skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"$200 is a lot of money for some people."

In the UK, an 'unsubsidized' i4 starts at $630. Even if you only use it as an expensive iPod Touch HD with an unused 3G antenna, the phone costs more than $200 to own, any way you want to look at it.

Orthogonal to that, I think this whole antenna kurfuffle is ludicrous hysteria.
I agree with you that this doesn't seem to be an issue to get that upset about, especially if a case is all that's required to fix it. And that really sucks about AT&T in SF; I wouldn't have thought they'd let that city get away from them. I'm interested to see if there is more to it than meets the eye, though.
Do you actually know any nurses, because I doubt it from your description.

My gf is an EMT, and two of my sisters are nurses. Here's the actuality:

Nurses are paid OK. They work long stressful jobs with severe penalties, both moral and civil, for screwing anything up. There is a high chance of serious injury, particularly while trying to move or assist fat or obese patients, of which there are more and more due to the obesity epidemic and diabetes. Working as a nurse or EMT means physical labor involving long periods of standing on your feet; little control over when your shift ends, no matter what the schedule says; having to work very early morning or very late evening shifts to get 100% coverage; and very little flexibility during the day. You know how you can run small errands and do little errands with your computer? They, for the most part, can't.

They also have ongoing education and certification requirements that they most often pay for out of pocket.

Finally, being an EMT, paramedic, or nurse means not only developing an intimate relationship with bodily fluids of all sorts but seeing on a daily basis the worst things that can happen to a human being. From mangled bodies from car accidents to cancer, to diseases (including those that require hazmat suits and offer severe risks if anything goes wrong), to infected wounds, to septic shock or heart failure or stroke, they see all the things that can go wrong with a human.

So yes, they're fairly well paid, but I wouldn't describe their actual jobs as anything like "cushy".
Yeah, it's "open source" in terms of the licensing, but it's not a true "open source project" where some animals are not more equal than others, where nearly everything is out in the open, and so on.

That said, I'm pretty happy with it - I'll take "open source" + some closed development any day over Apple or an RMS-pure project that, however, has no traction in terms of an installed base.
2006 and 2010 are a world apart economically
I've heard that the Python folks already drove most of the Lisp folks out. Lisp is only used for a very small part of their infrastructure, from what I've been told.
Medical tort costs in 2007 were 30 billion and have been increasing at about 5% a year for the last 10 years (http://www.towersperrin.com/tp/getwebcachedoc?webc=USA/2008/...)

Meanwhile, medical costs are more on the order of 2 trillion and have been increasing by over 15 % a year for the last 10 years.

I don't think liability is really the main cost driver here. I'd look at profits first. $2k to do a sleep study? How much work could that possibly be? And then they insist on another one? Not to mention the whole PCP -> specialist -> other specialist to get a frickin piece of plastic. Everyone got a piece there.
while the later critiques are somewhat valid, it seems kind of disingenuous to suddenly launch this snark-filled rant after the release of a tumblr importer.

it totally ignores the other ones released that do address dying systems, or the other systems that aren't dying. it tints the arguments of a negative tumblr fanboy reaction, more than a valid critique, especially given the amount of effort put into tumblr vs posterous, instead of posterous vs all the other platforms it now imports.
Well, it's not like he's going to say "I'm the problem". Check my link above about the size of tort costs in the USA compared to overall medical cost, and their respective inflations.
Recommended reading: Andy Kessler, The End of Medicine: How Silicon Valley (and Naked Mice) Will Reboot Your Doctor.

There are startup opportunities hidden here!
It may be hard to "prove" it's defective when Apple's stated position is that it's not.
I have the previous DX model, and use it extensively for technical and personal reading. It's not perfect, but it's convenient, light, and very easy on the eyes. Since I'm in front of screens all day, I greatly prefer it to a tablet, at least until the Pixel Qi screens arrive in force.

I do buy a few books via Amazon, but mostly I buy PDFs so I can read them on my dev box, phone, etc. as needed. The PDF reader isn't perfect, but it's good enough.

So yes, in my opinion the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. I'd suggest you get a slip case for it, though, otherwise you'll always worry about it when you carry it around. (That goes for and tablet format electronics, though.)
Except the example he gave was also wrong. 3 + 4.2 is 7.2, using exact arithmetic, which should be the default assumption.

If you're measuring values under uncertainty, then his explanation makes some sense. But that's a property of measurement and uncertainty, not of numbers or arithmetic.
Beyond the Checkin: Where Location-Based Social Networks Should Go Next
Can't upvote you enough for this. By the way, Feynman also knows the difference "between knowing the name of something and knowing something": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05WS0WN7zMQ
In the first case, a single Apple employee was being careless. In the second case, the entire company was being careless.

Sounds like Apple is following Jobs' advice, actually...
Here you go [1].

It doesn't matter if the work is voluntary, I voluntarily buy a product but if the company knows it's faulty and sells it to me anyway that's wrong. If the company knows that the job is unfair, and is using it as free labor that is wrong.

The point is what's morally wrong and in some cases... illegal to the point the feds have to get involved [2].

[1] http://wbztv.com/local/Adult.internship.experience.2.1763471...

[2] http://www.cartoonbrew.com/student/most-unpaid-internships-a...
That blog post is 3.5 months old (from March 15th, 2010).

Why is it appearing on HN now?
In all likelihood, if North Korea wins, the contest officials will probably simply discount it and use the runner-up.
Cutting back on the design and construction of the rovers such that they had very little chance of surviving significantly beyond 90 days would probably not have reduced total mission cost significantly, due to fixed overhead in designing the instruments and the rover overall as well as the quite significant launch costs. However, it would have drastically increased the risk of failing to survive 90 days and completing the primary mission.

Even sending $10 of dime-store electronics duct-taped together to the surface of Mars would cost about $150 million dollars, not including operational costs, that cost structure dictates that you should ensure a pretty high chance of success for your primary mission.

As it turns out, engineering the rovers to have a high probability of surviving 90 days and returning excellent science data in that time frame means that you have a significant probability that they will survive for much longer than that or indefinitely.

Spending, say, 10 or 20% "too much" on the overall mission cost (a SWAG but not a bad one, I think) in order to ensure a 90-95% chance of completing the primary mission with some lower chance (say 30-50%) of a several years long extended mission is an excellent ROI. In contrast saving a mere 10-20% and lowering the chance of completing the main mission to, say, 50% and the chance of an extended mission to near 0% is not a good ROI at all.

P.S. One of the main constraints on rover longevity is power production falloff due to dust buildup. Prior to these rover missions there were a lot of unknowns about dust buildup and as it turned out there have been some rather lucky environmental conditions which have saved the rovers from death that could not have been anticipated before hand.
Yeah, as long as some people aren't affected, it's ok. The people that have problems just haven't had enough Kool-Aid yet.
I also don't post to Posterous from the web interface

That's an interesting point. I wonder if that has any effect on the compete data. Specifically, if Tumblr users visit the site themselves more often than Posterous users visit theirs.
The knowledge that there is huge variance in productivity level of programmers is kind of useless, because we mostly lack the ability to reliably measure true productivity. Similar to advertising: "I know I waste half of my advertising dollars...I just wish I knew which half." You can really only pay amazing devs more if you can figure out which devs are the amazing ones.
Less is Always an Option - An Interview with Jason Fried
HDBaseT: The end of HDMI? New Standard for A/V Uses Ethernet Cables
It's from March 15th and we haven't seen anything else since. If it's a true leak, why didn't it catch on? Color me skeptical.
How are the teachers motivated?
The question is how much unnecessary expense is incurred trying to avoid legal liability.
UseTheSource: HN like site for beautiful Code
They have substantial revenue, so not taking much investment isn't surprising. I just wonder what the thought process was in deciding to sell to Google at this price.

This must still be a huge win for the founders. They probably still had most of the equity since they only took one round of financing, and at a point when the company was already mature.
@smanek is a Lisper and worked for ITA a few years ago I believe so perhaps he'll chime in.
Job application challenge
Hopefully Google will make flight search suck less. Currently even the most basic searches like "What's the cheapest I can fly from any airport within 50 miles of my house to any airport within 50 miles of NYC at any point during August" are impossible. I understand it's a computationally expensive question, but why the hell can't I just buy $5 bucks worth of computing time for an answer if I potentially stand to save a couple hundred bucks.
New genetic test can predict your chances of living to 100
I buy a lot of gadgets, so I'm used to being upset when I realize my $600 toy is not going to be much use to me. But most people do not go through the cycle as often, and they think that buying a product means it's going to work as advertised and not give them problems because they hold it wrong. The fact that the phone loses reception is irrelevant; the disappointment comes in knowing that you have a flawed half-baked product, and that there will never be one that works. Next year, there will be another iPhone, but it will be flawed in some way too. Now Apple isn't as cool as you thought. Now you aren't as cool as you thought. Now the Universe isn't as cool as you thought.

An angry letter seems like a pretty rational response if it means that you can still feel meaning in your life.
Interesting quote:

One intriguing finding in the study was that gene variants that raise a person's risk of disease may matter less than genes that protect against disease. The scientists found that centenarians had roughly the same number of high-risk genes as the rest of the population, but had more protective genes to cancel them out. The finding is important, because commercial genetic tests look only for genes that raise a person's disease risk, rather than reduce it.
that mix would fit well at Google
In practice, you walk into the store, tell them its not working properly and they will either take back the item you have claimed to be defective or replace the item.

In general, Apple's retail stores are extremely straight forward, offer great customer service, and don't yank you around like other brick and mortar retailers.
As far as I know, most of the CO2 in plants goes to respiration for energy production. Not saying it doesn't go to mass, as well, but it's the energy side of things that people learn in elementary school.

We're not stupid, and this man needs to think about his accusations before he blogs about them...
Ben please make the intro with these guys! I'm sure we can help each other fix whatever is broken on our respective sides :)
In defence I don't read his points as being "you're stupid" but more about the fact that we don't think about what we are talking about.

The Ask question... wrong! thing strikes me as simply a device to make this point.
...potentially fatal mistake...

I'd withhold judgement until the dust settles.

If this marketing campaign results in more active users for Posterous, from whatever source, then I think they would call it a success.

On the other hand, if they've alienated everyone and all the users leave then in hindsight, it'll just be considered a dumb move.

This whole 'Posterous vs everyone' reminds me of an Oscar Wilde quote -- The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.
Now wait a minute - you said that I wouldn't be turning my customers over to you but now you're telling me they have to create accounts on your system. Isn't that exactly what "turning my customers over to you" is? The end result is that I have to tell my customers, "Hey - go create a new account/login here" and then you have all their details in your databases. Are your databases secure? Is your code secure? How do I know you won't sell my info? That's back to the "I don't know you" problem...

100% free to start isn't an exciting thing to me, actually. I'm dealing with something incredibly important for my business and I expect that any company will either have a free trial, a demo, or a 30-day money back guarantee. I'm less swayed by the "100% free to start" than others might be because I'm serious about wanting an affiliate management package... I'm not kicking tires, so to speak.

All in all, it seems like I'm not really the target market - which is fine.
Getting Redis and CodeIgniter to play together
why would i use this instead of another service?

take the top coffee shops in vancouver... why wouldn't i use a service like yelp? why would i pay attention to someone's top ten movie list rather than a site that can take what i like in movies and make recommendations?

i can't see myself ever using a site like this.

from a design perspective, the site looks like something out of the late 90s. what is going on with the left side and bottom side of the recent comments?
to me it seems like a crowdsourced version dave letterman's top 10. In that case, you should put like the best lists ever.. like the funniest ones to keep my interest in the site. The ones on the homepage are not that great.

Not sure how compelling the concept of writing lists are , as they are sort of time consuming to think about. Like the success of twitter is that its short things your supposed to write off the top of your head. The aspect of blogging is to write compelling content for people to read about. Not sure where this fits in.

edit: good luck with the site.
Would you necessarily say that common law precedents are a form of top-down law?

Since precedents are formed in the particulars of specific cases -- with the parties involved in the case directly participating in the arguments brought to the court -- and are then broadened and deepened as they are applied to more and more cases, I would consider this the most bottom-up form of law.

Participatory democracy can be, and often is, much more of a top-down proposition, and is largely responsible for the modern accumulation of statutory cruft.
Actually, it is useful, because everyone is going to the same page, so the community's attention is focused on a few items at a time. This is what enables conversations to happen. If instead you just have a catalog of code, the community's attention is dispersed throughout the site. That's fine if the site has the popularity of, say, YouTube, but that's not the case here. There's extremely limited attentional resources, and they need to be focused.

Just as with reddit or hacker news, if I haven't seen some piece of code, it's new to me, so it's news. There's no reason to apply some traditional standard of news and then say code submissions don't fit it. I read reddit or hacker news because like-minded people canvas the web and collect awesome links. Often it's "news" but often it's not. This is a case where most items may not be news, but the hacker news UI is still useful.
The laws haven't changed over the last few years, yet the cost of healthcare has increased way more than the total in tort settlements. Even though reimbursement of healthcare costs is a big part of those settlements.

Given those figures, I'd guess that "avoiding liability" is a convienent excuse for running up the bill in many cases. If the laws aren't changing, and the amount of settlements awarded is actually decreasing relative to the cost of care, why is care going up so fast? Why spend more money avoiding liability this year than last year, if the odds of being sued have actually gone down?

Of course, expenses incurred doing better medicine and not screwing up as opposed to reducing liability are probably a good idea.
> As to precision it's more accurate to say 3 +/- 0.5 times 101 +/- 0.5 = 256.25 to 355.25 or 305.75 +/- 49.5 than to just say 300.

Ah, problem is you've changed the question now. Which is a reasonable thing to do when face with 3 + 101.5 = ?, but not the point the author was making (or, actually, it is the exact point the author is making) :)
Google says "...we think there is room for more competition..." - but now they own both how most people find tickets and the service that provides the link between the airlines and the internet. My guess is that they will keep with their mantra of giving user's the fastest possible answer by providing links to buy tickets in response to queries like "cheap sf tickets". Problems for companies like Orbitz ahead?

Google is already starting to apply this approach to accommodation, another high value segment. Searches for hotels in most cities now return as their first result a Google map with listings of actual hotels - over time I expect these to become more expansive and traffic to independent hotel aggregators to decline. With the current strategy Google is moving to an approach where they scrape review and hotel data from all the aggregators and then serves this in its own listings - eliminating the need for its users to perform a secondary search with a independent aggregator.
I didn't mean Javascript. Although it is better than 3.6.x — I meant the application. It loads fast, it's light and robust. It feels incredible
I say this as someone who loves Posterous, but I agree with this 100%. Personally, I'm just annoyed by the fact that this will be the butt of everyone who hates posterous's jokes for quite some time ("Posterous did <insert random screw-up here> wrong? At least they aren't one of those dying platforms. Har har har").
I'm curious about the nature of this scale http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/gadgets/apple/iphone4/ba... . Why does it have bar widths of (left to right) 6, 4, 2, 10, 40 dB? How does the logarithmic scale explain that, if it does?
Compete is horribly inaccurate. It's not even good for getting trends most of the time.

Fortunately, with both these sites we don't even have to guess, they're both directly measured on Quantcast:

http://www.quantcast.com/search.jsp?domain=posterous.com

http://www.quantcast.com/search.jsp?domain=tumblr.com

They're both trending upwards, but Tumblr is going up faster and is far larger than Posterous.
I was going to ask what the SafeSearch settings are.

Kids, particularly younger kids, receive a lot of their information visually. If an older kid or adult wants to know what, say, an accordion is, they will ask Wikipedia. For a younger kid, one tends to go straight to image search and get a picture of an accordion.

So while I don't have demographics, I wouldn't be surprised if children and educators were heavy image search users (at least for worksafe images). One can imagine a few bell and whistle features (such as "clip this for my project") and you could end up with a real niche product.
Flipping pages is fine, searching is passable. I find it a far superior reader compared to the ipad or a laptop, but they're really very different devices for different purposes. If reading is the most important thing for you, then it's better than anything currently available.
Loans are inflation. By definition. Here is a movie about this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_Ydp7-ApdA

Deflation occurs when the loan is paid down or written down.
Looking forward to finding amazing flight deals in the very near future assuming Google will take this to a whole new level.

I wonder what this means for Kayak/Bing/Orbitz
Google will lose lots of short term cash over this one. They've abandoned a lot of travel partners sites that are buying traffic.

Google is transitioning from search to content. The travel industry is now shitting themselves. Hotels will be next. Everyone else better watch out.
A garbage collection process should be a feature of all governments.
if only one could buy food and shelter with those...
SVG in XHTML - works in almost all browsers: http://limpet.net/test/svg.xhtml

SVG in HTML - works only in Firefox 4: http://limpet.net/test/svg.html
I'd actually like to see a constitutional amendment in the US that puts a fixed, mandatory sunset provision on all legislative acts.

Legislatures would be required to positively reaffirm any existing statutory laws within a mandated interval before their expiration in order for them to remain in force.

This would alter the political incentives just enough to allow a great deal of bad policy to expire quietly without legislators risking the consequences of being actively engaged in a repeal campaign.
Hilarious. I love these guys.
I think that the useful parts (QPX) are still Lisp. IIRC python is more for integration and (their limited) front end.
How do you screw up your email? I just did it
From the FAQ:

ITA Software does not market a consumer oriented flight search site.

That's probably not completely true. Matrix, although not a booking site, is one of the better flight search sites, allows consumers to find the cheapest time to leave and come back in a given month for a particular number of days of travel.

http://matrix2.itasoftware.com
I was an employee of IBM up until about 6 months ago, where upon I switched to a start up. But that is not what this is about.

Hopefully, things at IBM have changed internally because a vast majority of their internal applications require Internet Explorer to function at all. Pretty much everyone I knew used Firefox, but groaned loudly when they had to open IE6 to use some of their internal tools on W3.
Returning 2x might also be a good thing for the VCs too. I assume, getting some liquidity back is probably important to them in the current climate.
Damn straight. I just finished reading one of his latest entries; acidic, critical and brilliant IMO.

http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2010/06/are_certain_behaviors...

EDIT: money quote: The science error of our generation is this: If A is strongly associated with B, and B is strongly associated with C, then A is strongly associated to C.
Let's make a shit JavaScript interpreter Part one.
Sigh. This makes me wish I lived in the UK. Look what happened when they tried that here in the US: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05...