skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yeah, oddly, the intro text says what the problem is:

Users do not have to search for a hard to read diagram to determine how to insert the batteries.

Make the diagram easier to read. Don't make the diagram in thin raise lines embedded into the plastic at an angle that it's hard to shine light on them and look into the device at the same time.

But really, I like it when batteries are keyed so they only go in one way. No directions at all.
Very interesting. Check out the video in this link where he further expounds on what was written in the blog.

http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/06/alternatives-to-college.htm...

Also the comments in the link above give a good perspective on the positives and negatives of such an approach.
Three vaguely related observations:

1. When we lose weight due to eating right and/or exercising (excluding water weight), it's because the air that we breathe out is slightly heavier than the air that we breathe in.

2. When we're burning wood in a fireplace, the heat it gives off is essentially the sunlight that the tree has collected over its lifetime -- i.e. the heat difference between full sun and the shade of the tree.

3. A solar cell producing peak power is slightly colder than one that is either open- or short-circuited.
It's best not to worry about whether you're average or above average or below average. Instead, winners focus on setting personal goals and incrementally improving their performance against objective standards. Let others do the comparisons.
First, some more context. This was an 8th grade middle school physical science class. Here are some excerpts from a worksheet I gave them:

"Many people believe things based only on what they hear other people say, not based on real evidence. This makes it easy for people to have misconceptions (wrong beliefs). One common misconception is that the Earth is a sphere. The majority of Americans believe this in spite of the evidence to the contrary.

"The Earth is actually a disc (circle). The sky is a dome above the Earth. The sun, moon, and stars are all attached to this dome. The dome rotates, giving us day and night. Underneath the Earth there is water. Around the edges of the Earth is a vast, impenetrable ice sheet. The north pole is at the center of the Earth.

...

"Point #7: The United Nations’ logo correctly shows the shape of the Earth. Since they are the supreme governing body of the Earth, they should know how it is shaped!

...

"Point #9: This one you can try yourself! If the Earth is a sphere, then the ground must be slightly curved. This means that the floors of buildings must be slightly curved. Lay a ball or a pen on the floor. Does it roll?

"Point #10: If the Earth is a spinning sphere, then all of the water in the oceans would be flung into space!

...So you get the point. If I had more time, I would have made the lesson more compelling.

Most students exhibited some form of cognitive disequilibrium. About half ended up going along with the concept of a flat earth. About half were skeptical. A few, especially one student, got quite interested and came back at me the next day with lots of evidence and reasons to the contrary. So it had the intended result for at least a few students. And at the end of it all I think most got the point that we should rely on evidence, not simply what people say.
I would never have thought of it because I've seen many, many different styles of endcaps at the positive ends of 'AA' batteries alone.

The way this would have to work, given the use of 'no additional components', would be by tying the center contacts together at both ends of each cell, and doing the same with the outer contacts. So if a cell's positive endcap isn't perfectly flat, it would be likely to make contact with both terminals at that end, which would short out the whole cell.

IMO, Microsoft's patent attorneys are only the first of many attorneys you'll be paying if you implement this scheme in a mass-marketable consumer device.
I agree it's the passion. I had a chemistry teacher in highschool that was equally as passionate about chemistry as Feynman is here and it really helped me learn the subject.
Did somebody was on that lesson and missed the next ?
If +/- is idiomatic is an interesting question. But then, does it need to be? It's a matter of lining up the shapes on the device with the shapes on the battery. You don't need to know what the shapes mean, just what their relative position means.
The first issue is defining what you mean by "average." What does "average at driving" mean? If you're assigning people a competence percentage, then it's quite possible for a large portion of drivers to be above average (e.g. a thousand drivers that are 75% competent and a hundred drivers that are 25% competent). People often throw out the claim that "remember, half of everyone is below average," which implies a contiguous ordinal ranking for all people, in which case "average" is the same as "median."
New rules bring online piracy fight to US campuses
For some reason I had a sense of deja vu on this exact topic, so searched the archives and found this (from my earliest days lurking before I signed up for an account on HN)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=72115
I don't see how launchd provides any improvement over cron for this task — what am I missing?
The author, Manny Howard, was on the Colbert Report tonight. This guy was incredibly deadpan, one of the more enjoyable Colbert guests that I can remember.
Would this just be a full wave bridge rectifier?

I used to do that (4 diodes) for batteries AND powersupplies when I built my own guitar effects board power source. I was tired of either putting things in the wrong way and either a) not working or b) frying some electrolytic capacitor (if was a high current supply).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diode_bridge

Seriously - is it just that or did they find a way to make it have low enough resistance to put in every device ?
Customer Discovery Tools for Lean Startups
It is really interesting to read the responses to this piece. I was surprised to find many people saying that if they followed Derek's advice it would harm their self-esteem. Assuming that others possess more skill than you does not diminish the value of your own skill. I don't think it is a zero sum game. I think the biggest realization for me recently is just that one should not underestimate people. It is easy to think that others (especially faceless others) aren't as good at something as you are. To quote the late great George Carlin "Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?" It is depressingly easy to judge, and usually we judge negatively, and usually we judge wrong.
"Dangerous"

Yes, you're right. You have to do this well. I ended up having a great relationship with my students that year. But I think my principal had to field calls from confused parents.

"lying"

Right, you wouldn't want to betray their trust. However, my personality and teaching style led me to "pull their leg" every so often which I think is quite age-appropriate for 8th-graders. That's right at the age where the brain is developing new types of abstract thinking, and so the occasional tongue-in-cheek communication really exercises their brain well and if done well can establish a playful rapport with the students. I found that this doesn't work with 6th-graders, though. They are still rather concrete in their thinking.
That was the first thing which came to my mind as well. I thought they've probably got a bridge of schottky diodes for every battery. The mechanical design makes it seem very elegant.If it were a schottky bridge, it'll still have a forward drop of ~0.3 - 0.45 volts, which is pretty big for 1.5 volts batteries.
New Delhi (India) Traffic Police issuing notice of traffic tickets via Facebook
A couple of my friends are working on a new and much improved version of it - there should be an ask HN thread about it in the next month.

I'm excited for them to release it :)
Recurly changes pricing structure, lowers monthly fee
When you become a director of a company you have a legal duty to "enhance shareholder value" thats the only rule.

Anything else you do, every hire, every contract, every charity donation must be justifiable in this context - unless you enjoy shareholder lawsuits.
I tried to link to the original AP, but guess it is problematic. Too late for me to try to fix the link. Google search any number of consumers of this feed:

http://www.google.com/search?q=Schwarzenegger%20orders%20min...
Some of these are interesting. Gandhi, for instance, may have been racist in his early life. But if he changed as he aged, does that make him a racist forever? In other words, there was a racist Gandhi, but also a non-racist Gandhi. Which one gets the legacy? Both?
Ask?
>falling standards of living

You mean only being able to buy a 27" TV for $1000 instead of a 50" one? Or having to stick with a 3G phone for another year before getting a 4G one?
I actually take the exact opposite approach on life. One of my favorite entrepreneurial rhetorical questions is: "What would you do if you knew you could not fail?". Confidence in your own abilities forces you to try and break boundaries that you would otherwise fail to even start if you felt inadequate. I am proud to have a massive ego and I work daily on breaking down my fears and insecurities. The NUMBER ONE reason why entrepreneurs fail is because they give up. No one gives up if they think they're above average, exceptional, doing better than other startups. People GIVE UP because of fear, insecurities, feeling they are below average.

Just look at all the hot shot entrepreneurs that we all admire, they're all grade-A d-bags (Steve Jobs, Mark Cuban, Larry Ellison, Donald Trump, etc.) and that's because they believed they were larger than life, they acted upon that belief, and they actualized it.
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I was wondering, and yesterday I plumped for Desktop Connect instead, which is half the price, also an RDP client and also works for my multiple monitor setup, pinch to zoom, pan around.

I really want to see iTeleport to see what the fuss is, but not by paying 'just to see' I don't.
Diaspora: One Month In
Wait, if Apple can make an Ethernet port that works in either normal or crossover mode, why can't Microsoft make a non-fragile battery solution?
I think this is quite a stretch. It seems like a pretty nice idea and someone that goes to the trouble of buying the battery before it is widespread will probably not be confused, and even if they are as long as they put in the battery somehow it will work just fine.
I know I am repeating myself#, but why do we make more stuff? To make even more stuff?

Isn't all of this a really circular argument? I am really sorry, but I am extremely confused about what you are trying to say over here. :(

I know it's extremely stupid of me to ask this, but how is any method of mass production built upon exploiting people whether they are on a piece of land called the united states of america, or china or india help anyone in the longer term?

# http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1479902

----

Edit: I am sorry if this strikes you as an inane question/off-topic, but I ask this for a reason. The OP states that;

>>>To me, it's obvious what the future of mass production will look like, but it's not at all clear how to stave off a future where 10% of us are shouldering the entire productivity burden for the rest of the country.<<<

That is the conclusion only if you accept that the only way for us to function is to make more new stuff and to consume that new stuff. I somehow don't understand that.

I cannot understand why we have accepted an endless cycle that dwindles our resources as the only means to make a contribution? How do you define the value of all of these things that we churn out in the longer term? By measuring their impact on human beings? By their impact on the environment? By their impact on us? By productivity increased through that device? Some standard of living increased for the shorter term by it?

I want to make beautiful things, but I have to ask myself the question; am I creating wealth? Some would argue that wall street creates wealth (parts of it certainly do, but not all of it). However, everything here is dependent on the assumption that the money that is being generated here is wealth, and that the only way to do this is by earning more money. The only way to do that is to make and sell more stuff, which leads to more money, and so on.

I am not saying manufacturing is evil. It isn't. Neither is capitalism or any other ideology. I am merely questioning the ends for which it is being used. People have argued over the centuries that an action itself is stripped of being right and wrong, but it is the context in which it is performed, due to what intention and what effect that makes it good or evil.

So, as someone who doesn't know anything I just want to ask; why?

I am truly sorry if this is something not suited for this space.
After some learning, yes, you might understand +/-. But the mapping of the batttery poles to those symbols isn't exactly intuitive.

I like their idea.
It would take me way too long to stop looking for the +/- instructions to insert the batteries in the first place. This would only confuse most people who already know how to insert batteries. I have never had any sort of problem, nor have I found inserting batteries a non-intuitive action. Until all batteries can be inserted in a haphazard style, this does not solve a problem.
From the Unimportance of Competition to Complex Emotions
from the OA:

"To me, this was like finding out I'm a cylon, or this is the Matrix. Hard to accept facts."

That's because 95% of cylons don't think they are cylons.
Like watching your favorite sports team lose game after game after game. Eventually, even the most die-hard sports fans have to find a new team.

Apparently this guy is not a Cleveland fan.
Facebook is awesome. They dare to state the obvious (privacy is dead) and don't want to miss the chance of being the first to implement technology that may seem controversial now but will seem obvious tomorrow.
I've just started developing an Android couple weeks ago, using Java. I know it's an absurd answer, but fitting for an absurd question. Sorry.
It's entirely Orwellian. It reminds me of what it was like working at Netscape, during the whole weird, elaborate AOL/Sun/iPlanet dance.
I argued against it and took a shot at him, as is my wont.

But, don't you see that his hiding behind people who _actually_ make things and/or provide product or service to the American people is craven and cowardly?

He essentially gathers wealthy people's money and, by any means within or without the rule of law (if you dispute that, why would they tout their secrecy so proudly? For dramatic effect?), tries to get them more money. How is that at all "Google"? How is that even remotely the same as what we're doing here or what Brin or Woz or the Pizza shop does? Just because they are _in_ commodities TRADING doesn't mean they are down in the dirt. Their hands aren't the ones sooty at the end of the day. They are market manipulators, not distributors. Middle men. And, they justify their very existence in that rambling diatribe behind the apron of labor. It's disingenuous.
Hey daddy-o, get with the times. Sentence is the new paragraph. :-)
Jobs In India
Apply to be a Facebook beta tester
Hilarious EVO 4G salesman vs iPhone 4 shopper video
The exciting thing for me is to choosing a flux[1]-like filter at night, to be easier on my eyes.

[1] http://www.stereopsis.com/flux/
Note that just because a project using Lisp doesn't mean it's a functional project. Plenty of Lisp programs are written in imperative styles. I've done couple, guilty as charged.
Sarcastic quips don't play well on forums which value high signal-to-noise ratio, even when people can recognize the tone, unless they are exceptionally amusing or relevant.
Permaculture FTW
The PHP programmers tell me to just do a lazy check on each page load for auctions that are closed

I don't know if I believe this blanket statement. I personally can't imagine a competent PHP programmer, let alone any programmer suggesting this route. While it may be in vogue to bash PHP programmers, it's doubtful that asking this question in #php would produce such a result.

As a matter of fact, you could've just as easily said "The Ruby programmers", or "The Python programmers", since I'm sure there exists a group of programmers using those languages that may think that suggestion is a good idea.
Grouping an entire set of programmers into your question is in poor taste.

This is my opinion, as a very competent PHP programmer.
I'm going to submit a blog piece about how the less vomiting you do, the better social skills you'll have.
Well, I think "from the North Korean perspective" is something of an oversimplification of the matter. Certainly, from the point of view of the propaganda of the officialdom and the artistic culture it manufactures...
The story and some of the comments here reminded me of an old joke.

What is it: green, whistling, hanging on a wall? The answer is a herring. Wait, how? Why is it green? I painted it green. Why is it hanging on the wall? I put it there. But why is it whistling? So it would not be too easy to guess!
I'm curious how this works, and what level of work you expect for that? Most of the contract work I see advertised is luck to get above $40 an hour, of course that's through agencies.

Is this just the difference between contract to hire and lone contracts to individuals? Is there a known place to bid for local work like this, or is it all word of mouth?

I've typically been a java/j2EE dev working full time, but I can't help but wonder if been missing out on something obvious.
"the fact that he's restricted himself to a talent pool that excludes the top 20% academically makes his results not generally applicable."

The article said nothing of the sort. It said he didn't restrict applicants to any particular academic group.
I'm working for kind of a big travel portal and yes, we are shitting ourselves to the point that at least I am considering switching industries. I'm not even sure they did it for the content as much as for access to the raw data.
This is probably not in the spirit of the pseudocode, but I expected that each loop would only execute twice, because the initializer part of each loop (a=n,b=n,c=n,d=n) would be evaluated only once at the start of each loop, so all variables would be set to 2.
It's executed once at the start of each loop, but 'n' changes each iteration. That makes it grow at an insane rate.
It's purely mechanical (look at the diagram). The contacts are shaped so the battery hits the right part depending on which end it is.
Didn't they do that? Otherwise the individuals would have a LOT more than a few genetic traits in common.

Even if they did it though, the buzz-kill question still exists: are the results statistically significant? Is there a link to the actual study?
Buy cocaine and sell it to kids at the college's gates.
Ask HN:i need Money and i need it fast
Hello HN readers
Sorry for my bad English it’s not my native language.
Well im in first time strange situation. im in big debt in the bank..
I have family to feed and a mortgage to pay me and my wife are hard workers and we work all our life's still do .
So I ask straight to the point:
Im software engineer with more then 12 years experience in the enterprise software bossiness I never did any thing on my own im sure I can use my development skills .
im reading on the net that there is possibility to earn some money (not scam kind of thing ... ) but real things which I have no idea what they are …
Maybe creating niche little software and try to sell it .. im confuse and in a big anxiety from the situation.
Can someone please give me direction direction?
Thanks
He did author the article, the latest by Zubair Hamed is the name of the latest commenter of Fried's article.
>And at the end of it all I think most got the point that we should rely on evidence, not simply what people say.

...well...yes and no. For basically all of our beliefs about things outside of our immediate environment, we rely on evidence that other people have collected. I can't determine that the earth is a sphere by my own observations any more than a man could 5 thousand years ago.
If you live in a country considered cheaper than most western countries, you could try to do some freelance work online. You could be better paid than in a job in your country?

I don't think creating a new software is a viable solution when you are in need of money.
It's a nice attitude to have in a perfect world but what about this one? In many contexts, especially where there is high noise to signal, people will tend to believe/bet on/buy/hire/have sex with the guy who seems so (possibly over-) confident and makes lots of (possibly empty) promises over the guy who is humble and annoyingly realistic. I can't remember which firm but the leader of a cosmetics firm once said "we don't sell lipstick. we sell hope." I think that's true for lots of social interactions. So this attitude is better to have as a hat one can take on or off, depending on the situation. If you're alone or dealing with knowledgable people, yes, wear your humble hat. If you're selling something or yourself, wear the other one. Just to be clear, I don't like it how it is. But at the moment, being intentionally misleading sometimes, even to the point of eating your own BS, is a valid strategy for worldly success if that is what you seek.

EDIT: Just to be clear, what I mean by "intentionally misleading" is more like hyperbole than like lying. Steve Jobs claiming the "best phone in the world" is hyperbole. Bernie Madoff claiming the "smoothest returns in the world" is lying.
Everything is taxed, services as well as investments. What do you think will become of the accumulated wealth, that it will forever remain in bank accounts? What good would it be to have it and not have it moving through the system? It will eventually get taxed, perhaps simple not as fast as you wish.

Its only regressive when you lose perspective on the purpose of money.
I believe even Picasa has this feature.
You could try freelancing as a extra income source ( http://www.odesk.com/ or http://www.elance.com/)
im not from east Europe or India or china if this is what you mean ..
i looked in all the freelance sites i can't bit the prices the people from these country propose ..
see my reply , or maybe i wrong and people do have positive experience with oDesk and such , i never used it only browsed the sites.
To clarify/be pedantic, what facebook just added was face detection -- detecting where the faces are in an image. Face recognition usually refers to figuring out who a given face is of.

Riya was one of the first sites doing detection on images, and attempting to do some recognition. One of the reasons they're deadpooled now is that recognition is a really really hard problem (that's the area I do research in). Plus, they found that it was more lucrative building product search -- hence, http://like.com
congrats on the success - good to hear you're on track, and I'm excited to try logging in!

how can average people like me help out?
5 Reasons to Consider Moving an Application to Windows Azure
It's a question of supply and demand. An hour or two for someone who is already working can be quite annoying when it's a dead end. On the other hand, it may lead to future opportunities.

Once you reach senior level development in popular technologies, companies are often eager to come after you. (At least, that's what the recruiters and help want ads seem to indicate about senior level J2EE developers around the Philly area.)