skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The problem is that Anandtech's conclusion is out of place with the rest of their article, even if you take into consideration the shorting of the antennae.

The iPhone 4 loses 24.6dB of signal strength when cupped at the bottom vs 17.7dB for the Nexus one. If Apple should be required to add an insulative coating to the stainless steel, then shouldn't Google also be required to make their phone thicker (or make other adjustments) until it reaches the 14.3dB reduction of the 3GS?

If Apple is required to subsidize a bumper case, to bring the signal reduction down to 7.2dB, then shouldn't Google also be required to subsidize a case (even with a case, Google's signal reduction would still be 7.7dB).

Also, the iPhone 4 can hold a call quite well at the absolute minimum signal level of -113dBm. If the Nexus One can't do this, then should we demand that Google recall the Nexus one until it can do so?

This whole issue and the hundreds of news stories around it are ridiculous. This is not a black-and-white issue of the antenna working or not. The phone has a weaker signal for some people, and a stronger signal for others, depending on how you hold it and where you are. Take that into consideration when choosing a phone. If it's not working out for you, then just return the phone and buy one you like.
IPad surpassed Android in browser usage share
Perhaps ... but this does fit very well with their stated mission:

"to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."

(End of first paragraph at http://www.google.com/corporate/)

There are at least two dimensions to this: "organize and make accessible and useful" and "the world's information". You're complaining about inadequacies in the former, this is a move to expand on the latter.

Hmmm, for that matter, they're buying some brainpower that could help them with your specific complaint but also the "organize and make accessible and useful" part of their mission in general.
Miami Locksmith | Locksmith in Miami | Miami FL Locksmith
More trivia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurt_(Nine_Inch_Nails_song)#Mus...

Read the Reznor quote.
I don't know about the Droid or RIM phones, but here is a video of a Nokia E71 exhibiting the same signal drop behavior when being held: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amPG52DVQuk
That's an interesting thought. To say that 96% of people rate themselves a better driver because they customize their criteria to reflect what they value is quite insightful.
Aside from paying their own salary - that money could be a very good investment into their infrastructure. I know their primary goal is development of the protocol, but it'll catch on a whole lot faster if it starts with an official host for people to keep their seeds on.
Apple’s Response to iPhone 4 Reception Issue – A mere Cover up act?
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The post was probably killed because enough people felt it fell under this, not because of 'extremist political positions'. I just read the article, and I would've flagged it myself.

Also, I'd avoid describing people who disagree with you as 'extremists' and just deal with their arguments.
Financial Advisor Chicago, Low Risk Investments
I've had enough exprience working with CL to know that this is is a legitimate concern of the author's. Mahmud is right, in that the Lisp ecosystem is much better today than it used to be, but it's still very sparse and less organized than those of most other languages.

It's not that hard to get a quick webapp up and running with Hunchentoot, but there is a lot more generally that you'll need. Cliki and CL-Directory are actually pretty good resources for finding out what's available, but they don't tell you, with any clarity, what's useful, what's maintained, what's finished, etc. You kind of need to figure out that by checking. It can be a bit of a pain.
Apple tries hard to not look like any Big Brother-like mega-corporation (remember the ad with the girl breaking the screen?).

Their typical customer is a bit of a bohemian bourgeois so they need to adapt their writing to seduce that target.

Ok I'm exaggerating a little bit, but do you get the point?
I've long believed that free will is illusory. Empirical evidence includes studies that suggest that we may make decisions before we're actually aware of them (See Benjamin Libet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Libet) Your conscious mind is like a 6 year in the back seat with the toy steering wheel, pretending he's driving and making up stories about where he's taking us.

Despite that, I can't actually live my life as though I really have no free will. I tried it (briefly) as an experiment, and I merely sank into a sort of post hoc analysis of everything I did. "I was supposed to do that. That's what my unconscious made me do. Etc..." Indeed, I believe that free will is inseparable from identity to such an extent that even if we find unassailable proof that it's merely an illusion, we'll continue about our lives, "choosing," as if nothing ever happened.
How is this a problem with the web any more than anything? As soon as a thought leaves your mind and is engraved on some sort of medium (be it someone's memory, paper, or a webpage) it's out there for good.

Publishing thoughts on web, like print, demands rigour from the author and the reader. Read actively, write like you have an audience, and be skeptical.
Nobody would be that surprised if hugging the antenna causes a call to be dropped when the signal was already marginal, but if you thought that the signal was strong, it would be a big disappointment. The iPhone 4's design, which doesn't make it at all obvious where the antenna is, compounds the gap between what the user thinks is happening and what actually is.
There would be no lawyers without clients. Where do divorce lawyers get their business? From people who were unable to solve a relationship problem on their own. Where do criminal defense lawyers get their business? From people who chose not to abide by the rules set by the society in which they live. Where do business lawyers get their business? From clients who are unable to resolve a dispute about an agreement they signed.

Sure, it's convenient to blame the intermediary, but at the end of the day if people were better at solving their own problems, the attorney's role would be only that of a counselor. (a role that good attorneys embrace.)
I would deal with their arguments but the post was killed before I had a chance - and I would avoid flagging a post just because it doesn't match my political view of the world.
Quickly looking through the javadoc, I can't see anything from LangPipe that's not available in NLTK. NLTK was really fun to use in my project... It's not always nice to look at its internals (in many places it was written by people who know more about NLP than about programming) but even that isn't terrible.

So yes - one more vote for NLTK.
Attribution's effect on The Ad Market - Supply Side - Mobtown Labs
Feynman on knowing the name of something and knowing something
Perhaps you should take a look at: http://www.crackmes.de/

They offer tons of so called 'crackmes'. Those are binaries that are written to be reversed for fun. Ranging from 'very easy' to 'wtf'. The posted solutions offer an easy entry to go from theory to practice.

Have fun
This makes no sense to me. Maybe I'm ignorant, but it sounds a lot like going to a mechanic because your car keeps turning off and they offer a new paint job to fix the issue.
Good point, but if you follow through to the source of the driving statistic that Derek quoted, they're actually using the median rather than the mean. Also, you've defined the "goodness" of drivers as a discrete measure. If you defined it as a continuous measure (say, a function of risky behavior and fuel consumption), then it is impossible by definition for more than 50% of drivers to be above average.

(I'm guilty of self-plagiarism here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=191101)
I don't get it ... what makes gay men be so successful in finding sex partners?
You're quoting the authors' summary of their opinions, not disagreeing with Superfreakonomics' interpretation of their data. There's a big difference.
People who cite local food as being good in and of itself are likely to value it because they feel it'll help the local economy. If someone is truly interested in sustainability, then they'll rank food sources for sustainability, not proximity.

Small, local farms are, however, more likely to use sustainable methods, and people sometimes think that means that local == sustainable.
Steve Jobs always writes colloquially. I can see that trickling down.
Perhaps some horticulturists are rabbits? My wife planted about 120 tulip bulbs, which was nice the first year but by the second the rabbits found them, from there on all we ever saw was stems and leaves.
>The rain falls from the sky. Save for a few very large trees that actually reach into the water table, trees well inland rely solely on the rain for their supply of water.

But they draw up that rain from the local soil using transpiration as I was explaining to my 4yo yesterday, I'm pretty sure he'll have forgotten it by now, I digress.

What I'm not sure about is rainwater capture - do shrubs capture (internally) water higher up the plant (eg in at limb connections) or are leaves simply directing the water to fall close to the "trunk" to maximise root take-up.

It's a good catch though as I'm sure I'd fall to the leap from knowing that "trees grow by taking in CO2 and that is where they get their mass of carbon from" to the false assumption that "tree mass comes primarily from the air" without really thinking about it.

Thanks for your analysis.
Most people who own android, blackberry and winmo, don't buy any apps. Most people who have the iPhone, buy 27 (the actual number, the mean as of April 25, 2009).

That's how. A huge percentage of android apps are free, and many people don't get you can install things on blackberry and winmo.
Next up, why Sandburg's "Tell me why a hearse-horse snickers/Carrying a lawyer's bones." is intended as a compliment.

But no, Shakespeare does not depict Jack Cade as a statesman, is he?
i hear you. the part that irks me is that in the year since the time of 3GS release, this passed QA for call making. while we give them more time now, we suffer the affected calls. <sarcasm> maybe Gary Powell was the guy in charge of making sure calls worked properly </sarcasm>
Still have to do hand (and shoulder/ear/etc) gymnastics while waiting for the fix. Though, yes, it's a relief to know it's not my face nor just my particular phone that's broken.
a python interface to a lower level rendering library could mitigate most of that effect.

otoh, serious game writing is pretty hardcore tech, cutting-edge game devs probably won't jump into python right away.
Pressure-Sensitive Drawing Demonstration on iPad
An insulative coating? We're talking about signals in the 850 to 2300 MHz range - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitive_coupling anyone?
That's what prompted me to look him up. I caught parts of the interview while browsing the web, and decided that he sounded interesting enough to warrant a quick search, and this article turned out to be better than the interview (at least from an information perspective).
Around Top Gear's test track, they were able to get IIRC about 30 minutes of full speed usage before he battery was completely drained, at which point it was a 6 hour recharge to top up the batteries again. Definitely not practical for any sort of extended racing series like NASCAR, etc.
A lot of people do not understand someone wanting to be a recluse. In my environment there are some introverts and not being one I've been told I make them uncomfortable by not understanding their space.
Automatically find contiguous movies with Moviesneak.py
Sure. But, in my opinion at least, his "Thoughts on Flash" seemed much more carefully worded than this.

Everyone refers to signal strength as the quantity of "bars" they have, so I suppose this is the colloquial way to write this. But sentences like "Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place." just boggles my mind that it made it through Apple PR.

This is the same company that has the following boilerplate on the bottom of their press releases: "Apple ignited the personal computer revolution with the Apple II, then reinvented the personal computer with the Macintosh. Apple continues to lead the industry with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system, and iLife, iWork and professional applications. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store, has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced its magical iPad which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices."
Internet Video is Hot, But Not a Money-Maker Yet
... which argues that policymakers should leave the climate debate aside and focus on planting trees. Planting 5 billion acres of trees -- about 2.5 times the surface area of Canada

That's a lot of trees!
Fantastic list but just to add a few items from my experience.

11) COTS enterprise software, as often as not, is a Frankenstein mismatch of packages purchased by the vendor and stitched together. Our major software system is on its third owner. We have access to the source code. It dates back 20 years to mainframe software that has been ported. It's written in a combination of COBOL, C, PL/SQL, Java, Oracle Forms, and a smattering of browser scripting languages. The vendor's software suite is completely purchased and thrown together (a.k.a integrated) in the cheapest way possible.

12) Developers of enterprise software often get requirements from a dedicated analyst. Perhaps it was me but when I tried working from another person's analysis, I found it hard producing software the users actually wanted.

13) Software developers are not interface/user experience designers. Enterprise software vendors hire many more of the former than the latter.

I'm not a fan of having the analyst role split out from the development role. Coming to understand the user requirements is a major part of development. Requirements are not facts to be memorized and worked through like a check list. They have to be internalized to the point that you understand why something is a requirement.

Much the same argument as with the analyst role. I would rather have a developer with a passion for UI design get the proper education in design instead of having a developer and a designer as separate people. My experience is that some developers naturally gravitate towards the visuals, so harness it.

EDIT: Removed footnote marks because they looked confusing.
You'll have to give me some citations for 1. A priori it seems sensible ...
The biggest strength of PHP has always been that a non-programmer who already has an HTML page can start adding dynamic code by inserting a simple tag into their HTML file and continue working as they have been (edit the HTML file, reload page, repeat). That's the lowest barrier to entry of any language except maybe javascript.
OK, basically the argument boils down to "if you have to write a webapp and don't know how to program in Lisp or PHP, you'd be better choosing PHP".

It's very close to trite. Yes, PHP is easier to learn. But if you're already proficient with Lisp, would you still be faster learning PHP? And if you are not up to speed with lisp, why the hell would you even be considering it for a time-sensitive quick-n-dirty job?

The question he set out with was "why is PHP more popular"? His answer is "because it's easier to learn and more popular".
Is it possible to have a sincere discussion about this? If I falsely believe in free will then surely I don't have a choice in the matter.
What are we supposed to take away from this? I'm having a hard time identifying it as anything more than self-promotion. Do you plan to open source your Sky Framework? When can we get our hands on it?
"We are also making bars 1, 2 and 3 a bit taller so they will be easier to see."

Translation: Don't worry about the signal, we have BARS!
Three to Tango - What you need to know about hiring or running a consultancy
what we can do about insulating the political process from monied interests.

Absolutely nothing. Money is power. It's nothing more and nothing less than a societywide promise that people will give you things and do things for you.

Trying to prevent the imbalance in money-power from being reflected to a large degree in political power is ultimately futile. Any rules you make will have loopholes and workarounds for those in possession of enough money-power.
I love these people.
The Future of Maps
The author started way too fast and was surprised he would burn out so quickly. If you are trying to set up a small self sustaining ecosystem you don't dump everything in all at once. Anyone that's done an aquarium will tell you that. You start with one thing, stabilize it, add another thing, stabilize, rinse and repeat.

After reading this the only lesson he learned was how to waste $11,000. Off the mark he's growing tomatoes, corn, potatoes, eggplant, raspberries, etc. Nothing is mentioned about the watering and fertilizing cycles of the plants. Which is pretty damn important. And these aren't the easiest vegetables, except maybe the tomatoes and the cale.

I've started my own little terrace garden this summer and so far I've learned getting started is expensive and no matter how smart you think you are, read the directions. I basically spent $200 last month on what basically amounts to soil, pots, hand tools, and seedlings. And this is only to grow herbs.

My objective is to get out from under the thumb of my local grocery store. Last time I went shopping they were charging $3 for a bag of lettuce! If things work out by the end of summer I won't be paying for something like that again.
good observation. i'm wondering why bars are not equally the same height across. the quantity alone should be enough (1 vs 5) to convey strength. with the height being variable, it seems to make things seem worst in the worst possible way -- 5 will still be 5, but when its a 1, because the height is so much shorter, it seems worst than 1. what is the upside to variable height when you already have variable width in terms of number of bars? it's not as if there's an algorithm that determines the correct height for that particular signal, as there is a (faulty?) algorithm to determine the correct width (bars).
As someone with I gather a high IQ and who's spent a lot of time around people with much higher IQs and who's been shooting since kindergarten, I'd say anyone with an IQ somewhere over 110 most definitely could use a safety test after some safety training.

However:

"In sum, it is clear that the Framers and ratifiers of the
Fourteenth Amendment counted the right to keep and
bear arms among those fundamental rights necessary to
our system of ordered liberty" (McDonald v. Chicago, page 31, http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-1521.pdf)

And applying prior restraint to such rights is subject to serious scrutiny (ought to be "strict scrutiny", but that's TBD since both D.C. and Chicago's effective total handgun bans would fail any level of scrutiny).
As someone with a lot of experience with teaching new people PHP, you're missing something. The other language portion generally refers to another programming language. Most people with those problems suffer from not knowing another programming language, or fundamentals in programming.

People with the problems you mentioned are one of two types of people:

1. No prior programming experience.
2. Do not understand fundamentals of programming.

These are the people that use $var1, $var2, and $var3 instead of arrays.

Beyond that, if you can't be bother to learn the difference between =, ==, and === in PHP, you aren't bothering to learn, and have no reason to complain.
This could very well be the least anticipated mobile phone software update ever--now with less bars in more places.
I believe he was talking about a national policy, not a corporate policy.

The idea that we, as a nation, somehow resist the neo-colonialism known as "free trade", and, as Mr Grove says, fight a trade war TO WIN.

Corporations are legally obligated to make the biggest profit they can, which implies cutting costs any way that they legally can (so long as the cuts do not disproportionately impact gross incomes). No one is suggesting that we ask companies to invent charitable make-work.

I believe what he finally gets to at the end of the essay is to suggest that we, as a society, provide financial disincentives to offshore work, and incentives to do the work within our own country.

People making $40,000 per year are much more likely to buy your stuff than people making $20,000 (or $0), and are less likely to crash your gated villa, even if it costs 20 to 50 percent more. He also mentions that doing the grunt work trains (st least some -- enough) people to do the more creative stuff later.

Don't worry, though. The multi-national corporations so own our government, so it's doubtful our national self-interest is going to have much influence anyway. You can continue living the libertarian dream. Unless you end up being one of the untouchables. Ouch.
Apple releases statement about iPhone reception, fix due in a few weeks
> The main thing missing is a site that documents how to use these pieces in concert to accomplish common web programming tasks.

You know, not to get dragged into a stupid language debate, but for any language, a proposed solution without documentation is not a solution.
So the answer is to extend your credit elsewhere and third the overall costs - which is fine if you have access to an easily extended line of credit.

It's not always going to be cheaper for everyone to pay up front but on the whole it does seem better.
Well then it must be using "the right algorithms", obviously.
Is "Google Me" Real? "I Won’t Say", Says Eric Schmidt
Well, we could always find another large deposit of helium in some undiscovered salt mine. Unlikely, but there are still parts of the earth largely unsurveyed. So maybe. After that, maybe in 50 years we'll start mining helium3 from the moon, or producing it ourselves in a fusion reactor.
The issue isn't subsidies, but the fact that almost every carrier in the US and Canada refuses to lower your monthly bill when the subsidy has been paid off. Until that changes, the only sensible response is to get a new subsidized phone as often as your contract allows.
I don't know if this is really the case or not, but what Apple is saying is more like going to a mechanic because your gas gauge keeps dropping to E when you hold the steering wheel a certain way, and the mechanic informs you that your gauge has been reporting more gas than you actually had _for several years_.
Charles Revson - "in our advertising we sell hope", http://quotationsbook.com/quote/5212/.
I don't understand why I was voted down.
There are a mass of people that treat Apple products like a drug. They have to have their fix of the latest and greatest apple products even if their current product works just fine.
I just think that Steve Jobs fits the profile of a dealer, because he can be so 2-faced about the product.
"This right here is the future of cell phones, you can do everything on it!"
to
"Its just a phone".
How do you go from telling people that this product can do everything, theres an app for all of it, they get dependent on this product and then the product doesn't work when they get their next fix, they are helpless in the water, and they're told not to worry.
Microsoft has been the same way in the past. People stuck with Vista on their new PC's when XP worked just fine.
Though I can't come up with an example for google... perhaps they are truly not evil..
I have always wondered how well you can actually control psychological studies about why someone is thinking something.