skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"Oil dispersant" is a vast term and can include various type of chemicals. The toxicity depends on the chemical used, the concentration and where it's used (e.g. water depth or next to the coast). As a lot of products are sold under a "trade/market name", it's often difficult to know the real components (even this is changing over time).

It reminds me of the products sold by Monsanto and similar companies hiding the real composition under a market name and told everyone : "it's a trade secret and we can't give you the components".

In any case, this is very suspicious.

Additional ref:

- http://www.amsa.gov.au/Marine_Environment_Protection/Nationa...
- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elaine-shannon/why-are-dispers...

A small update : the video, by itself, is not really a reliable source of information. But I don't know if the submission was about the "quality of CNN" or about the "oil dispersant". I assumed it was about the chemical product.
Free Term Paper Should be organized and Focused 
Free term papers make it easy for many students to use as examples when writing. However, often term papers could be plagiarized. Therefore, students should check the content and the appropriateness of the contents to the topic closely. Checking the format adherence and in text citations too is recommended.
Is Parallel functional programming a blind alley?
John Shalf, the team leader of the Advanced Technologies Group at the US National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, in this interview indicates that efforts would be refocused on functional programming as a promising avenue for parallel computation. This approach failed in the 80s and 90s, and I fear will continue to be a blind alley. My critique of parallel functional programming may be found on pages 42-47 in the main report (http://arxiv4.library.cornell.edu/abs/1005.5183)
A very similar story can be told about Denise Faustman's ongoing research into the cure.

She has also cured Type I in mice, although using other means.

And she also got her share of first-class controversy.
Cf. http://www.diabeteshealth.com/read/2005/05/01/4126/why-did-t... and the preceding New York Times article "I BEG TO DIFFER; A Diabetes Researcher Forges Her Own Path to a Cure" http://bit.ly/bzUkWs . The JDRF doens't look good in this case at all.

More information about her approach at http://www.faustmanlab.org/

A good overview of other immune-based therapeutic approaches from 2006 can be found at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1868847/

It's interesting to follow the scientific debate. The 2006 review sponsored by JDRF claims that the methods used by Faustman offer little promise, and can even be harmful. She offers a completely opposite view, claiming in a 2008 paper

Because our findings showing potential benefits of TNF
or TNF agonism for treating AI, it seems paradoxical
that anti-TNF therapies are a major therapeutic class
of drugs currently marketed for AI. TNF antagonists
have provided clinical benefit to about half of AI patients,
those with rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn's disease. Yet an
expanding body of research in animal models on spontaneous
autoimmunity suggests the opposite strategy may be
warranted. Furthermore, in humans, several clinical
observations deserve mention. First, many Crohn's and
rheumatoid arthritis patients never respond to TNF
antagonists. Second, long-term treatment with anti-TNF drugs
can be accompanied by onset of new or aggravated forms of
autoimmunity, sometimes new autoantibodies, suggesting that,
for some AIs, anti-TNF therapy may not be the drug of choice .

(http://www.pnas.org/content/105/36/13644.full)

To me, the JDRF arguments sound more fishy than hers. It's a tricky business of solving puzzles like that, especially as an outsider. But it's fun to see how far one can go following the debate.
Why did you have to use flash for the hover effect? Javascript could have handled that in a few lines.
Wow, massive strawman. The government sucks at innovation? Who do you think funded and developed ARPANet? You know, the network we're using to communicate right now. Upon which countless businesses have been built.

Nuclear power? Government. First electronic computer? Government.

Furthermore, when it comes to drug discovery, that 'evil government' has one advantage over businesses, because they have no profit motive. Businesses exist to make money. Period.

No business is going to destroy its market for the sake of the common good. If you're in the business of creating drugs, you aren't going to wipe out a disease with a one-time cure, because drugs are expensive to produce, and palliative treatments are way more profitable.

This is exactly an area where governments do better than businesses, because the reward (improving quality of life) means more votes and support for those in office.
I'm curious to know if anybody here on HN has anything to say about the analogy. How might this extend beyond the domain of programming? Where else could this pattern apply?

E.g. there's a terrific comment over on Snarkmarket that talks about gliders, and how they are, in a sense, always crashing.
I always read things like this with a hefty grain of salt.

To say that all "pharmaceutical companies" blocked him on this because treatment is more profitable than cure seems rather absurd. You would think that with all the non profits out there already involved in solving this, there would be quite a few with interest in the research.

Also, as most startup people know, a short term large profit is awesome! Any company that truly finds a cure would make buku bucks in the short term and be able to bail from the market when everyone that can be cured is. Think about polio and Salk. The guy became a legend, and though it isn't talked about, decently rich.
I found this comment interesting

A parallel factor to consider is that companies these days just do not run out of money. That is not a function of an abundance of capital as much as it is a function of how damn cheap it is to run a company. Burn rates of $4500 for three guys are the norm in my portfolio. Thus, there is not a dependency on seeking a Series A.

This is how our small startup is working and we didn't even need any funding besides FFF. Our budget is very tight, but the emphasis on being break-even very soon helps us focus IMO.
Somehow I end up reading many of these backwards, due to the wording. When I see a "list of common misconceptions" containing bullet points like: "Christopher Columbus's efforts to obtain support for his voyages were not hampered by a European belief in a flat Earth." and "Napoleon Bonaparte was not especially short.", my immediate interpretation is that these listed claims are misconceptions (they appear in a list of misconceptions after all), and so the opposite is actually true: Christopher Columbus was hampered by a European belief in a flat earth, and Napoleon Bonaparte was especially short.

I do quickly realize it was backwards, but it reads very weirdly to me. If it's a list of misconceptions, shouldn't the misconceptions be the things in the list, with the corrections following each one as explanatory text?
If nginx has already grabbed a fifth of the market share of IIS, that's pretty impressive going.
USA is an odd mix of first world and third world.
There is very little corruption in everyday life -
police officers, fire department officers, general government workers - do not seem to take bribes (and indeed they do not).
Yet, in upper levels - City Halls, State Governments,Congress = corruption is rampant, even Russia may be jealous.
In USA truth belongs to those who have money. Law belongs to rich.

Once, in late 1980-s, US government tried to suppress information coming from USSR (!!) about problems caused
by nuclear fallout after Chernobyl disaster, because in 50-s US made some experiments with controlled release of similar pollutant into atmosphere.

Welcome to country of freedom. You are free to not have information.
Hm. It looks like I get to answer the second part of my own question. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=538909 is marked as .5-fixed, but the behaviour hasn't changed compared to 3.6.4
Sure. The hidden iframe allows you to do 3 things: 1) preserve state across view changes (mail vs. preferences, etc) 2) isolate code 3) reduce over-the-wire data size because all the rendering/UI generation is happening in-browser.

If you take a look at gmail in a debugger you'll see there are 4 iframes. The controller is the 'js_frame', the 'canvas' contains the graphic UI elements.

Leaving the canvas in its own iframe allows it to be reloaded separately without affecting application state.

Javascript still modifies the canvas iframe DOM. But that modification is cross-frame from the controller iframe.

I used a similar frame-based technique back in '97 when our enterprise startup needed a snappy native-looking zero-deploy UI.
General and fallacy debunking:

'Economics In One Lesson' by Henry Hazlitt

http://jim.com/econ

Land and rent analysis (missing in almost all textbooks):

'The New Road to Serfdom: An Illustrated Guide to the Coming Real Estate Collapse' by Dr. Michael Hudson

http://michael-hudson.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/RoadToS...

'The Chaos Makers: The Dreamers & The Deceived' by Fred Harrison

http://renegadeeconomist.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/the-...
They don't rant about it because it solves a truly-no-sex scenario, but because it's essentially a recreational drug for the majority of users.

I think the ability to have sex is at least as important as the ability to not piss yourself (e.g. incontinence medication) if not more, but still, its profit center comes from its recreational use. That's why the drug companies love it.
I'll second the Econtalk podcasts. Russ Roberts does a great job of looking into everyday phenomena with a guest and looking at how economics influences so much. Really a good listen.
A very wise and knowledgeable man, IMHO.
Maybe there are iPhones that don't have an issue but the following movie leaves little doubt: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03PQyWp0mWE
Hi, super blog, just looking around some websites, appears a very good blog platform you are using.

http://pukebox.com/
Especially since the introduction says:

"This list of common or popular misconceptions contains some fallacious, misleading, or otherwise flawed ideas"
>It is not the color of the cape that angers the bull, but rather the movement of the fabric that irritates the bull and incites it to charge. [from the Sports section]

I worked for the University of Maryland's Dairy Barn on the College Park campus for a couple of years in the early 1980s, and I discovered you do not want to try rounding up cows in the pasture wearing a rain poncho. It terrifies them so much they run all over the place rather than going into the barn like they were supposed to. The color was immaterial - tan and brown were as bad as yellow.
what people need is the freedom to act and create. government, especially when it takes by force from some to give to others for whatever purpose, distorts the decisions people make

and, as its activities destroy capital, government delays innovation. its easy to point to the things governments have achieved. what the people would have achieved had they been freer is not so easily pointed out.
Staying Credulous: On Not Letting Being 40 Get In The Way
Sowell's Basic Economics is the easiest to read one I have seen, and for the math phobic it has no equations.

Another really good, if idiosyncratic, book is David Friedman's Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life.

Also Thomas Sowell's Knowledge and Decisions covers roughly the same ground as Hayek's Use of Knowledge in Society, but is newer and more readable.
I'm not sure what you mean by "aesthetic value"?

What I do is to wander it somewhat randomly in search of information, only to click on anything that looks interesting, often reading things far in excess of my original query. Heck, I just closed a couple of Wikipedia tabs a few seconds ago.

But my goals are information seeking and have nothing to do with aesthetics.
Microwave "PainRay" Keeps Frost From Killing Crops
What is that app named? I want it!
Unless there is any further evidence to back up this claim, I'd treat it as spurious. Is there a list of Exxon Valdez cleanup workers?

The effects of oil pollution on health are fairly well established from previous spills. Cleanup workers should wear protective clothing to avoid skin contact, and also respirators to avoid inhaling toxic volatiles.
Buckling spring.

I know I am not the only one here who has gotten a keyboard form Unicomp: http://pckeyboards.stores.yahoo.net/

In terms of prolonged usage: it takes some time to get used to, it really depends on what kind of feedback you want form the keys.
Further reading [comparison of different mechanisms and the tactile feedback they give]:
http://geekhack.org/showwiki.php?title=Mechanical+Switch+Key...
[more force graphs]: http://geekhack.org/showwiki.php?title=Switch+reference&...
P J O'Rourke On the Wealth of Nations does an entertaining and fairly accurate job of "condensing" it. ISBN 0-8021-4342-3
those glass surfaces are not guarded from direct impact by a metal bezel

Sure. Because the previous iPhones were built like tanks and... oh, wait. They weren't either.

To me those two "coincidences" look more like exercises in damage control as the RMA flood kicks in.
I agree with a large extent to what you're saying, but I don't like the way you've used it as a platform to presnt an anti-government opinion.

In the UK we have a government body http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NICE which oversees which treatments the NHS can provide. This is another way of avoiding paying for treatments rather than cures.

I suspect both a market-based approach, and a single-buyer approach can work. In the US you have a weird government supported insurance industry driven approach with leads to the worst of both worlds.
IPhone 4 Jailbroken Already
Except BP is firing any cleanup workers that use a respirator and refusing to provide safety gear (BP says it's only fatigue and/or food poisoning)

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=Q4bDW12Fr78

http://www.southernstudies.org/2010/06/bp-reportedly-threate...

(of many sources)
Love the pragmatism and what a relief to read that someone is not running a Mac!

Any reason why you are still on KDE 3.x? The latest 4.x are finally getting there, with some tweaking def. stable and usable.
Ask HN: How do you apply the teachings of the book E-Myth?
The book is about the franchise model which is a great concept.

But building a profitable venture is such a challenge in itself that there are not many people who can actually apply the concepts taught in the book to turn the business into a franchise.

Yet, the book is a success. Am I missing something in the book that can be applied in a non-yet-profitable venture?
WOW, they look really nice. I like. :)
To state the obvious: there's more money in keeping people ill and in need of temporary amelioration than there is in curing them, and such is the foundation of american pharmaceutical industry.
Hey Antonin here. I'm the author of xrefresh from binaryage. Yes, my bad. I started this project in the times when I was pure windows user and has no awareness of X11 utility. xrefresh stands for "eXternal refresh" which sounded kinda cool.
Because you have to remember what you did to copy it over. But FireDiff extension may help in this case.
Does anyone know what the unsolved problems that Dantzig solved actually were?
Entrepreneurs can change the world
Cornflour Mould Recipe
I'd use 'effective' instead of 'beautiful.'
Personally I don't know anyone who's running on 3.0 yet - so I think it will be a while before I get left behind.
Zynga was in direct contact with Mozilla during this fix. It was a lot more about FarmVille than this comment will lead you to believe.
How Social Media Activity Translates Into Real Profits
>However, the normal convention when stating a nationality or, for instance, saying one is from Berlin, would be to leave out the indefinite article "ein." Though JFK's intention would have been, and was, understood by Berliners, he should have said, Ich bin Berliner.

Funny how in an article about common misconceptions a myth like that gets to live on (by being replaced with a new one).. I can't speak for Berlinerisch, as I've never lived in Berlin myself, but in standard German both versions - with and without the indefinite article - are 100% correct.
The version suggested in the article might be slightly more common ("Ich bin Berliner"), but for JFK's speech I'd even go as far and say his version was better, simply because it stresses that he's "ein Berliner", just like all the other people listening to his speech.
As I said, though, both versions are correct, and neither of them sounds better/worse.
(Sorry, no source, but I know a bit of German.)
I have type I diabetes.

"Weissman implied that the pharmaceutical companies had put profit over principle, preferring to keep diabetes sufferers dependent on costly insulin than to cure them once and for all."

This is not fun.

I wonder when are we going to agree that you cant make business out of anything.
Please beware that "economics" is a very dangerous subject in that the notions of "right" or "wrong" are very, very different from theoretical fields like mathematics, practical fields like engineering, or experimental fields like physics (yes, I'm aware this is perhaps overgeneralizing, but you get my point).

My practical advice to a beginner would be: Please disregard any theories in the beginning, by which I mean both rigorous microeconomic models and (especially) the narrative sort found in books for layreaders or newspapers.

Stick to data! Read a lot of data. And then some more. Also, instead of theories about the data generating processes, read their concrete definitions, what exactly do they measure (not just the general idea they're intended to capture but what exactly, like "192 vendors of banana in location X are self-reporting Y"), how are they collected, what market mechanisms exist (market microstructure), etc. Stick to the concrete and read data.

Only when you're ready to make a commitment, take a year or two off and dive into economic literature. Economics is a field where, if you don't know what's what, you will be "had" by the next plausible-sounding, impressive-looking idée du jour if you're not careful.

One has to know quite a bit to see the assumptions underlying the theories and how they influence its results, and I can tell you that the mainstream theory rests on very shaky theoretical foundations. The typical structure of economics literature is that this weak foundation is first brushed over in one sentence (usually starting with "we assume that..." and ending with "...to keep things simple/tractable/whatever"), then comes some big mathematical exercise, and then comes a very plausible-sounding discussion of the main idea that is constructed to either resonate or astonish you. there is also quite a bit of advocacy here, don't forget we're dealing with a real-world subject with somewhat fuzzy notions of "right" and "wrong", hence the incentive is there to fund/get funded for certain lines of research or results that support or refute political views.

Also, unlike in other fields, you will generally not find that the "best" economists naturally emerge in brand-name departments, like Harvard or MIT. It's very political. In my own opinion, the better thinkers are found on the fringes, perhaps with "official" specializations in physics or sociology or psychology and not officially branded "economists" at all!

So stick to data, you will know more than most branded economists and you can't go wrong, after all, the data is the data... ;)
That is exactly what it is. Voted.
Everybody is suggesting some Austrian Economics books.
I don't think it's a good idea to start with something which is not mainstream in the academic world.

I've read something about austrian economic, and it sounded good to me, but I know it's so easy to foolish a layman in any field with almost anything.

If most academics today at top univesities and most nobel prize are not followers of the austrian school there may be good reasons.

Better to start with the current state of the art and then read about less popular schools.
Beauty and Nutrition Blog
New beauty tips to make your skin glory and keep your body healthy. Daily updated beauty blog to know more about beauty tips. Here you find many new information about how to take care about your body with nutrition and make your skin alive.
government is coercion, the use of force against peaceful people. I can't imagine why that would do anything but destroy. People look at what escapes destruction as if government created it.

yes, we have a weird government supported insurance industry driven approach that is quite distortive and destructive. I am fully in favor of ending it and letting peaceful people make their own choices.
One of the best post at Techcrunch.

Igniting a spark in someone is the best thing onc can do.
I've read an interview with Jobs that said it's meant to scratch - it gives it personality. Jobs thinks it should, the rest of the universe would prefer it doesn't.
I also have a Wii ... it's just lying there. I just don't like it ... once you get passed the initial "wow" when trying out that controller, the games are pretty shallow and it is not capable enough to at least dazzle me with beautiful graphics.
Kris Aquino and James Yap's marriage is over
Diaspora is yet to show up anything, they have created hype though but nothing visible till date. Google certainly is not going to say anything to be the facebook killer, they will just introduce something and if that works that's great, and if that doesn't its just ok, it will not make much difference until it succeed, failure for Google in this space doesn't make any difference. It is the advantage of being Google.
Ask HN: Best web text editor? 
Hi HN. Does anyone use web-based editors? Is there a good online equivalent of TextMate / Notepad++ / Redcar (with Python support, code folding, etc) that I can access from anywhere? Perhaps with git support? Anyone making such a thing?
Microsoft Natural Ergonomic 4000

http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/mouseandkeyboard/productde...
How to Write a Narrative Essay
A narrative essay is an essay written in the first person. When writing this type of essay, you need to consider the subject selected. Once a good subject is selected you will be able to write a good essay by incorporating all you know about the subject into your essay. For this reason, learning how to write a narrative essay is essential.
It's just more keypresses mainly, but also you are unnecessarily changing focus to the browser. If you have your Vim session set to "Always on Top" or to one side, you never have to leave the editor to see your changes.

(On a side note, I wish I could use "Always on Top" in Windows. Anyone know if this is possible?)
> I sometimes think the experiences of us here may be out of touch with what most ordinary businesses do

Not necessarily ... at least not in Europe where I live ... if you're a consultant that gets hired, try explaining to a client that they need to also buy a Windows Server license (or several); or pay extra per instance (in the case of cloud computing like EC2).
Looks like HTC touch, no?
multitouch is hugely over hyped term.
But why!? What happened during the course of bovine evolution that would result in cattle being so terrified of large swaths of fabric.