skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Try the Last.fm similar artists station for Sigur Ros?

link: http://www.last.fm/listen/artist/Sigur%2520R%25C3%25B3s/simi...
Hey nice job with that by the way :-)
I see that it's still more expensive to go green than to bite the gas-price bullet.

Still, 100mpg is a good marketing angle for them.

Let's look at it this way:

Assume average person drives 1000 miles/month

Assume gas costs $4/gallon

Assume Prius gets 100mpg, and other cars get 20mpg

A Prius driver with the conversion kit spends $40/month on gas.

A typical car driver spends $200/month on gas.

A prius driver saves $160 per month for driving the prius.

It will take 5.2 years to re-earn the $10,000 upgrade. This does not include the price for a prius, which I was surprised to find has come down quite a bit. A 2008 prius base model costs $21,100.
I actually think Assassin's Creed UI is very intuitive, especially for the the range of movements that are allowed simply by pointing your character in a certain direction.

And quitting on the 360 just takes one step: turning off the console, no save necessary.
Online is pretty vital for me. I'll have to check out scrapbook though, I like firefox mucho.
The comment you cite has enough made up data and weak reasoning to make the daily mail look respectable. For actual data, let us turn to the internet. The February 2007 report involving chimpanzees does lend credibility to this orangutan picture:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02...

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn11234
Oh, very nice idea!
Lots of very fantastic information and suggestions here! Than you everyone who contributed. I'm really liking evernote at the moment. Great solution!
Does anyone use amazon FPS?
libraries another favorite resource :D
I'm trying to upload a rather large file, but it cuts off before it reaches even 1MB with FF2 and XP. I am at a public wifi right now though.
How do you explain cloud computing to your grandma?
google checkout's features are limited, but the rates are competitive and it's essentially free if you use adwords enough
Aggregation Wins - Not So Fast
http://www.chasepaymentech.com/ + PayPal

Chase has excellent rates and amazing customer service. I've tried many Merchants and they're by far the best I've ever used.
Jabber support spotted by iPhone insider
A follow up: Turns out that the final release comes in two flavors. The default Kubuntu 8.04 has KDE3; there is also a KDE "remix" version with KDE4.

I've had an annoying time this weekend doing the standard upgrade (I suggest NOT upgrading via the internet using a running system if you can avoid it; my upgrade hung trying to stop a service, and it went downhill from there)

But hibernate and suspend work now. :)
I work for http://bluefin.com as one of their developers. The site isn't much, but we offer merchant accounts and a payment gateway which has an intuitive API to use.

And on the pricing side we can beat paypal's rates easy. I use it for all my side projects as well. If you have any questions about merchant accounts (which I did when I did my first website that accepted credit cards) feel free to call us up.

You can ask for me (Noah) if you like.
not sure I understand your question fully, but python does have support for memory-mapped files.

>>> import mmap
>>> help(mmap)
I hope to someday live in a society where sex is 100% consequence free for both men and women.
It sounds like the article is giving Google a hard time:

Brewster Kahle, founder and digital librarian of the Internet Archive at the Open Content Alliance, said Google may be trying to "lock up the public domain" by making proprietary copies of works whose copyrights have expired — which includes the vast majority of the world's books

They have a "license" to do anything they want with the books (that's what public domain is), and they chose to develop scanning and OCR technology to make money off of that. Why is that wrong? If another company wants that database, they should get some scanners and start scanning.
Your list seems just as "hip" as his list.
doesn't this invalidate all advice since only statistics can give non-anecdotal advice?
You don't get it because you haven't lived there. How can you "consider operations" in places that don't have a reliable banking system? Just imagine how it's like (i've seen it first hand: natural exchange + cash in envelopes). How can you run a business, pay salaries and expect some work to be done, if electricity randomly gets shut off several times a day, when there are no banks that people trust and inflation can jump 100% at any moment? How can you do technology in countries where Internet access is 5 to 10 times more expensive than in the West (even with their standards of living)? How can you explain to your investors that 30% of your capital was spent bribing the officials (you don't have a choice).

Again, I admire your thinking but that's more like dreaming. I worked in ex-USSR and have friends from Nigeria (one of the most developed nations there) and believe me, dealing with all that shit makes you so inefficient, that even cheap labor won't help.

Things will improve of course, and rather quickly -- nearly all soviet block contries are great places for doing business now (compared to what they were 15 years ago), but that's another matter.
Why Pilots Make Great Entrepreneurs
What if you factor in the cost of carbon?
Err, no. Every aspect of human behavior undoubtedly has 1000s of contributory factors. That's basically why the soft sciences are soft--avoiding errors in explainations is impossible because everything cannot be accounted for. But, you know, when you say, "Genetic differences count for nothing," when they are well-known to count for a tremendous amount, you're assuring a tremendous error.
Stop this silliness now. Claiming a "miles per gallon" figure when you get significant amount of your energy from another source is just silly. Its like claiming 100mpg if you start at the top of Pike's Peak.

I propose we popularize "kilometers per megajoule", or kpm. A gallon of gas has 130 megajoules, 33% efficient internal combustion engine, so a 60mpg car would be something like 2.5kpm. This will nicely separate separate efficiency of motion from energy source. People should be able to easily reason about a 2.5kpm vehicle with a 20 megajoule plugin chargeable battery. (I think, no one has check these numbers. Notice I had to come back and edit for the engine efficiency once already, so they should be scrutinized.)

The ugly part is how to think about the internal combustion engine. You may have 1300 mega joules in the gas tank, but you will lose 60-70% of those in your engine before they meet the drivetrain. I leave that part as an exercise to the reader.
Waiting for the severance is a good idea. I worked at DoubleClick when Google bought them, but hated the job and quit before they ever got their act together and pulled the trigger. I figured they were going to fire everyone anyway.

Well, I was right, they did fire nearly everyone ;) but in such a way that most people got like 7 months of free money. For 5 months they have to show up and work (on personal projects; you can't get fired for not working, you're already fired), then they get 3 months of free money after that.

Not a bad deal. I was happy when they gave me 2 weeks of free money after I quit. 7 months would have been a nice vacation.
(I wish I had stayed so I could try to get fired after being fired. That would have made for a good story :)
Is it just me or is that "ipaper" an absolute POS?

Could not print, bookmark, select text . . . what is that good for? I mean seriously, someone please enlighten me.
Please explain. Are you referring to the environmental, intangible "cost" of carbon emissions, or maybe the cost of cleaning them from the environment?

What is the cost of carbon?

(To be clear, I was trying to evaluate the 2 cars economically, without the consideration of carbon footprint or other moral duty to the environment to get in the way of the calculations.)
authorize.net + paymentech
To Launch or Not to Launch (Garret Dimon)
Why do you say that? Which part is hip? If my #5 were my list I could understand the comment, but my list is much more reasonable than the post. I use c, python, and matlab on a near daily basis for work so they are all quite practical. I think Scheme/Lisp are important to learn even if you'll never explicitly use them. The pl in 5 are useful depending on your domain, but I certainly wouldn't list these items as all being important to learn.
yes, but it is more viral than an MIT or BSD license.
Practical lists of languages to know:

List 1: Java, Python, Lua, and C, or C++

List 2: Java, Perl, Ruby, C or C++.

If you know well 3 out of 5 of those languages from each list, it will be easy to find employment anywhere.

Other languages to know for fun: Ada, Lisp, Haskell, Smalltalk....
Have you considered joining a company that uses Lisp? Why do it on the side?

I have a new theory about getting what you want. Just do it. It has worked splendidly for me so far.

I would imagine freelance Lisp would be a good way to learn as well. Rather than toy problems, you can solve someone's real problem.
Google Me the Movie
What's the difference between this site and saying to a hacker:
"Make [X]... If I don't like it, I won't use it... I won't pay for it, either."

On one hand, there is no difference. People say this to hackers all the time. On Drupal.org this happens so much that there's an official process: There's a specific category in the ticket tracker called "Feature Request" which is applied to tickets in which end users beg the open-source developers to spend their free time developing one feature or another.

Some of those requests succeed. But many of them are ignored, because the number of feature requests and their complexity is orders of magnitude greater than the number of available hackers and their talent.

Of course, if code is built in five minutes for free by a twelve-year-old, it often doesn't work. (To get it to work, you have to pay the twelve-year-old $100 per hour to fix the bugs.) But if a corporate logo is a paint-by-numbers collection of the latest trendy visual cliches, thrown together in five minutes for free by (e.g.) the kind of amateur Photoshop jockey who enters the Fark Photoshop contests... most business owners will never know the difference.

The designers on the no-spec site (e.g. http://www.no-spec.com/articles/why-speculation-hurts/ ) sound like tailors, trying to convince us that mass-market clothing made in sweatshops and sold off the rack is a terrible product when compared to bespoke-tailored suits. And they're right, of course. But from the perspective of an owner of the local pizza parlor who needs a quick logo, it may not make much difference.

I will say, though, that no-spec.com offers some of the most effectively-designed FUD I've ever seen. You should definitely shop there for all your scary-signage needs.
The 25 Most Valuable Startups
http://www.sleepbot.com/ambience/broadcast/

Guaranteed zero beat
PageRank for Product Image Search
Maybe they just don't want you to quit. :)
This seems awesome. Is this for real?
Released:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSAloy8LV7E

Looks VERY interesting.
I love Sigur Rós, but while the tempo is calm, the songs often get intensely emotional (if you watch them live, you'd think the drums guy does heavy metal in his other life.) Their music brings me peace, but it keeps me awake.

It surely fills the 'nondiscernible lyrics' part though, and lispers will appreciate they have this album titled just ()

http://tinyurl.com/5lfpc2
It's funny, but my career of choice was being a pilot. I even flew about 10 hours before it got too expensive for me. I was even accepted into Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (pretty much the top aviation school there is). It's unfortunate that it has to be so expensive to fly.

Anyways, if you've already exited your startup and have money to spend, or are interested in aviation at all, I would certainly recommend it. It's one of the best things I've done my entire life.

Believe me, there are plenty of startup opportunities in the aviation industry. A lot of it is broken right now, and people who fix it stand to reap a huge reward.

Go check out http://www.erau.edu/ if you're interested in the college. It's about $40,000/year with the flight training.
Every aspect of human behavior undoubtedly has 1000s of contributory factors

Agreed, of course.

Genetic differences count for nothing

Of course not.

We cannot account for the contributory factors nor quantify them, and we cannot quantify for the interplay between the two since there is not a 1-to-1 correspondence due to feedback effects. Nor can we accurately quantify the genetic contribution in the first place.

when they are well-known to count for a tremendous amount

By what amount under what circumstances for a given individual and situation?
www.lounge-radio.com is quite nice. If you turn it down, it's decent sleep music. If you turn it up, it's awesome work music.

I've nearly stopped listening to my entire music library, using this instead.
Is there any way to actually download this as a PDF?
If you follow the link: http://www.software-lab.de/download you will find a Lisp that the author (and I) has used in many projects. I believe he has been freelancing for over 30 years, and at least the last 12-15 have been using this (or predecessors of it) language. I have also been freelancing for 19 years and "doing what I want". I did python for 7 years and have now switched to using picolisp. randix.net
He brings up a good point. Launch early, add features later on. However, this is broken because of one thing:

Press.

Get in the press for your 1.0? Response sucks and people don't like the product? You won't get much notice for 1.1 since some people already have the stigma that your product sucks.

Same thing with Google and Yahoo!: Google does better than Yahoo!. Google gets press. Yahoo! tries to do better (and arguably does), and they are slowly gaining more respect after years.

A big problem always - and I'll say this: launch later with a refined product.
copy the URL and strip out the scribd part
I meant the expected cost of carbon once a cap-and-trade system is implemented. All three candidates favor putting such a system in place, so there is something like a 90% chance of getting this legislation enacted sometime within the next 24 months. McCain's bill actually is expected to go up for a vote the week of June 2nd. The calculation should ideally take into account the fact that most people would charge their cars at night when electricity is cheaper and a greater percentage of the mix comes from renewable sources (because of wind power).
Sorry. I just think it could also be neither.

To me, it doesn't seem to makes sense to say mathematics is out there, waiting to be discovered, because of godel's incompleteness. What would the structure of the mathematics that is waiting to be discovered be? For any of mathematical system, there is a true statement in that system that cannot be proven. If mathematics is out there waiting to be discovered, I don't understand how Godel's incompleteness would stand when applied.

I also don't think mathematics is some cultural artifact people invented.
"Magic"
What an original, innovative idea. Oh, wait, it was already done four years ago http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0436754/
ah, I see. Thanks.
Why does it have to be painful? Maybe he's just doing it wrong.
I'm still laughing about the idea that there is secret shit going on that the assembler programmer doesn't know about!
why is monkey news being posted to hacker news?
"English" is an ethnicity. "American" is not.

Hard to understand? I didn't think so, but maybe.
Can you kill the autoplay sound on your website? No one likes those.
Dinner Ideas
Recipe for london broil
Ask HN: Where do I start if I want to learn AJAX?
AJAX has been something I have always wanted to pick up, but not sure where to begin. I am not very familiar with Javascript either. Could you please recommend any online tutorials or book that's good for someone new to AJAX?

I have heard AJAX is really hard to pickup without using an existing framework, is that really the case? If it is, which framework should I begin with? (I actually find that a bit hard to believe, and really want to learn the fundamentals)

I have a fair amount of programming experience. Web development experience is primarily with php/sql, if that helps with any suggestions :)

Thanks in advance!
Try Google's GWT.
For $70,000, in 150 days, you can go from no experience whatsoever to being a certified airline pilot. Includes housing.
http://www.atpflightschool.com/airline_training_programs/pri...

A private pilot license costs $6,000 - $10,000, supposedly.
Am I the only one that doesn't know a single one of those?

And frankly I don't care to learn any of them. I have never been turned down for a job because I didn't have Lisp skills.

In fact, I think I can count on my fingers the number of jobs that have required any of them...
What CPM is your app making? Data from Facebook Developers
If you are familiar with web programming today, Ajax isn't a tough technology to master. There are hundreds of simple frameworks you can start with. Grab any of them, find a simple tutorial and start tooling around.

The concept is simple: send and load information without refreshing the webpage. You'll use the same back-end technology. You'll use a smattering of Javascript for the browser. And you'll be in business!
The problem though is that AJAX app development is a mess (e.g., in terms of dealing with compatibility issues across browsers and different versions of the same browser, using the slow minimal dynamic language Javascript, poor tool support, etc). At least Google's GWT tries to clean up a bit of this mess. A better way to go in the future might be to use Silverlight.
http://www.w3schools.com/Ajax/Default.Asp

This gives a pretty good introduction at what is actually going on. The framework I've used (Prototype) abstracts away the details (like constructing the XMLHttpRequest) but its always good to know whats going on below the surface.

If you know any python, this link - http://www.willarson.com/blog/?p=36 - is very helpful, it was how I got started. The actual AJAX part of it is the same no matter which server side language you use.
Is it just me, or is the sign-up YCed/redditted/slashdotted?

http://www.filedropper.com/makefreeaccount.php gives me a time-out error.
Is that ChasePaymentTech? http://www.chasepaymentech.com
Try jquery.

BTW, it's not so much that ajax is "hard" without a framework. The problem is with the varying ways different browsers implement javascript and the DOM. A good framework (like jquery) abstracts away many of these variations and allows you to concentrate on the more interesting hard problems.
I know. I'm just saying that was a lot more useful than any of the replies here. I don't know why I got downmodded.
The Real Threat to Google
As a person working on a web storage product, I'll tell you that's not a dirty little secret--it's our business.
Thanks.

That's exactly what I really wanted to learn -- know what goes on under the surface and how everything interacts, so I could build upon it.

I think I have already went through the w3schools tutorials a while ago. If you come across any others please let me know
How close is Google to accomplishing its mission?
I call shenanigans (orangutan shenanigans nonetheless): if you look at the splash, you can tell he slapped the water and didn't actually "stab" as you would with a spear.
I don't get what you're saying about "genetic propagation" -- we aren't talking about a previously nonexistent gene spreading to every individual, just a change in the statistical distribution of genes. All that requires is for certain kinds of people to have babies faster than others.

In any event, I appreciate your taking the time to substantiate your claims. Doing so helps keep the quality of discussion here high.
I second Authorize.net -
I agree, this looks to good to be true... The mobile printer is very impressive.
The other comments in the thread seem to tell you to use a framework, and that's great advice. But you need to learn plain javascript first. You say you've mostly done PHP, so there are some programming concepts that are essential in javascript that you haven't been exposed to, namely functional programming. So, learn a bit about functional programming, then get a javascript book (the oreilly one is good), and read that. Then you'll know the basics and can use a framework to abstract away some of the tedium.
Prototype is really a horrible framework. It works by adding methods to every class in the language, even when they don't make sense. This makes for a bit of syntactic sugar, but it also ensures that you can't use other frameworks and that custom code might become very hard to debug.

For your own sake, use anything else.
I really liked the book "Pragmatic Ajax: A Web 2.0 Primer" (http://www.amazon.com/Pragmatic-Ajax-Web-2-0-Primer/dp/09766...)

It provides an overview of the more popular frameworks, and explains the ideas behind rich web interaction (and Google Maps in particular).
No, you can just use Java with GWT.
I've done a few paid projects using Lisp. It's usually not too hard to talk people in to when they aren't committed to a particular technology already and are hoping to get the best combination of cheap/fast/good. I have a project coming up involving small-business networking for a particular company's customers and I'm planning to use Common Lisp for that.
I want to know why this story got front page, after 2 points and 2 comments, must have been the 133 karms of doubleplus and the 30- form markboa combined with quick comments, but its a lack-luster story with no agenda or education.
Google python chartwrapper - Google Code
RIAA has been digging its own grave for years now. The faster the music industry implodes, the better it will be for consumers and more importantly, artists.
I spent about a month in Africa last year, split between four countries. I believe what you're saying for, say, Nigeria, but you're wrong in believing that it's on the high end of the spectrum. It's in fact in the bottom third (HDI, GDPpC). It's a different world in the more developed African nations.

Countries like South Africa and Botswana have stable currencies, functional democracies, reliable banking and readily available cheap broadband.

Edit: Just checked, broadband prices are a little higher (about 30%) than I pay in Germany at the first couple sites I hit.

Edit 2: The gap between the rated HDI (Human Development Index) between Nigeria and South Africa is about double the gap between the US and Mexico.
Why not just make it a wiki? I'm experimenting with a wiki for developers and testers about which libraries and services actually work (http://www.devdiligence.com). It is pretty hard to get people to update a wiki page with what they know -- I imagine it will be even harder to get people outside of this community to send you info.
Look at those stupid numbers. No bubble my ass.
Wow! I wonder what the quality is like, and the purchase cost
someone please take this back to reddit where it belongs
Problem is, most people's primary electricity source is coal-burning power plants that do not provide significantly lower carbon emissions (depends on the efficiency of the module, of course). However, more municipalities (like here around seattle) are offering wind-sourced power to homes who "green-up". There is a $12/month additional charge, but it is a great way to reduce overall emissions.
No gotcha on signup page? No email checking? How many bogus account will they get?

If I wanted spread warez, I would run some bots and create a bunch of accounts.
Do all these companies qualify as startups? Some of the ones on this list have been around for a WHILE (eg Linden Labs)
Need good interview questions for startup founders
I'm interviewing a lot of startup ceo/founders in the next few weeks for my website. What are some great/insightful/funny startup questions you wish people would ask you?