skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Saying that meditating is "you just sit" is like saying that exercise is "you just move". You'll get somewhere doing only that, but not very far. Things in life that are simple, we already all do--like wiping our asses. On the other hand, meditation ends up working for some people and not others, and different people require different amounts of time and effort to get anywhere. This indicates that meditation is like any other worthwhile thing in life--not simple.
Loss of signal strength is not a software issue. The way signal strength is reported, however, is a software issue.

The impression people get when they trigger this, often, is based on the display going from five bars to zero bars; this implies that signal strength has gone from 100% to 0%, which is quite far from the actual reality. Changing the display algorithm to more accurately reflect the signal strength would resolve this; more likely you'd lose one or perhaps two displayed bars instead.
One of the reasons BBC chose CouchDB for their next-gen data store is the predictable performance under load.

Here is a series of blog posts from one of their engineers, on their use of CouchDB: http://enda.squarespace.com/tech/tag/bbc-forge

There are also a bunch of CouchDB case studies here:

http://www.couch.io/case-studies
you can never assume every EVO has Qik or Fring

My EVO came with Qik installed, but I did have to install Fring. I'd be willing to bet that in the near future, Android will have a standard video chat app built in, and likely running on top of gTalk
I've worked with people who made a big deal about not having a degree. I've also worked with people who made a big deal about their degree. Neither were as good as they imagined themselves to be.
How about if the data collectors just agree to ignore any personally identifiable information? Probably more interested in the data aggregate anyway.
notifications in IOS need to be completely redesigned, they are terrible at the moment, and trivial things can completely interrupt a tweet/game/email.
With a couple of exceptions, they've picked some rather wealthy, atypical families. I start putting my rant hat on if we go over $90 in a week and that's double what I know some people spend each week. We're in the UK, 3 strong, have a reasonable diet with good meals each day and several treats. We'd all weigh 500lbs if we spent $500 a week on food (or be permanently glued to the toilet after eating non-stop fruit)..!
When I was involved with some people who wanted to do this, they had a security expert on the "board" who would bring up that study where given 2 (or 3?) pieces of information about a person, you can ID them. I guess just knowing the hospital and the sample and the date, you could ID the person.

Anyway, these were the kinds of discussions I had for a year and then decided to leave the world of semi-academic meta-bio research because there were too many "committees" and "boardS" and "experts" and nothing ever got done.
Every website's publicly accessible forms. Think Yahoo Pipes, except using forms that already exist.
I wouldn't be too sure about that. Dotcoms used to think that Aeron chairs would provide similar ROI. Now it's back to basics, excepting the actual computer.
Tell me, downvoter, what Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have done that will be more memorable than perhaps in a few years having wiped out malaria? Windows Vista? The Zune? Buying Gillette and Geico?

Downvotes contribute nothing to a discussion, and without commentary they serve little purpose, save to inform the downvotee that you have something against what they said yet felt disinclined to share it..
Its simple actually...

1) Apple was first-to-market. And I don't mean the iPhone. The iPod was when apple just used a rocket booster to jump ahead of the game, and finally their steam is running low.

- The iPod was revolutionary.
- The iPod was never quite cloned "correctly" there was more to the iPod than meets the eye. By the time Apple removed the DRM restrictions it was too late for consumers, Apple had already made a dent in the market which others could not recover from.
- When everyone finally caught up to the iPod... poof there goes the iPhone again darting apple ahead of the game. For at least 2 years before again anyone even came close.
- The iPad is another attempt to do the same, but by now it did not dart them as far as the iPhone did. The competition is now riding on unicorns and are hard to out-meneuver.

2) Apple literally filled the void of the tech industry. The void was in usability. It was simple, give users a very friendly UI, and lets do away with core concepts we find important but most don't. I don't know how to explain "files" to my grandfather. He asks me "will my programs be there when I leave home with my laptop?" I tell him yes and no. You need an internet connection because to him his "programs" are the websites he visits. He can't even grasp the concept of moving files from hard disk to usb flash drive. To him "files" are mythical unicorns. And I see this from many people, he is just the best example. Apple is trying to cater to the audience of people who are completely lost with computers by making computers behave like "real" objects are inside them. The ipad is a great example because it makes things tangible. A child can understand it.

The point at the end is this: Apple never had "features" they had "usability". OSX is a great OS because it combines user friendliness with unix. That is why developers love it. Hey I can't get over how awesome it is that uninstalling an application is dragging it from applications to trash (just got a mac). And to top it all off its quite easy to find all configurations and such for any installed application. On top of it all I don't feel like I need to re-install mac osx every 6 months like I had to with windows xp. AND to make it even better their keyboard shortcuts are a perfect fit for a laptop keyboard without having to resort to a lack of home/end/page up/page down keys. I swear check out those 4 frequently used keys layout in ANY pc laptop. It is insanity. Look at mac, the defaults are made so that you can use the say layout/combinations everywhere, brilliant!

In the end apple is running out of steam. I think they will level out in a year or two taking their place as the new Microsoft of the industry (which is fine). I just wish macs were not so f-ing expensive. I mean I feel like I am getting inappropriately touched by Steve Jobs every time I add more ram to my order.
Mashable Pulls A Hallmark: June 30 Is Now Social Media Day
This really made my head hurt. Good thing there are other people that take care of this stuff for me.
Oh, sure. I'm just reacting to people who think that "sitting Zen" is going to make magical enlightenment fairies fly out of their asses. The way Zen/Buddhism was typically presented in the US, you'd think it had summoned Magic Fairies, or at least was full of antioxidants or something.

I think it probably works for most people, but the actual effects really aren't that profound, which fucks with peoples' expectations. You aren't going to be able to fly, but you might catch yourself before you get mad and chew out a friend about something you know really doesn't matter. Which superpower would you rather have?

I'd also recommend that people find a sane local group to meditate with, or whatever, but I don't know where everyone on HN lives and can't give useful advice there, so my advice is skewed.
I don't have an account but I'm still curious. If the API is interesting enough, it might be worth signing up.
Now you can have batteries facing either way
As a non-programmer I really like your comment but you leave me wanting more. I understand that programming and computer science are different animals, but I guess in terms of your example I don't understand why someone pursuing a profession in programming would want or need the CS background?

Are you getting at the pursuit of higher understanding angle i.e. separating the pragmatic pursuit of workplace advancement from the more selfless or idealistic pursuit of knowledge?
What I have to say is probably more of a meta-response -- a few things to think about / look for when you're learning.

One of the first things I was told when beginning my E.E. degree was that I'd be _learning how to learn_. Many years later (after obtaining a master's), I see that it is true.

Others here have stated, and I agree, you need to try doing stuff. There seem to be two sides to engineering: understanding/developing theory, and implementing it. Both are worlds unto themselves.

Also, learn the tool of the trade: Math. Even if you don't learn a particular subject, at least familiarize yourself with it enough to be able to later on say to yourself "hey, I think this type of math is what I need to solve this problem" then go and learn it.

(And, relating back to doing things, try looking at example problems and connecting the concepts involved to their equational counter-parts -- this will make connecting the math to the context easier when you try to come up with solutions or understand something else).

I'd recommend starting out with these branches:

Differential Equations - as most physical systems adhere to these types of rules

Linear Algebra - as this is useful for taking differential equations and turning them into computations a computer can perform (via state-space) as well as many many other things -- I've found a lot of the ideas I learned from linear algebra were helpful in understanding other branches of math, such as differential equations (e.g. basis vectors/functions)

and

Laplace/Fourier Transforms - lots and lots of engineering will look at things in different domains (esp. these two), so it'd be a good idea for you to get used to doing that.

Again, the best way to learn this stuff is by doing.

[EDIT: Grammar]
The Gates Foundation seems to have a lot of high-profile donators sticking a lot of tax-free money in there.

Not to be cynical or anything - but there is as much malaria in the 3rd world as there was before this foundation started.
Why don't we have programs like this today? This is awesome.

Make sure you keep watching after main show is over.
Shouldn't this effect of amplification of RF waves be directly measurable? Why write a speculative article about it without doing any tests?
Check our Rob Cockerham's exploration - he likes tackling these sort of things (Dyson and Herbalife cop much larger pastings if you explore the site further).

http://www.cockeyed.com/citizen/goldkit/cheat.shtml

http://www.cockeyed.com/citizen/goldkit/reputation.shtml

http://www.cockeyed.com/citizen/goldkit/gold_kit.shtml
56% Serving CSS with Cookies? Wow. I must have missed this wave of innovation. I honestly have never heard of this before.
One thing that has been pointed out in the article is how inline links can be exteremly distracting. They encourage you to take a break in the middle of reading something and go read something else.

One thing I've found helpful is in readability[1] which can take inline links and make them footnotes. I've also made a Drupal module[2] which acts as an input filter so you can do inline links as you write (to not break up your flow of writing) and have them automatically be turned into footnotes (which will work with WYSIWYG and Markdown as well). It's really nice and I've found it's something that help promotes a reading style which is more linear.

[1] http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/
[2] http://github.com/codeincarnate/Drupal-Footnote-Links
Yes but everything else except the document is supposedly optional and tend to scale up rather quickly. So these rules have a little more weight when applied to your CSSes and JSes.
I was going to complain how I found neither compiler nor VM in that source listings, and how it's not a pure Lisp, yada yada yada. Then I took a look at the author's other projects to see if he was a Lisper ..

Well, the man certainly puts his money where his mouth is. He has 40+ projects on github, the majority of them written in Nu.

http://github.com/timburks

If it's good enough for him, and let's him get work done, who am I to complain.
No Google. When you search on Facebook, it shows people local to you at the top.
I've spent a non-trivial amount of effort trying to figure out how to do number two at scale, with a high level of accuracy, in a manner that could eventually be profitable. So far I'm not close.
I wish this were possible, but AFAIK it's not at this point. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but they don't have an API to speak of and there isn't any means to link external resources so you could run hit trackers, analytics, etc.
Yeah, but "Buddhism" in the US means Soto and (especially) Rinzai Zen, since the Beats (esp. at the San Francisco Zen Center) did so much to popularize it. Otherwise, Buddhism has mostly stayed in local ethnic enclaves.
"I'm just surprised people are arguing this point, I see it everywhere. Maybe now it's been brought to your attention you'll catch more instances of government officials using 'consumer' when 'citizen' would be more appropriate."

That's not an argument. You show me the instances. (Having heard this argument several times in the past few months, I still haven't seen any myself.) You're punting.

"That stuff combined with a study of the of tools of psychological and social influence originating in Europe in 1800s and 1900s (from Hegel to Dialectical Materialism) makes it difficult to believe that anything about our modern world is a coincidence."

Oh Christ, don't trot that Hegel bullshit out to me again; I had enough of that during my philosophy degree.
Data that allows the ranking of companies in any major industry by their adherence to best practices, especially consumer-friendly best practices.

Example would be: average hold time. But this is already somewhat available. I'm thinking there's tons of other data that is not available. Such as: do doctors at this clinic/medical practice send reminders when their patients are due for checkups?
This is a very tightly-knit gang of uber hackers. Their last project was a program which generated articles for Wikipedia:

http://people.csail.mit.edu/csauper/?page_id=64
It's one of the common HN tropes. Pretty soon we'll have yet another post about nootropics or polyphasic sleep. "Ask HN: I want to be smarter, but don't want to expend any effort! Help me get something for nothing!"

Meditation actually helps (in my experience), but it's about on par with actually getting exercise or getting enough sleep - totally lame. :)
If you're interested in Lisp, Objective C and Cocoa, you might also be interested in Clozure[1], a Common Lisp implementation which provides complete access to Cocoa through its Objective C bridge[2].

[1] http://ccl.clozure.com

[2] http://trac.clozure.com/ccl/wiki/Cocoa

--
Auto suggestion machine at your service
FreeBSD, Building a Computing Cluster
> I'm not sure I'd want to work for someone who didn't understand the difference between computer science and programming.

It's not a misunderstanding. You just can't get a degree in programming. 90% [1] of students in CS departments are there to be industry coders.

[1] True bogus fact.
Here in DC my fellow alumns are having some difficulty finding jobs, and they are ready to work just about anywhere. They eventually get sucked up into the big consulting firms though. They will do well enough in 10 years' time.

I think the biggest problem has been for international folks who can't get anyone to sponsor their visas except for, say, the World Bank, which is all too familiar with the process.
IPad 2.0 should have 1GB of RAM
Ask HN: Building Credit Score?
I just turned 18, and am looking for some tips on how to start building my credit score.

Anything you suggest I should do?
If you are paying Apple to add ram to your order, you certainly are being touched inappropriately by Steve. It's not your imagination.
The old name for this was "market research".
I'm not sure I'd say it is more selfless or idealistic, but I do think that college, at least as I see it, serves a very unique purpose.

It's goal is to take great ideas over time and teach those ideas to new students of the field. And computer science as a field is more about the science of computing, than it is about programming. Generally programming is taught as a way to understand different manifestations of computing.

To answer your first question, pursuing a profession in programming doesn't require a CS degree. And it's probably only marginally beneficial to improving the quality of your work in _most_ programming jobs. I do think we can view programming as more of a vocational skill. There will be some jobs that require CS backgrounds, but for the most part it's a lot closer to writing in that there is a suitable job for almost every level of skill.
Scientists to present car for blind drivers next year
Someone who hires programmers told me that university vs. self-educated were pretty indistinguishable, except for algorithmic problems - which over came up very rarely.

Fred Brooks claimed that education and training for programmers was extremely beneficial - but he was writing in a time when many programmers were writing operating systems and compilers. Additionally, structured programming (ie. without gotos) was a (relatively) new idea. Therefore, I tend to think that today, when the vast majority of programming tasks aren't nearly so difficult and our tools have improved so much, and good practices are generally known, that programming is much easier, and training isn't nearly as important as it was.

Even for creating new ideas and tools (eg. Thompson's regex search; pagerank), it's more a matter of being super-smart, IMHO. Of course, it helps if you know the basis of the idea (eg. what a regular expression is). If you want to prove those ideas, however, I think academic training is very helpful - but in mathematics, not computer science.
On the dot. I was trying to point out that the original research seemed to come from the point that being skeptical about the absolute power of scientific method is not ok. The authors were "shocked to find" .. blah blah.
I would be interested in finding out more about your approach to this or chatting about ways to make this happen.

I found this old thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=911853 but couldn't find your contact information.
I've been waiting for a follow up to my ticket for exactly 1 month for "Request for Mobile Access Key flag for application", despite numerous email requests for an update.
God says...

woes deceit abated virtue seven tumults manage Among flown
assiduously months gulf disputing Etext allaying vouchsafest
third deem commencement shalt promise continent adversity
flock imaginations contents Furthermore multitude garlands
cattle stiff indentures cedars Right overcoming Full discover
liveth shelter
"Dyson and Herbalife cop much larger pastings if you explore the site further"

I think you mean Kirby, not Dyson. Here's a link:
http://www.cockeyed.com/citizen/kirby/kirby.html
you can probably do something like shadow the commit command with an alias in your global pref file
The present world have more software freedom if Bill Gates wasn't the one who helped put a computer in most homes in the developed world, but he was still an instrumental individual in the computing revolution. Like Andrew Carnegie, he will leave a legacy with a complicated narrative.
Ultimately, what matters is that the Android set of actual phones you can buy competes in the marketplace with the iPhone line. There's no competition between operating systems per se--this isn't Windows vs. Linux.
I am working at Brighten Labs, a startup founded by a couple of my college friends.

We first built CashCurve in February 2009 to be our own cash flow management tool. To me, it seems simple and effective, but we would like feedback. Thanks!
> I actually wonder whether marriage should have a time limit specified.

Some places do, down to a matter of hours. It's a slick way around prostitution laws and moral qualms.
Basics of probability and statistics
LuaJIT is great and it's very interesting. (In fact, I've been reading through its source code trying to understand the magic.)

My impression is that the developer is reading the important papers and putting the theory into practice. It's innovative in the sense of "new stuff that is made useful".

Guys like the SPUR team at MSR on the other hand are trying new ideas and writing these papers. That's innovation in the sense of "a change in the thought process for doing something".

Both are important and each one would be useless without the other.
Nice article, we want more :)
historically there has always been a cottage industry in decrying the new as dangerous. the otherwise terrible movie The Year One had a funny sequence on this where bronze is being introduced, much to the dismay of the stone knappers.
If it's presented as "We're building this product - tell us what you want it for" it would tend to select the people who are really keen. That's the kind you want to start with - but you're right, it is a subset, probably a very small one. So maybe this is better for operationally getting started, rather than measuring market size.

A related idea is to build less of the product, eg. the backend is run manually (ie. you are the backend). I like this one better, because it seems dishonest to me to say "buy our great app!" and then not have it. But I guess you can word it as a request for interest, like the HospitalVille example.

Question: has Zyngna actually been successful with this technique? (I've only heard of Farmville).
Warren Buffet's Pledge to Donate 99% of Wealth [pdf]
Genes Are Secret to Longevity, Scientists Can Predict Using Genome
I was pointing out that if Apple enabled developers to their data into the main search functionality, it doesn't necessarily mean that the search results will be useless.
It is not my job to police them. Given I am utilizing the BT ecosystem to receive the copy, I share in return as payment. I do not share movies forever, but that is really just to keep my bandwidth from being saturated. If I just leach, then I won't have an opportunity in the future to have this convenience.

Would I prefer that they not pirate the stuff I download? Yes, I would. Content creators absolutely deserve to be paid for their efforts.

If content publishers would give me the convenience of a non-DRM infected digital copy (or the ability to easily rip a disc), I would not ever need to use BT. The digital copies of disks some publishers provide is close, but not good enough.
For those purposes, Visual Studio is free: http://www.microsoft.com/express/Web/
Philippines, Developer Profile with Brian Quebengco of Inovent Design
There are also HIPPA laws to consider also if you opened up all that information. Not to mention the privacy concerns.
Thanks for the heads up. That is quite convenient, unfortunately I'm now using vimium. I'm reminded that in my vimperator days gmail wasn't a problem because the vi key bindings just worked everywhere. All this is moot considering I can just patch the plugins. I assume vimium either has a similar capability or that it can easily be added, but it does allow a web app to trap key strokes before by default (opposite of vimperator)
A lot of people find this article well written, or alternately, they find the article patronizing and some are angry at it.

I just think the article is incorrect, which is a necessary consequence of its sweeping generalizations. A quote from the article: "You are a mess." The author spends much of the article telling the reader how unhappy the reader is, how much the reader is suffering. From a rhetorical perspective, I can understand why the author would do this. Yet I'm not convinced that I'm unhappy, and the rest of the article falls apart without that foundation.

"It [life] is an emotional roller coaster, and you spend a lot of your time down at the bottom of the ramp, yearning for the heights." To me, life feels more like emotional airplane, at home above the clouds but makes the occasional layover in Detroit.

Your experiences may vary.