, but it deserves attention.

Plus... one of the things that has always sucked about modeling in my opinion is the difficulty of entering a model. Maybe with a good way to get a structure out, we will soon work out a good way to get a structure in?
blowhard on blowhard crime?
I'm not clear on the details, but there's some information on the map forum: http://eeve.org/board/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=3560

If I had more spare time on my hands, I'd try to figure it out by disassembling those map files and comparing them. But I don't, so I won't. :)
I haven't done any downvotes, but I do note that you have made quite a few posts in regards to DRM and other forms of restricted access methods.

In your posts, I have noted the constant refrain of people being prone to theft. That may or may not be true.

Why then would music/game/whatever companies devote so many resources to something that only causes problems for actual (rare) paying customers? I don't think you have ever really answered that in a satisfactory way.
I doubt others with good idea's could do the same thing though. It's this particular idea, the facebook replacement, which interests so many people right now.
Do nerd solidarity.
But, and someone correct me if I'm wrong, not if the HFT apple trader buys from the apple seller at the lower price and then resells it.
In your copy paste, as far as I can see the [line] between "Facebook" and "Zynga's" is, indeed, an em-dash (or at least longer than the other dashes).
Greece Debt Crisis Explained Part Two
Hm, you're right. They look basically identical on his blog, but different here. And now that I look really closely, they appear to be slightly longer on his blog as well.

Edit: Also, it's a lot easier to tell in Firefox 3 than Chromium. Ah, the web.
http://www.ehow.com/how_2066890_get-bees-out-house.html
It's interesting that PageRank's measure of quality is entirely dependent on there being a community that recognizes the quality of the content first, before the search engine. Without a community, you're not going to get incoming links.

In other words, work produced by lonely geniuses is quite likely to go unnoticed.

For all we know, the content that is being produced by companies like Demand Media has already been produced by thoughtful people, writing at length about subjects they love on obscure websites that no one ever links to. What a shame that would be!
Sub-$100 Netbook Maker Switches from Linux to Android
"Nobody thinks it would be efficient to privatize the federal highway system and turn everything into a toll road."

Different definitions of "efficiency" notwithstanding ...

A privatized road doesn't have to be paid for by toll, that's merely how we mostly do it. We could easily contract maintenance and operation of a road to a company, and that company is paid by the government from tax funds.

Kadin in another reply to your comment describes the trucks that use the road "for free," paid for by all the other tax paying saps. In reality the receivers of the trucker's goods also benefit from that truck on the road (and the truck company and its employees pay into the same tax funnel as the receiving citizens).

Imagine a village not connected to the main highway. Some of the villagers walk out early one morning to the highway, and flag down a truck full of stuff.

"Mr. Trucker, we sure would like to buy some of your stuff, if you would only drive your truck to our Small Mart."

Mr Trucker replies "I surely can't drive my truck over your unimproved land. I'll be back next year; if you have a proper road, I'll drive my truck over and you can buy some stuff."

The village people delay construction on their YMCA and redirect their efforts to building a beautiful road. The next year they flag down the trucker and say "Mr. Trucker, we now have a road that goes directly to Small Mart. Just $10 to drive your truck over it."

Mr Trucker says "I don't see why I should pay $10. I'm not going to do it, I'll just drive down the highway and find another village."

The village people look at each other, admit that they could really use some more stuff in Small Mart, and agree to let the trucker drive "for free."

While waiting for his truck to be unloaded, Mr. Trucker buys a big soda and a burger, $2.99 plus tax and thus helps pay for the road a little bit at a time. The trucker is happy, and so are the village people.
And then you try to code partita #1 and you run in to all those little funny marks that somehow expand to 8 notes.

Macros were invented by J.S. Bach.
It is difficult to distinguish between talent and people who are lucky.
Were you actually confused? Are you smart enough to know what an "em" dash is and not smart enough to know that the hyphen in heads-up works differently than Facebook-Zynga. The only way that would make sense is if they merged and for some reason kept Zynga as part of their name. Given the context that's obviously not happening.

An em dash is typically considered bad practice in formal writing. If he wanted to be formal he would have used a semicolon I think. In informal writing an em dash often replaces the work of other punctuation.

Note: I don't care. I was able to understand him just fine and that's all I care about. If he was writing a scholarly paper I'd take the time to correct it and send him some suggestions. I'd also only do this if I was asked to do so.
They’re en dashes, which should have a space on either side when used that way, so he’s still doing it wrong.
This blog entry is the Perfect Dilemma for the HN crowd.
I'm just wondering do people apply the same rigid privacy protections offline? If so how? If not then why? Assuming you have to deal with people offline who are either not your friends or strangers doesn't leaving the house itself become a major privacy violation if you apply the same standards offline? I admit having the data online is potentially more far reaching. I'm just curious how people reconcile online/offline privacy concerns.
I like the comparison with poker. Doesn't mean that Facebook
is out of the game by a long shot, it does open the space up for some competition. Maybe the companies that helped push FB along should get together and start their own?
Up and running with Cassandra
Exactly. You are not stealing anything from Foursquare, or twitter, unless the whole industry is stealing from everybody all the time.

Personally, as much as I fear facebook taking too much control, I don't see either of these as being big issues. I don't put important stuff on my fb account, and most people I know do not care that all this information is available.

These are the same people who see absolutely nothing wrong with supermarkets loyalty cards, and their details being sold off to other companies. This is the majority now, who think more CCTV cameras are a good idea and make the world safer, who agree with more stringent airline boarding procedures, and support the government taking away out rights if they want to.

This is the world we live in, privacy has been slowely eroded away for a number of years now, and there are much more important stuff to worry about on the entertainment news shows.
Mass is more appropriate than volume here, but point taken.
Nexus One running Android Froyo 2.2 is 450% faster than Eclair 2.1