skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is the number one way I really grasp some new technique or area in programming.

During awake time, when I'm actively studying/using a new technique, things can get mixed up. I might be absorbing information, but not necesarily using it very efficiently. I just plow on, trying things out, playing around. (Perhaps because most of what I do is self-directed studying, so getting unstuck is left up to myself.)

After days like this, when I sleep, it's fitful. I'll dream of people tormenting me until I can do something in O(n) time, garbage collectors chasing me, whatever. But oddly, often times when I wake up, I have a calm and a better unstanding of whatever it was I was studying. And sometimes, I'll wake up with a start, with a clear solution to a particular problem in mind.
I'm sick of all of the hype (for the past 20+ years) that relational databases is the only data storage technology you need.

When all you have is a hammer...
I've seen it on at bars and heard it openly mocked--the scenarios in the commercial are so narrow that it can easily make it look useless (or unrealistic like the soldier overseas who not only has an iPhone 4 but access to high-speed WiFi without a firewall).

Save for deaf people and gadget reviewers, few people want to see each other during phone calls on a regular basis. At the same time millions of people want to IM each other, but they haven't built that in yet.
Which company's stock would you buy?
Just curious, what terrible things has DoubleClick done since being bought by Google? If anything, I'd say Google 'tainted' them and not the other way around.
Either I'm missing something or this doesn't really seem like that big a deal.

Here http://www.secdev.org/conf/skype_BHEU06.pdf is a 2006 analysis of Skype that found that "RC4 is used for obfuscation not for privacy." They simply worked around it to continue their reverse engineering. And showed that you don't need to understand it to e.g. build a parallel evil Skype network or overflow a buffer and hack everyone running skype.

An impressive feat of reverse engineering given the lengths Skype went to, but I don't quite see how practical it is.
I'm not sure what it is about this commercial, but when I see it, I start thinking about mortality and the ephemeral nature of life. According to the article, the Greek roots of "nostaligia" mean "an old wound." I think that's very appropriate. I get the same background feeling from this commercial that I get from watching the first part of Pixar's "Up." I'd love to see a cinematographer's analysis of both of those pieces.
My understanding is that it's common for college campuses to sign exclusive contracts with one vendor or another.
The 6 Most Elaborate Music Videos
Interesting article about music videos. You have to read.
I saw this once a couple of weeks ago, also.
If that's the case, you may want to try Googling the references you don't catch, before asking the folks here to explain further.
You make a good point. Sure Assange is self-aggrandizing. Some may even call him flamboyant, but is that such a bad thing for wikileaks? I recall similar criticism of Jimmy Wales. Wales acts like a rock star and he, like Assange, is a master fundraiser and aficionado of private jets. Despite mass defections of editors, and the enduring pompousness of Mr. Wales, Wikipedia is better than ever. Sometimes a greasy-haired, eccentric diva is the best person to represent your cause.
My hand instinctively goes to where the quicksave key would be before my tests.
Care to elaborate? I'm not sure of the size, but there are 100.000+ related monthly searches on Google (under $.20 per click), which is how I hope to reach customers.
That Apple commercial (as discussed in another post on Arrington's review of the commercial) is quite moving. I'd go as far as to say its one of the best commercials ever made.
Challenge: try to find a bakery in Ireland.
Searches for What?
After FPS marathons, I get visions of running through tunnels before falling sleep.
I hate ads with animations in them no matter how targeted. If it moves I block it aggressively. If it doesn't move, I even click on it sometimes to support the site.
Is a free (Apple iPad) promotion a good way to get in more users?
I disagree.

As an international student in the US, I personally would enormously benefit from a cell phone that can do video conversations well. My family lives thousands of miles away, and seeing their faces is actually something I really value. We communicate via Skype constantly for the video functions, but this really limits the flexibility of where I can take the calls.

I am going to be working far away from my university, and I will be using video conference to talk to my girlfriend while I'm away. I am considering getting a pair of iPhones for the ease of use and convenience (she's not very tech savvy).

As to IMs, I personally am a heavy IM user, and there's a number of iPhone applications for IMing (Palringo, Beejive, Windows Live Messenger come to mind). I don't use it because it is just too bothersome to have extended conversations when typing with any small keyboard.

Of course, I'm not implying that just because I feel like this would anybody else do, but I don't think it's as crystal clear as the OP describes.
How life recovers from mass extinctions: Dead-ammonite bounce
That link above, "Silver Needle in the Skype", is a fascinating research paper about how the Skype binary is engineered with anti-reversing techniques.
Ask HN: Does the downvote feature cause groupthink?
The internals: http://github.com/nex3/arc/raw/master/news.arc

Probably out of date though.
I can't find a reference through all the noise, but I remember it being quite expensive for McDonald's to develop a new food. If they use a fresh egg for example, where will the supply come from when they can monopolize all the egg production for a region? The food must be formulated to be cheap, hit the right market, taste great, last, and have a high profit margin. Fast food is more of an industrial project. Then they have to worry about distribution, training, marketing, manufacturing, and how it will be manged throughout the world. 8 figures might not be a reach. And nobody can copy it because of the brand McDonalds and how they do all that other stuff. They don't need a patent.
On the contrary, it's almost exclusively die hard libertarians criticizing state sanctioned marriage.

The main reason more libertarians (as opposed to good/small govt conservatives) don't criticize state sanctioned marriage is that most are unaware of how large the subsidies to married couples actually are. Many people think marriage is nothing more than a standardized contract between two people.
I would love to participate in an open, transparent, and fair equivalent to wikileaks. Currently, cryptome actually does a 99% job of this.

Tools, vs. Services, and definitely in preference to individual personalities as gatekeepers!
9.00 AM Rise from bed
9-9.45 AM Get ready, breakfast, bath etc.
10 AM - Leave for work (that pays real money and keeps immigration officers off my back)
10.15 AM - Reach work. start working(Java, GWT related, I know, learning PHP, JS and Jquery now. ).
1. PM - Lunch.
1.45 PM - Start work again.
6.30 PM - Leave work, Go home.
7 PM - Start working on my startup.
8.30 PM - Dinner.
9.30 PM - Start startup work again.
1.00 AM or 2.00 AM - Dead tired, go to sleep.

Repeat.
Get rid of downvoting (to fight the pervasive groupthink) and I'll consider joining reddit again.
Thanks for mentioning it. (I'm the maintainer)

I have to mention that there are still some bugs, since we're pre 1.0. These should be fixed in the coming weeks, though, 1.0 should be out for Whyday!
The particular method is frowned upon (because it could be faked), but the reasoning behind it is sound: As long as you can prove that you had an idea on such-and-such a date, you can challenge any later patent on it, and file for a patent yourself at any time (or rather, until other folks start using your idea without you challenging them).

Think of some electronic equivalents of sending yourself certified mail: save your idea on Google Docs; email it to yourself and your friends; check it into a private Github repo and save it to Tarsnap (both cost $$ unless you're already using those services). You should flesh out your idea in great detail, as detailed as a patent. If you take all these steps, you should be able to successfully challenge any later patent on the idea.

But, if you want to be able to sue anyone who uses your idea, you're going to need a patent. That's what a patent is: a license to sue. So if there's a good chance that someone will use your idea in the next few years, filing for a patent now will save you a lot of headaches. Remember that it takes years for a patent to be approved.
Erm yes, I apparently mistyped, I meant to write that it had been removed (saying that it hasn't been removed makes low if any sense)
If I recall correctly, the underscore is only added if the name would cause confusion otherwise.
So good to see something on the web about the beauty, vastness, and mystery of what is out there, rather than about the cleverness of the project's creators.
Huge urge to downvote this comment...
I know a few people who did that primarily on principle. They all regret it today, android just isn't anywhere close in the long run( their words not mine)

I have both iPhone and android before you go all fanboy on me.
Obviously there are markets for the technology, but they aren't huge and with the existing limitations it's not nearly as easy as the commercial makes it seem. The soldier doesn't have WiFi (or money for two iPhones). The hospital doesn't either for that matter. Grandma and grandpa would have to setup a wireless network before being able to see the granddaughter graduate. At least with my grandparents that means you have to set it up and then fix it every time you visit. The deaf demo is the most realistic, but it can be hard to sign with one hand so a laptop with a webcam will work better in many situations (or frankly just SMS/IM).

Even with the Face Time technical limitations, the lack of video calling isn't a technical problem but a social one. I've had a laptop with a webcam for 5 years and used video calling a handful of times with at least two of them being just to get screenshots for a book on OS X. It makes a great demo, but at the end of the day I almost always prefer text to audio and audio to video.
There is an interesting and applicable point made in "The American Gustation Crisis of 1985" http://www.damninteresting.com/the-american-gustation-crisis... (aka. How Coca-Cola won the war).

In retrospect, some marketers believe that the failure of New Coke may have had something to do with sensation transference, a human oddity first described by Louis Cheskin in the 1940s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Cheskin#Sensation_transfe... Cheskin demonstrated that people will unconsciously associate imagery, sounds, tastes, aromas, and textures into their general impression of a product, even if such associations are unintended or inaccurate.

What Apple is doing with the commercial, as pointed out by MG Siegler, is using our emotions, specifically our love of our family and friends, to the iPhone, associating that emotion and love to the iPhone. Powerful. Scary.
These pop psychology articles prove you wrong. Gaming companies strive deliberately to make their games addicting.
And by addicting I mean addicting, not fun.

http://www.cracked.com/article_18461_5-creepy-ways-video-gam...
+
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3085/behavioral_game_d...

The techniques that I'll discuss in this article generally fall under the heading of behavioral psychology. Best known for the work done on animals in the field, behavioral psychology focuses on experiments and observable actions. One hallmark of behavioral research is that most of the major experimental discoveries are species-independent and can be found in anything from birds to fish to humans. What behavioral psychologists look for (and what will be our focus here) are general "rules" for learning and for how minds respond to their environment.
I think I saw a documentary about your aunt and uncle, with Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder.
When it comes to long term romantic relationships, people say "don't tie your romantic relationship to a dangerous financial contract which is loaded against you."

The usual advice about startups, namely "incorporate and get everything in writing early" is very similar advice. Incorporation and contracts limit your liability in much the same way that avoiding marriage does.
What evidence is there that this statement is actually true besides second hand evidence and assange's own statements? If there was documented evidence that the pentagon is after assange, wouldn't it be responsible for assange to "leak" that information?

I think we're getting scooped up in the story of a narcissist. A reliable source of information and a drama do not mix.
> Your speculations raise a larger question: Can you think without language? Answer: Nope, at least not at the level humans are accustomed to.

Wait, I have a question: by thinking in language, does this mean, that, it's very common for people (in the English speaking world) to think like there was a background voice speaking in your head, like the thinking bubble scenes depicted in movies and sitcoms?

As a Chinese, now I can think in languages (dual thinking in Mandarin and English), but in the school days I have developed a totally different, alternative way of thinking process.

All Indo-European languages have alphabet to represent syllables, but Chinese is not a language (Mandarin, Cantonese are languages), it's a distinctively unique writing system. Why unique? Its logograms/logographs are not directly linked with phonemes but linked with the meaning itself.

When I do thinking and reasoning, I recall a concept by the word's exact character shape and structure, then match with the picture of book pages I memorized, identify the corresponding semantics and then organize my result. This is way faster than thinking in languages like a background voice speaking in my head.

Elementary education in China has a technique called 默读, which means read without speaking, after we learned this, later we were taught to get rid of "read" altogether. We only scan the picture of one book page, and cache it as a static picture, then a question is raised about a particular word appeared in that page. We are demanded to recite the context out. This is called memorize-before-comprehend. After decades of training and harsh tests like this, we were totally used to treat thinking as pattern extracting from lines of sentences.

This is why Chinese find English grammar funny, a noun is a noun, it should be a static notation of things, easily recognizable universally, why the hell do people invent stuff like plural form to make obstacles for recognizing?

Human voices spectrum are way smaller than visual spectrum. And our brain is faster and more optimized at processing mass volume visual stuff(especially pattern recognition), does anyone else think in pictures?

Update 1: Anther reason why Chinese are soooooo obsessed with calligraphy. If some idea is really important we write it in an unforgettable, various artful way so the pattern extracting is even faster. And the calligraphy details contains rich hints and link to related ideas.

Update 2: Found out deaf people also have problems with English grammar, similar to the common mistakes Chinese makes http://www.reddit.com/comments/bgasc/_/c0mmn2l
What would an example project be? Be a little more specific on the services you would be providing.

I don't see why there shouldn't be a market for such a thing, but you need to be quite clear about what you can provide (your idea is a little fuzzy at the moment - possibly because you can offer a variety of things, but clarity and specificity are better for marketing)
Something along the lines of, "Choice only matters if your choice is one of the choices," applies. Apple wasn't offering him his choice so he bought an Android. Yet he still acknowledges that the iPhone 4 may be a better phone.

His four main points are: openness, momentum, cloud, and capability. Android is definitely more open than iOS but Android's power depends on non-open software/services (Google). Android definitely has momentum but at their current rate it will still take years to match the iPhone's share of the market. Also, the Android app economy appears to be much weaker due to a cultural issue (rather than critical-mass issue). Cloud is a bit misleading as you can integrate Google's services with an iPhone almost as well as Android and iOS/MobileMe probably matches Android/Google albeit with a increase in cost and perhaps privacy. Capability is balanced by lack of usability.

I still think people are excusing flaws in Android due to frustration with Apple, hoping for "open" to win, etc.

I recently tried to switch to the Nokia N900 (Maemo OS, soon MeeGo OS) but found its capability did not balance its lack of usability.
It goes against every intuition I have to believe in thought that lacks language.

I have met other people who share your intuition, but for me (native speaker of English with normal hearing) and for my wife (native speaker of Taiwanese with normal hearing) it is routine to think visually, with no words at all. We have multiple thinking styles, and quite a bit of our thinking does not involve words. I used to have the intuition that everyone can think visually, until I met people who self-report that they cannot imagine doing so.
EDIT: Fixed recursion

Up! Director Peter Docter's interview on the "Married Life" scene:

"From a "feel" standpoint, it was the sense of a life lived, and not only the highs, but the lows. That's why we put in a couple of dark moments... It actually feels more real, and I think that's how you remember life being like."

"Strangely, we got a couple of home movies from the Internet -- Michael Giacchino has a collection that I think he ordered from EBay. And we had no idea who the people in them were, but we'd watch their lives progress and piece them together -- we'd note, "Oh, now there's a new kid in the picture. And what happened to that person? I guess they must've moved away." It was strangely compelling."

http://theenvelope.latimes.com/news/la-etw-pete-docter25-201...

Interesting and weird academic view on Sam Mendes' FaceTime ad:

"Distance, work, and duty separate these individuals from their primary relationships, but, the film implies, the phone can mediate these contingencies and keep users connected to life's truly important moments."

"But the phone, in turn, obscures these flows and systems to the extent that it mediates between them and the relationships of its users as an object allowing for immediate emotional interconnectivity."

http://mwnau.posterous.com/absence-mediation-and-emotional-o...
US Researchers Have Produced Blood Genetically
To deal the injured soldiers during war, artificial blood has been produced by US researchers. The scientists have developed the artificial blood by the cells taken from Umbilical Cord and with a machine, which works like bone marrow to generate blood.
And when did corporations start having morals or even ethics? Google is just interested in the $$$.
Not a bug, just how HN works. Same thing happens if you make a comment.

Notice the id variable in the query string, its going to be the id of the orange-starred submission. You can change it to the ID of another item on that page, and the star will "move" there.

Its very handy on comment pages, because it lets you see your comment in context very easily.

Edit: I didn't mean this to be offensive. Is the downvoting because of inaccuracy or tone?
Ex-husband & I have one child. My current partner (also divorced) & I are not married and we have two children.
I've had video chat on my laptop for years, yet hardly ever use it. Further, if I'm near free WiFi, I'm usually near my laptop too. I suspect most people are the same way.
(a machine learning phd student here) 10 hours a week reading seems about right for me, although often is a lot more or less than that. Usually most of my reading come from: google scholar searches on a topic of interest, following the references cited in a paper I'm trying to study, following the google scholar list of papers that cited an interesting paper I'm trying to gauge the influence of, and (a few times a year) some 10 to 15 papers that are freshly released from one of the top international conferences in machine learning or natural language processing that had interesting titles or abstracts. A very small amount of reading comes from my advisor or colleagues. I do follow some arxiv feeds about research in ML, but it's very rare to find good papers there that I would not find by some of those other means.

I'm not sure how much of this translates to software engineering, but I find it helpful to keep a loosely organized reading list with papers and topics I should browse or read more carefully. The important thing, I guess, is bootstrapping an initial reading list for you to expand. Search for top conferences (ACM, IEEE, etc) on SE and browse the titles/abstracts of papers. Also look for seminal papers on something that interests you, and see who cites it, find interesting abstract/titles, etc. Then find out where were these papers published and search for more papers there. Maybe keep a note of the good publishing spaces in the areas that interest you and check up on them once a year or so.

I've right now got around 20 papers/books open in my notebook, only 1 was got from arxiv, around 10 from conferences in the area and the rest from google scholar or references.

However, a note of warning: most papers I've on software engineering and horribly dull, uninteresting, and unscientific. Take a look, though, at experimental software engineering conferences, because they seem to be producing very interesting things and slightly improving the face of the field.
Arid Australia Turns to Desalination, at a Cost
Source code here:

http://cryptolib.com/ciphers/skype/
Energy Transitions, Then and Now
Thanks for pointing out the '-P' argument for xargs!
Bing Gained, Google Fell in June: Hitwise
Maybe this is unfair, but it reminds me of the people who boycott buying gas from local BP stations to protest the oil spill.
Moscow looks and feels difficult. No doubt my impression is just a small fraction of the real story. I was surprised to see so much graffiti.

Made me think about what the Russian people have endured the past 250 years and how strong their resolve to persevere must be.

Be interesting to see the same video 10, 25, and 50 years from now.
Kerim
Can you give us a detailed explanation of why Torrance tests are problematic?
Almost no one watching the commercial knows that you need wifi without a firewall.
Recite CMS Review
What killed AIG: Not Goldman Sachs but securities lending program
but Android's power depends on non-open software/services (Google)?

huh
Thats total B.S. Claim
Thanks for the tips. I'm interested mostly in search and natural language, so there are quite a lot of papers coming through arXiv and Google Scholar. Thanks for the tips and leads, though, I'll give your techniques a try.

Take a look, though, at experimental software engineering conferences, because they seem to be producing very interesting things and slightly improving the face of the field.

Could you suggest a few "experimental software engineering conferences"? These sound like exactly the sort of thing I'd be interested in following, but a scour through the ACM's events list nor asking my Twitter followers didn't give me many good leads for events like that.
Well, I'm sure Don Draper - the sociopathic lead from Mad Men - _could_ have created this advert. It bypasses the mundane nature of the technology, and shows the human benefit. It's sugar coated, and perhaps too schmaltzy for a UK audience, but I can see why it works.

Unfortunately - in keeping with the work of all sociopathic ad-men - reality has been distorted. This isn't real life, it's fantasy. For a start, a lot of the actors are 'holding it wrong'.