skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Laptop ergonomics deserves a special mention. Because it forces your line of sight and wrist level to converge, there really is no ergonomic option -- either you hunch or you scrunch. Elevating the screen and either using an external keyboard or external monitor really helps.
Take care of yourself. I use the grip described here for handwriting.

http://www.tifaq.org/articles/healing-from-a-repetitive-stra...
People said floppy disks wouldn't last 30 years too. Yet, I've got some C64 disks that are approaching that age quickly. While I'm sure there is some corruption, most of them still work just fine.

If I was to store on magnetic media, I'd do it in a way that allows for some data loss (like usenet does with .par2 files). If you can stand to lose some of it, just pad it with enough redundancy for recovery and you'll be fine.
Not related to the article: the typography on this page gives me a headache (I'm on win7/chrome5). Ten different font size, random kerning and line space, serif mixed with sans-serif, bold/italics/bold-italics without a ratio. Argh.
Jesus, you'd struggle to get the data off those the day after you did it, nevermind in 50 years.
If Reader silently updates though, the UI issues and annoying prompts are pretty much eliminated.
You can do some pretty cool things with PySerial. For example, we wrote a module to implement the USB I/O 24's (an IO board) API in Python which uses PySerial. There is also a RelayBoard module which sits on top of that one. We wrote this while working on an automation (namely opening doors) project in our lab (NLON Labs). The aforementioned module can be found here: http://code.google.com/p/python-usbio24/
Safari doesn't support .ogg for <audio>. I guess I should show a message for Safari (and IE9) users.
I've started a project for exactly that. It's not in stealth, as such, but it's in early pre-alpha.

It's ugly, bug-ridden and deeply flawed, but if anyone wants to have a play, email me.
If it's electronic media, I would guess that solar wind/flares will kill it pretty fast without earth's magnetic field for protection.
The higher education bubble
I've been looking in to this recently (ref: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1567330)

I just tested the speed of the elastic block storage on my EC2 instance with HDTune: http://i.imgur.com/Lbgjy.png

vs crap assed 64GB SSD I bought for my netbook last fall: http://i.imgur.com/r2eaw.png

I've been frustrated with IO speeds on EC2 the last few months, but this pushed me over the edge. I'm buying components to roll my own server.
My question is different, because I'm asking about Europe specifically.
There isn't really much in the way of background, I was thinking about people who decide to use cryopreservation, or the potential of sending out spacecraft for long periods of time where it may be out of communication range but the craft is meant to return, or even something as simple as a school's time capsule.

The constraints were chosen in order to remove the easiest answers (file sizes, period of time, etc).

Ultimately I think it's an unsolved problem that will become more important over time. My family can has photo albums from over 50 years ago but that doesn't have the kind of bandwidth we need for larger datasets (audio, video, etc).

So I guess it's just a thought experiment I thought was interesting.
Why?

Cost of living is very high in London.
Just ask Al Gore

Here he is preserving the earth's precious resources :

http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1622338_136300...
Perhaps you're not familiar with how tight the margins are in the VPS business. SSDs may be small when you're sticking one in your desktop but when you're running 40 VPSs on a 1U box, they're huge. Density is king in VPS land, and adding an extra drive for each customer (or simply having to have the ability to add an extra drive for each customer) would kill that density.

I'd you special hardware, get a dedicated box.
I guess they're still working on http://www.seedaccelerator.com/ which looks like YC. In terms of YC-like quality (mentorship and alumni + VC networks/connections) I don't think there's anything close in Australia.
=> 1024x768. I run 1920x1200 on my primary monitor but it can be really hard to read large articles in a maximised browser, so I usually have a floating window that takes up about half of the desktop width.

This means that it will be netbook friendly too. Won't be long before mobiles can do 1024 in landscape either.

[Yes I do use instapaper text view but not for everything]
1) london for the ecosystem
2) berlin for the quality/cost of living and a pretty booming ecosystem
1. Convert all the data to decimal (digits 0-9).

2. Put a decimal point in front of this long string. The result will be a rational number between 0 and 1. Call it x.

3. Get a titanium rod exactly 12 inches long.

4. Using a fine laser, etch a line in the rod precisely 12x inches from the end.

5. Done. Precise, durable, elegant, compact, and green.

EDIT: </sarcasm>
Ask HN: What smartphone to get right now?
I am currently on an AT&T family plan in the US. I currently do not have a smartphone, and it is annoying because as a tech person, I feel like I am falling behind the curve. However, I have been hearing all kinds of disappointments with new phones lately, so I ask: if you were to buy a phone today, which would you buy? Or would it be worth waiting for a little while to see how other phones pan out?

Extra info:

-I run linux, not sure if this is a problem for iphone

-I want to become familiar with the technologies that will help me understand the capabilities and limitations of smart phone apps today. Not sure if iphone is significantly more important in this regard than android right now

-I would like to stay on AT&T but can leave if necessary
Here's what I want:

Better display. Higher resolution, color fidelity, reflective or responsive/respective of ambient light levels.

A screen that can simultaneously display enough pages/books to occupy/correspond to my immediate, working memory (5-7, maybe a few more for the young/bright).

Immediate responsiveness and a graphical paradigm that need not seek to exactly mimic a real world setting, yet sufficiently replicates and triggers my sense of spacial orientation to take advantage of same (I left the book with that reference face down on the chair, and the other reference I need is at the 3rd or 4th bookmark in the one with the green cover.)

Electronic/automated search and discovery.

Real ownership (no magic DRM "disappearances") including the ability to transfer (including lending) at will.

Longer term, for especially solo consumption of electronic media, I think we're looking at heads up, imaging glasses and contacts. Until they start installing the sockets in our craniums.
Paris. The business culture here is so toxic and aristocratic that you could probably recruit any developer by promising to not terrorize him. (An internationally competitive salary is not required: small steps.)
You're quite right about my unfamiliarity. Still, it seems that you could have only a few boxes with this option and, as i said, charge quite a premium. I suppose if I really believed this, I would execute on it...
This forces you to rest your hands on your elbows instead of your wrists and to have them on a straight line. ... deep enough to allow your arms to be on it past the midway to the elbow

Agreed. I don't put the chair back, but I have two of those rubberized "keyboard" wrist supports (the ones that are about 20x3 inches) across the edge of my desk (one for each arm), and I type with the point of my elbows just off the wrist pads, my forearms supported by the base of my forearm just near the elbow. I found that if I rest the point of my elbow on the wrist pad it's not as comfortable. Since they are side by side, they stretch the entire length of where I'm going to move my arms, for both using the keyboard and mouse. And since my arms are supported near the elbow, the natural most effective typing position for my wrists is straight, or what high school typing teachers would call "up", not resting on something. The pads put my forearms almost perfectly level when my hands are on the keyboards.

I don't use the gel or bead filled ones because they don't keep their shape as well, and I don't find their rounded edges to be as comfortable -- I know the exact position to be in based on being able to feel the edge of the pad with the base of my forearm. I need something to support the weight of my arm, not change its shape to the contour. Unfortunately the rubberized ones are getting hard to find.

In a pinch, I use rubberized mousepads, which every office seems to have lying around and no one uses. When using these, I just put one under each elbow and use the edge of the desk like I'd use the edge of the keyboard wrist rest, feeling out the edge with the base of my forearm. This isn't ideal though. I need to stock up on more of these "keyboard wrist rests".
Same here. What i wonder is whether mobile web app thingie is going to get better over time or if it's going to stay half-broken forever.
Quit coffee. I ended up in the hospital after being in the heat and being hypercaffinated, so I decided to quit.

After the first few weeks of withdrawl, I've found that it is a net gain overall. No more feeling like crap until the first cup of the day. Better sleep. Clearer, less scattered thinking. I recently went on a trip with a friend who is still a heavy coffee drinker, and it was striking to see him suffer through the first several hours of the day before his second or third cup. Being able to wake up and feel great is well worth it.

The thing you lose is the muli-hour high speed coding marathon. But lets be honest, how often is it that the result of these marathons isn't something you end up needing to rewrite anyway because you jumped in too quickly or failed to think it through?

You could, of course, drink it "when you need it", but I've found that this is the slippery slope back into addiction. So, I just stay away.

Edit: I've also found that a tall decaf from Starbucks can serve as a mental substitute for those days when I really crave it. I even get a slight placebo energy boost. "It's so good when it hits the lips" :)
That part was him saying, "I used to be in really excellent shape, here is what has worked for me, and I can really notice when I get less exercise," not "don't take health advice from someone unless they're at least third dan.".

And maybe caffeine doesn't dehydrate everyone, but coffee sure as hell makes me sweat more. (Coffee dehydrates me, but tea doesn't anywhere near as much.)
Here's what I would suggest:

Take a bunch of fibrous, cellulosic material, pound it into a pulp and then squeeze it into very thin, flexible sheets of material. Let them dry.

Then, take some form of pigment or dye, and with a very fine stylus impregnated with the dye, visually encode the data on the cellulosic sheets using a set of graphemes. Each grapheme would roughly represent a phoneme in a spoken language.

It would take quite a while to encode all that data. I'd suggest building some type of mechanical to automate the task of transferring dye on to the cellulosic sheets. I'd also want to bundle these individual cellulosic sheets into stacks of 200-500 for organization's sake. I'd probably cover them with a more durable material such as animal hide or perhaps a thicker layer of cellulosic material.

I'd then take all these bundles of data laded cellulosic material, and I'd build a structure to protect these bundles from the elements. Developing a cataloging or indexing system for these bundles shouldn't be too hard. I'm sure it's been done before.

Regardless, you could either preserve the materials or let the public have free access to the information. You'd run the risk of damaging the data, but if you had a mechanical replication system, you could simply make multiple copies of each data set, and ensure the safety of the data that way.

Sheets of fibrous, cellulosic material should last several thousand years if kept in the right environment.

You know. Now that I think about it. It's probably much too complex a system to handle something like that. I really don't think it would work.
Las empresas mexicanas más rentables en el segundo trimestre de 2010
Compared to Eastern Europe and Southern Europe, yes. But if you compare London against Germany or any of the northern siblings (Scandinavia region for instance), London is very cheap.
If cost of living is your highest priority, then cities in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Italy and Spain (in that order) will be your favourite. But then that's just not what a startup needs, doesn't it? In case of software, London has the best ecosystem. London is also not bad for lifestyle, etc ...
Epidemiology, Causality, And P-Values: Part I
This will probably be controversial, but I believe that RSI (and typing-related carpel tunnel) is psychosomatic. I experienced what I thought was chronic RSI that I wasn't able to solve through any other means but reading Dr. John E Sarno's "The Mindbody Prescription" which I highly recommend reading.

For 1.5 years I was not able to type without pain. I was able to rid myself of this pain in weeks through a psychological approach. It's been over 7 years since then and I haven't had problems.

I also play guitar, bass guitar, and drums. It can be painful sometimes to play a lot if I haven't been practicing, but that pain goes away immediately, and I don't believe it contributes to a permanent or long-standing problem.

Ergonomics is good for being comfortable and pain-free. And exercise is good for general health. But I don't think not doing so is going to give you chronic pain.

Of course you should see a doctor to rule out diseases like multiple sclerosis.

Here is a document that explains Sarno's ideas: http://www.rsi.deas.harvard.edu/handout.doc
Google cache of it for HTML: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=2&v...

Keep in mind that this does not mean "it is all in your head"... The problem does cause a physical condition in your body, but the cause of it is psychological.
Define start up. Are you going to be profitable from day one? London, that's where the big money is. Do you need VC money? London, that's where the big money is.

Are you self financing and have limited run way? Go to cheaper places.
Not at all. It doesn't matter how or why Hong Kong was became what it is. What does matter is that 50 years of British rule in a small piece of China had a stunning effect on China as a whole. It's a great example, not of how to run a country, but how to transform one.
It sounds like a lot of these are symptoms of the real problem: People are so hell-bent on hyper-focusing for long hacking marathons that they ignore warning signs and neglect their bodies.

Also: I did Aikido for a couple years, too, and know exactly which wrist stretches he means. They're great pre-typing stretches.
ha, yeah right.

no way that would ever work.
In pg's equation for a startup town (great university + rich people), New Hope definitely has rich people. It's where my parents took me when we wanted to go someplace.
Do FB allow that sort of indexing in their ToS?
Trolleywood is funny (shopping trolley == shopping cart), but DVDs? seriously? is this 1999?
Czechoslovakia? I believe life cost and style, from what I've seen, is quite different between the czech republic and slovakia
Make a bunch of asian kids memorize it. You'll need some redundancy, but not much. Most of them will live to be 60.

(note: self.race == asian)
We employ 80+ people – most of them local to New Hope.

So they're just up to $2mil in revenue and they have 80+ employees? Seems like he mentions the number of employees they have like it's a good thing. I'd be doing everything I could to avoid that stat in the article.
Did you see this: http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&... especially the bit about the difference between Public and Private connections?
For more info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_URI_scheme
Very.

I recently switched from BeautifulSoup to lxml. It's tons faster, and I like it quite a bit more than BeautifulSoup. The documentation isn't quite as good, and it's a bit of a pain to install, but if you have to do a bunch of scraping, I'd check it out.
I'd be happy to, if I understand you correctly that you want somebody to do the parsing into a database-ready format, or a database you've already got hosted somewhere. Email's in my profile.
Lots of good (and bad :-) ideas; here's another:

Mylar "paper" tape, or use some other plastic that's known to have serious archival qualities.

Bulky, but if stable (enough) in the presence of water it'll survive various failure modes that would kill acid free paper. Of course you could etch Mylar or some other stable plastic to gain greater data densities like with the suggestions for paper. Just pick a plastic we know is seriously stable from actual experience, like we know with acid-free paper.

We also have such experience with emulsion based storage methods (microfilm, fiche, etc.), but those are rather delicate for my taste.
So, my questions are will this be used to alter search results - eg this person is well connected in this field and regularly visits these domains, hence we'll add a bit of authority to those domains? Seems they should probably try it.

Also are they using meta data like XFN and microformats to garner some of the data or is it just internal Google social links?
They sell these things at the store called vitamins. If you don't drink milk, then you should be taking vitamin D and vitamins too.
What are the implications for the web and Tim Berners-Lee's vision for linked data once the cloud switches to SSDs? Won't sites like reddit see a lot fewer problems since the DB access won't bring the hard drives to their knees?
I'm VERY sorry about that.

This was my first stab at Blogger as a blogging platform. The 'compose' interface was a real pain to use so I typed the whole thing in OpenOffice first. The move from OpenOffice to Blogger was not smooth thus all the weird spacing, font size changes, etc.

Also, our CSS template is sort of funky too. We are going to fix all that stuff in the next week.
The Diet Solution - Great Program, Good Habits For a Better Lifestyle
Than pick the european cities from that thread :) .
Samsung Captivate. It has similar quality display with iphone's display and has the best mobile graphics at right now. It doesn't have a front camera, though.

I would wait until November/December until some Android 3.0 phones come out with better UI, next generation dual core CPU's, better graphics, higher resolution, 1 GB RAM, etc
Actually my Macbook Pro has improved my ergonomic situation. I use the built-in zoom tool, (it's the reason I bought a mac, as I have low vision) and because of the zoom feature, I can put the laptop wherever I find it comfortable but still see things. The zoom keeps me from hunching over or leaning in.

Also, I use my middle finger on the trackpad, as I need to use the middle AND index fingers to "right click", and this slight turn of my wrist completely removed the wrist pain I get from using a mouse or a normal trackpad.
"Have people forgotten how to forge metal?"

Not entirely related, but there are only three (foundries? forges? - not sure of the noun) capable of creating a one-piece reactor pressure vessel in the entire world, one in Germany, one in Japan, and one in France (I think - there might be two in France and none in Germany).
The true face of flash games
This is a niche underneath two giants, but it's a sheltered niche. Google and Bing can't copy them without producing strange side effects for their normal users who make typos and copy/paste material into the search box. A slight degradation of service for normal users (who don't expect /map or /time to limit them to a single web site) is much worse than allowing a relatively tiny competitor to have an edge in features.
Html/js is good for some UI parts of an app but eventually makes one yearn for native threading/locking, queueing, posting notifications, for that last 10-20% of code.
The industry is ... skeptical ... of thorium.
Who says that in 50 years SSD storage won't be a ridiculous format? It might be just as hard to get data off an SSD as it would be to get data off an LP, or some other device.
I'd personally opt for either Prague or Frankfurt on one hand or Geneva or London, if you could sustain it financially, on the other hand.
The safety requirements are much higher than in the past.

There are lots of problems. For example the control systems are now all digital. Now find THREE INDEPENDTLY designed and programmed control systems, so that these are available redundant and don't fail at the same errors. How many companies are there that can get their stuff certified at the required levels?
You should take a look at the Samsung Captivate which is a Galaxy S Android phone for AT&T, if you want to move to Verizon the Droid 2 should be released later this month (I'm planning on getting the European version of that, Milestone 2 I assume they'll call it)
In my experience, London is more expensive than just about anywhere in the world. If you need cheap, my recommendation is Berlin, housing and office costs are very low, and if you are coming from anywhere else in Europe almost everyone speaks English which is quite handy
Looking at the way the proxy was created on the Nginx server, it seems he's created an open http proxy that's asking to be abused. Anyone could make a curl request to that /apps/bbc-news/proxy uri and pass whatever URL they wanted to hit via the x_bbc_url http header. Doing this, any request they make would appear to come from the whitherapps.com (or whatever) domain. I can see the 4chan guys having a field day with this posting spam to boards their own IPs have been banned from. Seems like the server should only allow http proxying to a white list of domains, or better yet, a white list of urls.
It's certainly possible to imagine universes in which that would work.

But in ours, where stuff is made of atoms, I can't see you positioning the mark on the rod any more precisely than the width of an atom, which I think is about 10 to the -10 meters. So I'm guessing you could only encode 30 or 40 bits, even with super-advanced etching and measuring equipment.
Compiled for what platform? jamii mentions NaCl, but x86 is a very complicated architecture to emulate. Java applets are better, but there is still a lot of overhead (and most people never performance optimize their Java). I would like to see a plugin system based on LLVM, but we have a ways to go there.
We're talking 50 years not 50 centuries
Sorry for the incovenience. I am behind a university network and for that reason I had access to the site without paying. Here it is an upload of the pdf file...

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/49469234/The-four-hundred-years-...