skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Well, this will only happen if they actually get into parliament. Announcing the plans might get them more votes, making it self-fulfilling though.

It is fun legal hacking in any case.
Uh, that's a pretty simplistic view.

Yeah I know. But it seems like we're on the same page about what happened.

Where do you see monopolies?
Probably already had a JRE installed (just about everybody does, I would expect), downloaded a pre-compiled clojure.jar, and ran it.
The advantage should be more properly stated that you don't have to deal with Java the language, but you still get Java the ecosystem. Using all of the supporting build & deployment stuff is actually seen as advantage with experienced Clojure guys.
There is a fascinating book by Julian Jaynes called The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind that goes even deeper into this area.

Basically, he says, our two minds were previously split and "you" would "hear" your other mind issuing instructions about what to do. (Much like Snow Crash and the nam-shubs of Enki).

Over time the two merged, and we ended up with a single stream of consciousness. Among other things, he says, we can see the remnants in people experiencing "the voice of God", and the way we are extremely susceptible to commands spoken closely into our right ears.

To be clear: modern theories of consciousness and psychology have v. little time for Jaynes, but as a philosophical curio/thought game it's great fun.
I imagine it's to steer away the rubes.
Even if you have no free will, that doesn't mean that your mind can't be changed by arguments.
More confidence? I guess it not so simple since you're interpreting it in a different way than I am.
Letter from Apple Regarding iPhone 4
how does one downvote?
Big business aside, I believe about 10 million students use Google Apps as their official collab/email tool (not counting people's personal accounts. And Google adds a few big schools every month.). These students simply won't arrive at their jobs post-graduation willing to use Lotus Notes + .doc attachments.

Haha, want to bet. They'll use whatever is expected because for some places Gmail isn't an option. Maybe in 10 years when some of these students have titles like SVP they can migrate to other platforms.
I'm going to guess desktop browsers and netbooks also have more browser usage than Android. Are people surprised that a bunch of purpose-built web browsing device is used for browsing the web more than a bunch of mobile phone?
Well, it's more than trite, because a lot of very smart people run off distracted by shiny things like Lisp. I remember writing Scheme in Scheme in under 500 lines in college! It was so elegant!

I still have a Clojure book on my shelf, read almost the whole thing, got emacs off the ground with SLIME a few times, and haven't actually solved a business problem with it. I have existing code bases in Python and Java, and I can create way bigger wins by fixing the obviously wrong things with them than by bolting on some component in Clojure and creating a new area of "nobody knows what happens here".

Mayyyyyybe if you have specific needs then a lisp is a good idea -- if you're in a green field situation, have sufficiently complex application logic to justify an unusual web setup (this is much more rare than people think), and either know what you're doing with lisp and/or have a long timeline to figure out what you're doing. But it's pretty uncommon, and as awesome and elegant as LISP is, it's refreshing to see someone writing from everyday experience rather than "this is cool!" once in a while.
Inspiring stuff, but I don't think you have to necessarily assume you are below average. You can assume you're great and create this state of mind naturally if you strive to surround yourself with exceptional people. It naturally creates a condition of student / teacher when the people around you are experts. I guess it's just another way of looking at finding motivation to learn. Great reminder regardless.
Put the money into a brokerage account (I would do optionshouse.com) and purchase Call options for a biotech company with impending FDA approval.

THIS IS WHAT I WOULD DO:

Consider ARNA Jan 11 calls (4 strike). Currently at ~1.55
The stock will need to be around 15-16 for you to earn 10x.

The FDA decision should be around October 22, 2010

If they are denied you lose all. If they are approved, you have a chance to be pretty close to 10 bagger

Everyone DO YOUR DD before investing
If they are so poor that they absolutely cannot scrape together $120 then they really should be buying a $20-30 second hand phone and a pay-as-you-go plan. Committing to $30+ a month in those sort of financial situations is just a really bad idea.
You've just won my personal Comment Of The Year Award :D
At the end of school (17-18 years old) I was top of my class. I got the best exam results in my town. I expected to breeze Uni, I sailed through the first year and some of the second, breezed some higher (3rd/4th year honours) classes for which I had a natural aptitude. I realised not long after starting that I was more intelligent than some of my class but by no means all but also tellingly lacked their drive and ability to knuckle down. There were several others that were completely out of my league in all aspects.

Sadly I'm still kinda there wallowing in that [self-]defeat 12 years on.
Hilarious "Translation From Apple’s Unique Dialect of PR-Speak to English" by John Gruber: http://daringfireball.net/2010/07/translation_iphone_4
Back of the napkin calc: NASCAR cars get 5 mpg, hold 22 gallon tanks --> 110 miles max range. Average speed of 170 mph --> a maximum of 39 minutes of racing.

If they currently pit every 35-39 minutes or so, it wouldn't be completely impractical to pit every 30 minutes or so: have pit crews do a quick swap of the electric batteries at the same time as a the tire change.
Not last month, a month earlier than the post in question. Check the timestamp.
"Bar rendering" debates and the actual signal (yes, a physical quantity!) that the phone sees from the AT&T network are non-issues with a BlackBerry thanks to its wondrous ability to display RSSI directly: http://www.blackberrycool.com/2009/04/22/converting-signal-s...

Someone should write an iPhone app...
I wonder if non-subsidized phones would cause the manufacturers to think harder about quality, as well.

In the US, with Sprint, AT&T, & Verizon you pay the same price for service whether or not you bring your own phone, so you may as well take the subsidized device. To a person who buys a smartphone on subsidy for $200, as far as they're concerned that's the price and they expect an equivalent amount of value.

If the subsidy were out of the equation, and you had to pay $600 for that device, wouldn't you expect more from the phone than you would if it were perceived as a cheap throwaway? It seems like that would get the manufacturers to step up their game a bit, which is good for the consumer.
I totally meant programming languages. C syntax and conventions are not "fundamentals of programming"; they're C syntax and conventions. We agree that effort is required to learn them. That's my point. It's easy iff you know something similar already.
I looked at this article, but I don't think the experiment proves as much as Libet claims it does. Neither he nor subsequent researchers seem to have gone beyond toy problems (what EEG activity appears in someone writing or programming?).

Also, I find it hard to believe that free will "lives" in one or another part of the brain; neither determinism nor randomness is freedom, and a physical "organ of free will" would have to be either deterministic (from macro-scale physics) or random (from quantum-scale activity).

I agree that living without free will is probably psychologically insupportable; even Muslims and Calvinists, who believe in double predestination (and Marxists, who believe in historical determinism), live as if free will was true. (Read _The Pilgrim's Progress_ and tell me that Bunyan really believed Puritan doctrines...)
While subsidized phones exist in Sweden, the interest is not nearly so bad. In fact, after my 18 month plan is up, I will have paid the same amount for the phone in increased monthly payments as if I had bought it directly. The uptake for the carrier is of course that I am locked into their service for 18 months. The base plan (without the phone payment) is only about $14 per month though for unlimited texts, 500 MiB data, and reasonably cheap phone calls, so I don't mind it.
Google Releases Exclusive Real-Time Stats Dashboard for Blogger
The SS-9/18 family had options for half that yield (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-36_%28missile%29).

Note that if you're willing to deal with the fallout, you can double the yield of a design like the Tsar Bomba by switching the fusion tamper from lead to U238. I'd suspect the SS-9/18 family 25 Mt warheads achieved their yield by using the latter due to the weight savings (a bit more weight doubles your yield, and if it's exploding on enemy territory...).
A Private (and Secure) Facebook for Families?
Bespin Bookmarklet: edit code or other text on any page with a textarea
Your driving example is actually characteristic of how men and women differ on the issue. And the opposite is true of accidents: men, who fancy themselves better drivers, get in far more serious accidents due to aggressive and reckless behavior, and women, who fancy themselves safer/better, (supposedly) get in far more fender benders with slow moving or parked cars (possibly do to spatial perception).
In any case this area of research seems to open up a lot of opportunities for snake oil consultants.
The law as it has stood for centuries has imposed different degrees of liability based on one's mental state and this is often tied to moral standards.

Just a sampling: (a) it takes "malice aforethought" or premeditation to support higher degrees of a murder conviction; (b) one must act with "scienter" (intent or knowledge of wrongdoing) to be held liable for various intentional torts such as fraud; (c) punitive damages may be awarded to punish a wrongdoer for conduct that is outrageous or wanton or done in reckless disregard of the rights of others.

When I read reports such as this piece, I always wonder how the science can be real and yet have such a disconnect with real-world application, i.e., if it is true that we fundamentally don't control our actions, why should we be held responsible for them depending on varying states of mind? Why should we incur larger penalties if we "intended" to take a wrong action if our intention is ultimately based on unconscious stimuli over which we have no control? Why should it be wrong to steal something if an uncontrollable impulse made us do it?

Given these sorts of disconnects, I wonder if society doesn't treat science of this type effectively as if it were really more like philosophy - interesting to contemplate but often having no real-world application. Certainly, if it is true science (verifiable, repeatable, etc.), the law should change to follow suit. Yet how would that happen without chaos ensuing in the areas of crimes, torts, etc. where people are supposed to be held responsible for their wrongs and particularly if they intended to commit them?
Not really a coincidence: users are much more likely to complain about this problem due to the new antenna design being so prominent in the marketing. If Apple never said that the antenna was the metal rim (and assumingly are telling the truth here) then people would not be forming these theories.
All electric Isle of Man motorcycle race "TT Zero" is already happening. Averaged nearly 100 mph for duration of 37.7 mile course. http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/06/motoczysz-isle-of-man-t...
> have pit crews do a quick swap of the electric batteries

I think that's the impractical part...
looking at this screenshot of blackberry, http://www.cellphones.ca/news/upload/2009/01/blackberryvoice..., it also has variable height along with variable width. what is the benefit of variable height vs uniform height?
But, he can only be persuaded by the arguments that will necessarily persuade him, not necessarily those which correspond to reality. What merit is it to simply find the right button to push?
hmmm... looks like they are backing out the 2.1 OS fix that "Improved accuracy of the 3G signal strength display". That always seemed fishy to me.

http://gizmodo.com/5048905/iphone-21-update-available-now

Especially entertaining is the update note at the bottom:

The "3G signal strength display" fix certainly seems to have done something for my iPhone 3G: it's sitting here in the same place on my desk, and has gone from two bars of 3G signal with the 2.0.2 software to a whopping five bars in version 2.1.
well i was more speaking of setting up clojure in a web development way, meaning, starting automatically your jetty server and website at the machine boot, which is pretty much a given if you use a LAMP setup.

Also you don't code a website from a REPL, you need a proper developpement environnement, some way to manage your website dependencies, etc.. well, theses issues have been covered in lengths these last days, in a few articles, and the clojure people are well aware of it, and working on it, but for having done a serious website in clojure , let me say it's nowhere as automated or simple as setting up a LAMP server.
Were alleged Russian spies undone by technology problems?
Nice Nine Inch Nails reference ^_^
Nexus 1. Has it shaken the industry?

No manufacturers are stepping up their game and google is crying uncle on the goitalone, unsubsidized model.
It does remind me of south harmon institute of technology in the movie "Accepted". But I can't understand how this will work, anyone care to explain?
Is helium being used not only because it is inert but for its other properties as well? I mean if an application just needs an inert gas could it use argon instead?
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grahams_Number
We only get to choose how to respond or not respond.
Lots of merit, because pushing that button will give an enjoyment feedback of being right.

Compare with adventure games that more or less consists of finding the right buttons to push in some order :)
His view of "art" is very movie-centric.
You still need to spend a lot of money on lawyers and accountants to get the local and international laws correct.
Before more lithium was found, it was thought that lithium was going to become scarce.

The more fundamental point is what do you think you know that isn't known by the people, including speculators, whose livelihood depends on helium supplies? Do you think the information you've just received isn't reflected in the price of helium futures?
Turtles all the way down: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down

Fields arranged by purity: http://xkcd.com/435/
I don't find it very surprising that iPad users browse more with the device than Android users do with their phones, but I thought that the number of sold devices would more than compensate for that. So, yes, I am surprised.
AnandTech had some good details on the mapping from dB to bars: http://www.anandtech.com/show/3794/the-iphone-4-review/2
In addition to the up and down vote there should be a button to nominate the article for the "HN Classics" section, a new list dedicated to all those topics that seem to surface every other week
I think it's important to remember not to make free will vs determinism a binary argument. As I look at it, the truth is both and neither.

For various reasons certain people will be influenced and coerced down the path of least resistance by their environment more so than others. Free will is essentially something you must claim for yourself (of course I mean relatively, no one can ever be <i>fully</i> in control of the developments of their life).
StackBuffer.com; awesome StackOverflow interface build with HTML5, CSS3
StackBuffer is open source project providing HTML5 and CSS3 interface for StackOverflow API. This project is actually experiment trying to prove that you can write only HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript without need to do any backend programming. This app is targeted mostly to developers to see what can be done in short period of time with new HTML5 and CSS3. Consider it example application.
This is so obvious, simple and powerful. Bravo Microsoft!

I wish they could rent out Jonathan Ive to show the world how brilliant it is. 63 years of people struggling to read scratches on plastic have past before someone focused on how to make this common but not-often task better. I can't wait to see it deployed in devices.

"The AA battery size was standardized by ANSI in 1947 but had been used in miniature flashlights and electrical novelties for some time before formal standardization." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AA_battery
As soon as a thought leaves your mind... it's out there for good.

This is another mindset endemic to engineers like myself: First-order thinking. The notion that, because a bit in a piece of flash RAM, a memory in someone's brain, and an etching on the wall of a thousand-year-old church are all the same to first order -- "persistent" storage of information -- they can therefore safely be treated as the same thing.

The second-order differences are pretty important. To pick just one particular example: Human memory is not just an incredibly fallable medium (you remember events that never happened, and your memory of events that did happen gets distorted over time and is situational, dependent on your current mood) but it is inevitably filtered through the personality of the rememberer. The only way to learn what a World War II veteran remembers about the war is to listen to what the veteran tells you. If the veteran happens to have been a personal friend of General Patton, they will tell you certain things about Patton. If the veteran was a sworn enemy of Patton, they will tell you other things about Patton. If you strive to prevent them from doing this consciously, they will do so unconsciously. Such is the nature of human memory and communication.

A photograph of Patton, or a written memoir, is an entirely different beast.

And, similarly, there is a big qualitative difference between a third-hand account of a conversation in a bar, an entry in a handwritten diary that is stored in your basement someplace, and a popular web page that has been downloaded a thousand times and is available on Bittorrent in case the original is taken down.
Stainless Steel Bar Sinks -
That's not really too much of an elephant. Most western countries have sub-replacement birth rates right now, and this effect seems to occur a short while after countries develop.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1480935
Translation From Apple's PR-Speak to English of the Letter Regarding iPhone 4
PHP is 1000 times easy to pick up than Scheme.

Yes, Racket is Scheme, but it's much more practical than a vanilla R6RS implementation, and it packs a lot of libraries, tool support, and clear and simple end-user documentation, exactly the kinds of things that people mean when they say 'user-friendly'

What, specifically, makes PHP easier to pick up than Racket? Everyone I know who got started with PHP took an off-the-shelf lamp installation and started spitting out simple webpages. By that measure, Racket is at least as easy - download it, and you have a webserver, templating language, and a package manager with plenty of database toolkits.

If you're simply saying that PHP doesn't burden a noob with features like macros and continuations: You can write Racket code that's just as stupid as what you have to write in PHP, but unlike PHP, once you've gotten over the learning hump, there's a nice language waiting for you on the other side.
"...which doesn't make it at all obvious where the antenna is..."

Ironically, I now have a much better idea of the iPhone 4's antenna location than that of any cell phone I've owned since they had protruding antennae.
Project #6 for the Ruby Summer of Code is getting JRuby apps on Android to work:

http://rubysoc.org/projects
Its time consuming. Thats exactly why I don't grow my own things. Its a hobby within it self. If I had to grow my own food, then I would not have time for other things in my life.

Now imagine everyone not having time for other things in their life. We would be a much LESS productive society..
tl;dr: AT&T's service sucks more than we thought so we're patching the "bars" on your phone to more accurately convey that fact. You'll still drop all your calls.
I flag (some) political stories, not because they disagree with my worldview, but because the guidelines say they're offtopic. <shrug /> If people want to talk politics, there are plenty of forums for that. /r/politics on reddit being a good example.

But I don't flag something just because it's political. If there's something about it that makes it seem like it would be of particular interest to HN readers, I leave it be.
One reason that legal punishment can still work in the absence of free will, is that absence of legal punishment might make more of the moist robots do societally damaging things. Essentially, it is not about a moral decision, it is about preventive damage control.
On actually reading the article: this title is a bad summary. (Makes me think of Slashdot.) What the article covers is the point, which I hope is uncontroversial, that stimuli give rise to responses, and influence the course of cognition: holding a warm cup of coffee makes you think more, well, warmly of someone you're interviewing; seeing a framed picture of a library causes you to speak more quietly; the smell of cleaning agents inspires you to keep your cubicle clean; long dint of repetition encourages you to decide that yes, in fact, you are having a Big Mac attack.

None of this is controversial, unless you're thinking in terms of Descartes -- the body and mind as purely separate and the mind as purely master of the body. There's a Catholic saying that "body and soul are one" -- what the soul (or mind, if you prefer) does, affects the body, and what the body does, affects the soul.

Another thing I'd mention: like evolutionary psychology, this article's research is highly culture-bound. They don't seem to be interested in determining whether pictures of libraries mean the same thing to Indonesian hill tribes, or whether the scent of Febreeze means the same thing to Moroccans (or red mages).

Also, as the article points out, this kind of unconscious encouragement can be overcome; you have only to be aware of it.
Video: Don Syme - Intro to F#
Well, the dB to bars transformation does have some peculiar bar widths, http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/gadgets/apple/iphone4/ba... , (some might even say intentionally misleading). But they chose to tempt antenna fate by putting the antennas in electrical contact with the user in normal operation. That was a design choice most other manufactures don't make, and, according to Anandtech's review, it has had real and measurable impact on the performance beyond the "holding-it" factor for other phones. They still aren't copping to their choice having added that extra performance hit.
You have a right to be arrogant… it's your prerogative. But if people view it as arrogant, that's what it is.

Calling him arrogant isn't denying him a human right; it's passing judgment based on an article he wrote.
100 watts is also enough to power a Laptop or a Mac Mini. I can't wait for the day when you just plug one cable into your laptop for power, video, and everything else. (Provided your external monitor has a USB hub.) Docks will be obsolete.
From what I understand, He-3 would actually be consumed in plausible energy-netting fusion reactions, which is the reason for the whole lunar mining speculation. I think prices would need to be pretty steep before lunar mining makes economic sense.
You experience adventure games pretty differently from how I do.

Also note that "merit" and "enjoyment" are different things.
My Server Was Hacked
It plays a big role in cryogenics, too. Helium is the standard way of cooling (non-HTC) superconductors down to operating temperature.