skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Nielsen's value lies in their ability to know exactly who is watching TV (or using the computer, now that they can monitor internet usage).

Members of a household log in to a Nielsen box when they watch TV, and Nielsen knows precise demographic information about each member of the households they monitor.

Google's not going to be able to tell you a Hispanic, thirteen-year-old male watched Ninja Turtles (online) from 8-8:15.
They did have an RC though, or at least a beta (which couldn't have been that restricted).
They showed controlling the TV with Android phones, in fact with multiple phones.

No more fights for the controller. :)
This is how a startup should handle pricing changes, so long as the old pricing scheme was viable.

This is the opposite of what Recurly did a month or two ago when they dramatically raised prices and the same revolt occurred. Their response was a big "F You", and their latest e-mails finally announcing even more pricing changes show they lost enough users in the process that it threatened their viability.
I'm likely to be completely wrong, but I seriously think that Apple is prepping Apple TV for the iTunes cloud that we continue to hear about. It will be the premiere device for them if they want to enter that market. Imagine on demand streaming of all the shows you want for around $30/month. Ready to stream to your iPad, iPhone, iMac, and Apple TV.
Introducing Google TV
They just copied the genome of an existing micro-organism.

Making changes to the genome to accomplish some task is much harder to do.
Good food and bad food
BP testing Kevin Costner's ocean cleaning devices
Ask HN: Review my blog NoSQLDatabases.com
I've recently (1 week ago) started a blog on NoSQL databases. I'm aiming for the site to be like HighScalability.com, but for NoSQL databases instead of scalable architectures.

I wanted feedback on the design, initial content and if you guys could use something like this. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

URL: http://nosqldatabases.com
What's so wrong with buying? What was so great about the tribal lifestyle? Trading and bartering are just raw forms of buying: You work, grow potatoes, then trade those potatoes for something you need. Why is that better than working, earning money, and trading that money for something you need?

I'd be more inclined to indulge the author's suggestion that we stop being consumers if he actually provided some supporting arguments.
It's open source. :-) Hopefully you'll be able to get plenty of devices that use it. Logitech is creating a companion device. They said it should be available worldwide.
I've used Drools a fair bit in my current job but I've never learnt much about prolog. Can any one summarise where prolog would work better or provide additional features?
Thanks Julio!
I actually am still up in the air about comments... In this case given that this is my personal site I'm not sure how much I want other people leaving their mark on it, if you know what I mean...

I'll have a think on it more though, maybe try out Disqus for a while...
Hello World TDD
Are you referring in particular to the light green links or the bright green headings? I definitely think there's room for tweaking..
Financial Visualizations
Maybe there is something i am missing here, but how is this better than hooking your laptop to your TV and bookmarking on your favorite shows on your browser?
Craig Venter creates synthetic life form
They did and I ran it for 3 months before giving up and going back to XP, it was rather painful.

Though, it was a "Death by 1000 paper cuts" sort of situation with vista.
Good suggestions!
It's worth noting that I'm not actually freelancing though. As it says on the 'About Me' page, any work I take on will be through the company I work for, Walden.
Not impressed yet. I watched the video and I can't tell if Google TV will know about the channels I already receive. If you look at their pitch (around 0:30), they say it's too hard to find what I want to watch because I receive hundreds of channels. I don't know about you, but I have a DVR, and it's quite easy to find and record any show and watch them anytime.

So if Google TV doesn't give me access to the live shows I already receive, it doesn't really solve a problem. I also have an AppleTV, so I understand the value of being able to watch video podcasts and YouTube on my large screen TV.
How Steve Jobs threw out US$10 billion
No, they aren't.

If you're saying there are more of them and that Nielsen relies on a sample, then that's probably right. (Although, statistically, I'm not sure that matters).

And Google doesn't use analytics from set-top boxes, they use data from Nielsen:

"The demographic data imported for Google TV Ads comes from The Nielsen Company, the longtime television audience measurement experts. AdWords data is drawn from their National Homevideo Index (NHI) daily national cable report. We draw the demographics from the viewing source data, using the quarter-hour report periods."

http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...
Most Competitive Nation? U.S. Ousted as No. 1
They could do what iPhone did to phones to the desktop/television. A simple platform that does what 90% of people need (watch Hulu/Netflix, browse eBay, send email, etc). The Chrome Web Store can provide the App Store component.

I think the really critical part is getting the price so low that they get massive distribution. At least until TVs have it built in. No one thinks "I need to buy an internet computer for my TV", so they have to make it cheap enough that people will say "why not?"

They should make good money off ad revenue, so hopefully they can give the devices away, or get them down to $19 or $29.
Thanks for your kind words!
I worked to make the site feel a bit more aesthetically pleasing because I wanted to demonstrate that I am perfectly comfortable doing UI design and that in a pinch I can do some graphic/web design.

As long as it doesn't give you the 'programmer wearing a suit' feeling that is... Thoughts welcome!
The biggest risk within close reach is that ConnectU might get the appeals court here to reverse the judgment confirming the settlement, with resulting uncertainty that would prove hugely disruptive to FB.

In other words, whether or not ConnectU ultimately has a winning case, the doubt that would be cast by its having a case that might even block FB from doing business down the road would hang over FB like a "cloud on title" does over real property. Such a cloud taints the underlying property because no buyer will touch it until it is cleared. This would affect FB's ability to get future funding and would most certainly mar any IPO it might be contemplating.

That is why FB will fight the battle fiercely at this level. Everything is clean so long as it can make the settlement stick. If not, everything busts wide open. Of course, FB would not allow that to happen and would pay a lot of money to prevent such an outcome. The ConnectU founders know this and are essentially pushing to magnify their payout by bringing that cloud into play.

Actually, that is the major risk here. As to other risks, such as a risk of being found to have committed securities fraud, I just don't see that as a material risk here. The real problem, and it is huge if this gets re-opened, is the threat of a trial over trade secret misappropriation, and that is immediately opened up if the judgment is set aside. The underlying case could drag on for years before getting to trial but the "gumming up" effect of its pendency will mar FB's prospects throughout that entire period.

FB might also face legal action by its investors but the far greater likelihood would be that they would pressure FB to settle this up at whatever cost, perhaps at the expense of some of Mr. Zuckerberg's personal holdings in the company. So he would also be under some substantial and immediate pressure should the judgment be reversed.
> Linux may be powerful, but the command prompt and configuration files and filesystem obscurity will just as soon get you a pink slip if something goes wrong and no one knows how to fix it but yourself.

Hmm. So, I'm the only one who can fix it. Are they really going to fire me in that situation?
Albion College eliminates Computer Science
Belief in #7 leads to belief in #10.
I've never understood why solutions such as these are better than simply plugging your computer into your TV. Any answers? Am I missing something?
It'll be interesting to see if this goes anywhere. Microsoft (Xbox), Sony (PS3) and Apple (Apple TV) all have boxes that in some way attempt to bring in TV/movie/photo content to your TV. Those three haven't impressed me too much with their efforts. Of course I'm in Canada, so many great features are inaccessible to me.

Apple TV in particular has been particularly weak. It should have been something like this from the get go. Maybe they'll finally announce some interesting stuff for it now that the iPad is out the door.
Similar to "branded felons" there is also a group of "branded debtors." These are people living near the poverty line that credit card companies lure into huge debts. And since companies do not hire "branded debtors" (people with bad credit) there is a similar cycle of discrimination: inability to find work to pay debts and so on.
You don't see this as the best possible scenario for them?

They've been able to get everything they should need for success - adequate funding, lots of press, users who want what they're going to build so badly that they're giving them money sight unseen.

How could there be a better situation for someone who wants to take on Facebook?
No no, all input is valued.
Ideally I would like the website to be able to talk to programmers and companies, with a focus on the programmers... I appreciate you thinking it's cool! :-p
This is good news for the thousands of skilled Flash developers that really know how to leverage the platform for interactivity and gaming. As the article points out, content must still be optimized for 10.1 to see the most benefit and that will take time.

Although Flash filled an important need for video when the FLV format was first introduced, it's role as the primary video player for the web will be marginalized over time. However, that will bring the focus of Flash back towards it's roots of vector animation and interactivity at which it does an excellent job.
Computers are huge.

Also the interface in general is bad for TVs. Media centre front ends such as XBMC can solve this issue, but that's not a consumer friendly "out of the box" solution.
Is it truly as simple as using the install OS X CD? Does it only work if you aren't using filevault?
looks like xbmc+apple tv combo (minus itunes)
Mutants that differ on specific genes are created regularly to study the effects of each mutation.
Cost. Ease of use. Remotes. Integration with existing AV equipment.

All available in a PC connected to your TV, but requiring of effort and understanding.
I am all the sudden reminded of Windows Media Center. Microsoft sure seems to have a lot of trouble getting traction in some markets.
Usually I agree with the moderating, but ...
... on this occasion I'm at a loss. There was an item entitled:

"Unanswerable multiple choice question"

and it was here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1363393

There was a lively discussion, and it got lots of upvotes. That, of course, of itself does not mean it was on-topic, but the guidelines say:

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting.
That includes more than hacking and startups. If
you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might
be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual
curiosity.

This particular question was a great example of that last point. Treated carefully
it can be used as a starter for paradoxes of all kinds, and self-referential discussions that can lead to correct and appropriate explanations of Goedel's theorems, recursion, formal systems and probability.

I will almost certainly now be using it in my next math club talk, and have already started discussions about it with colleagues in the local university math department.

So why was it killed?

Probably "the judges decision is final" will reign, but I'm annoyed at this one.
What I tried to do when I was working full-time was: Get up early in the morning, review some definitions, then read perhaps only one theorem, try to prove it yourself, then read the proof in the book, then try to find a problem in the exercises that would use that theorem or refers to it, and take those problems with me to work. At work, I could then think about it while doing less demanding tasks or just during breaks. Then, after work, I was exhausted so I only read a little bit and looked at new definitions or so. Lots of time, I also just goofed off (yeah, it took discipline and energy to get something done when working full days). On weekends, I could naturally do more. Still, this was my slowest time, for obvious reasons, and I could never have gotten through the material if I had been working full-time all the time.

In my first year of a doctoral program, I could study from after lunch until next morning and I concentrated on getting the fundamentals right. The greatest book, the one where things began to click, was Rudin's "principles of mathematical analysis". Before I came to this book, I had wasted a lot of time finding my style of learning or, if you will, discovering my preferences. But if you already have the basics and are not going to waste as much time as I was trying to figure out what is what, you might pull it off much quicker.

Good luck! To me it was a cool time and I finally got rid of my math inferiority complex ;)
Health Care Tax Credits Can Cover up to 75% of Startups' Health Coverage Costs
From dune:

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain
The Cleverest Geeky Windows Tricks Everyone Should Know
It's not App Store revenue that Apple's concerned about, it's app exclusivity and platform control, both of which they expect to lead to device sales.
True.

And #7 might be true with "at BigCo" at the end but here if you believe in #7 and #10 you're definitely going to prove #7 wrong.
I disagree. I've already shown that 5 hours of use is acceptable in Apple's world. On top of this, 3G isn't the only available connection. The iPod is completely non-3G, and the iPad has a non-3G variant working just on wireless.

Apple's contention was that Flash would destroy mobile batteries. This is clearly not the case.

Look at it this way: With Flash, the battery life is 5 hours. With 3G, the battery life is 5 hours. Yes, on 3G, the battery life might be worse, considering you are using both 3G and Flash.

But then, where do you draw the line? If 5 hours is acceptable battery life for 3G, if I don't have 3G, could I have Flash and get the same battery life?

Finally, that's 5 hours of 3G browsing the internet. Is that 5 hours of streaming video content? I don't know, the website doesn't say. However, the Wired article makes remarks this is party what he was doing, streaming flash videos over a wireless connection.

Hopefully that explains it better. Flash clearly doesn't kill battery life. At least no more than 3G does.

I think Apple's point of view is partly that 3G offers something you couldn't get otherwise, whereas Flash replicates things already available on the iPhone/iPad platform. Therefore, 3G battery life issues are acceptable, where as, for Apple, Flash is not.

And, you can't offer Flash on non-3G variants, because then you know people would want it on the 3G variants.
I think they left a few things out, like playing back local media. This appears to be built on android, though, so maybe that means that functionality like this can be enabled later. I wonder if it will support hardware decoding for H.264 and WebM.
Tired of competing on price? Try this instead
Remorseless Power
Plugging in a computer to your TV hasn't been easy until very recently. Most computers do not have the hi-def outputs that TVs require. The only standard port you can use from a laptop is probably S-Video. Then there is the problem of appropriate resolution, refresh rates, zoom-levels, and audio quality.

I've had many different computers connected to my TV for almost a decade now. The most annoying part has always been the input device (remote vs. keyboard/mouse vs. Boxee's iPhone app). I have a DVR. I hit "Guide" and instantly the guide shows up. If I have a computer hooked up playing VLC, it's not as simple. You can run MythTV, Windows Media Center, or a bunch of other apps but none of them work as smoothly and nicely as my Verizon FiOS DVR. I even bought a Panasonic ShowCenter ( http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1911939,00.asp ) and while it played nearly everything, it just didn't work well all the time. It crashed, caused audio-sync issues, and I had to keep reentering my wifi info everytime I restarted it.

Right now my solution is to have a small hidden netbook connected to the TV. I VNC into the netbook using my laptop while I sit on the sofa and play it however I want. So far this has been my most favorite option.
It's been out as a beta for quite a while: http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html

Not sure when the release is due though.
There is intrinsic to the academic system a pervasive issue of trust.

Grades can indicate the depth of knowledge, but with the disclaimer that both the arbitrating grader is trusted (in a very special sense), and that the method used to decide grades be both defensible and explicable to others.

To provide a concrete example. A paper on the first book of Hume's Treatise of Human Nature attempts to bring a new argument to bear on the consequences to modern epistemology incurred by Hume's concept of abstract ideas. The paper is written as a final in a graduate level philosophy class, and the instructor is known to be knowledgeable, intelligent, fair, and honest. The paper receives a B+. It is arguable that the mark is generally reflective of the student's understanding and ability at the time the student wrote the paper. (this example is taken from personal experience - I wrote this paper, and I feel that the grade was reflective of my knowledge on the topic)

But without the trustworthy instructor, the grade would be meaningless. The problem, if I were to speculate, is one of numbers - too many students, too few professors. A basic premise of security is that the more parties involved in a pact, the lest reliable the pact is, and if grades are to be a faithfully representation of a students ability, the reliability of the academic pact is paramount.
His book: Formalized Music: Thought and Mathematics in Composition

http://books.google.com/books?id=y6lL3I0vmMwC&printsec=f...
Media Center took the approach of replacing the DVR, while Google is supplementing it.

While I love the Media Center DVR, its web browsing sucks (there's no TV-focused browser). If Media Center fixed that problem, and fixed the issue with extenders being able to play all content (including Flash) then it would be a compelling device. Now it's hard for me to justify not using my Comcast DVR. Sure not as good, but I get tons of OnDemand content, and its a small quiet device with no upfront cost.
An Open Web App Store
Here might be a good place to start: http://www.startupcompanylawyer.com/2009/01/01/how-do-you-se... (this is a somewhat technical piece but written by a real expert in the field and aimed at the knowledgeable executive or other non-lawyer - the discussion of the old 10 to 1 ratio between preferred and common pricing, and the new ratio used since the enactment of IRC 409A, appears toward the end of the piece).
Facebook's New (and only) Security Feature
Rather, marketing. No-one profits from you plugging your PC into your TV, so no-one is going to spend marketing money to tell you you can do it.

It's not hard. 1] Plug s-video cable into TV. 2] Right-click ATI tray icon / secondary display / enable. Done.
For the record, that Windows weakness isn't because Microsoft are too dumb to design a secure OS in 2010, it's because in XP and Server 2000/2003, passwords <=14 characters are also stored in the older, weaker, unsalted LanManager hash format for backwards compatibility reasons.

If your password is greater than 14 characters this wont happen, and if you are using Server 2008, Vista or Windows 7 this wont happen unless you enable it explicitly.

Edit: Following Rider's link to a previous submission, it seems Ophcrack does attack NTLM hashes. Wonder if it rainbow-tables them in 10 seconds?
Are there things prolog can do that embedded solvers cannot? In .net, solver foundation, http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/solverfoundation , is a great fit for solving from a set of rules. And I believe most languages can embed some sort of rules optimizing engine.
But we are also producers; most of us have to be in order to acquire money with which to purchase goods to consume. His point, initially at least, was that choosing to label ourselves as consumers leads to a discussion framed in terms of that behavior, at the expense of really evaluating all our options.
Better write up: http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/05/first-functional...
I'd love to see it (sort of), but Apple has pretty a pretty piss-poor record of doing well anything in "the cloud". If anyone could get it right, it's google.
I'm still a little skeptical about the wisdom of putting computer hardware inside of your tv. CPU/GPU/Decoding obsolescence is much faster than panel obsolescence (assuming that new panel technologies plateau until the next resolution bump). Just wait until your $1200 TV loses Hulu support because your manufacturer

On the other hand, what a great way for panel makers to differentiate themselves. I also expect that these features will be only integrated into the higher-end models (240hz + LED), giving manufacturers a way to recover from the recent price wars that have brought LCD prices down so rapidly.
One can only dream... I would drop my cable subscription in a hearbeat
I thought I'd read this before. Courtesy of http://searchyc.com we get this, different site, exact same article:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1180910

Lots of comments there.

tl;dr - if someone can access your hardware, you're toast unless you use encryption.
For what it's worth, Zendesk is definitely worth it for the five customer support people we have. The amount of flexibility they give you and the api hooks are fantastic.
This is how you do a public apology. Nicely played.
With the exception of takeoff and landing, electronic devices are generally permitted in flight. The radio can't be switched on, but many smart phones including the iPhone have an "Airplane Mode" which turns the radios off.
I think it also comes from the people that you are leading, the organizational culture and the national expectations for behavior. I have a colleague that responds best to aggressive speech, but another that communicates best one-on-one in non-meeting scenarios. Communication can be hard for people who are used to being precise in order to be understood -- sometimes being understood isn't enough. Effective communication goes beyond being understood and extends to the emotional and cultural aspects of the conveyance of the message. The easier it is for someone to listen to you, the deeper your message will penetrate. The problem is that "ease(message)" varies by individual.
I'm not quite familiar with WMC story/ecosystem even though I am using it with W7 these days.

One thing I noticed is that the missing good/solid hardware from big companies (i.e. Sony). Right now I'm using W7 with my computer and its screen, not a separate device that I can hook-up to my TV.

AppleTV sort of did that half-ass (pardon me). AFAIK AppleTV cannot work with my Cable provider: it only streams content from the internet.
Just fights among the controllers.
Their customers & readers aren't going to forget the chortling, self-satisfied tone of their earlier communications.