skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Bleetbox isn't a blog, its just a chat app that lets you talk about stuff on the web in real time.

i.e. not blog spam
Apple and Intel: Destined to Clash
> There's a pretty good chance (e.g. about 100%) that anything you would want to run on that high-end visualization system won't run on your laptop, and anything you would want to run on your laptop won't run on your phone.

I agree I will not be able to view 3D medical images on my phone with the same ease I can with a visualization workstation, but that's beyond the point. The point is the same functions are being called by Google Earth on the cellphone and the medical imaging application.

> your definition of success is to be running on the broadest spectrum of devices

No. That's my definition of "cross-platform". Comparing OpenGL with Direct3D is an apples to oranges comparison.
Kongregate acquired by GameStop
Can it track eleven points of contact like MacBooks?

http://www.gottabemobile.com/2009/11/09/track-11-fingers-on-...
The content farms hurt most when I'm doing a focused query, e.g. trying to make a purchasing decision or discover a specific fact about a very particular topic.

Many times, when searching for specific products to buy, you get page after page of review aggregation sites filled with affiliate sales links, often with the same reviews, over and over again.

At other times, you get poorly written generic content farms that almost trap the reader with the hope of getting what he wants, until it eventually dawns on him that the site is basically a fluffed out set of wikipedia pages.

Here's one I reported to Google as search spam: http://www.motorcyclepartstrade.com/

I was looking for motorbike gear some months ago, and ended up on this site. The odd thing about it is it looks a bit like a shop of some kind - "parts trade" and all that - and it even says "search through our large inventory of motorcycle parts", but it's not actually a shop, just a huge web of interlinked articles. The only ad at the current time is a static link to digitalroom.com.
brianmckenzie, out of interest, was your intention to play devil's advocate and spawn a philosophical discussion?
I know what bleetbox is, and it clutters the page and breaks many links. That is why I ask, respectfully, that submitters link to the actual page. If we want te use bleetbox, we can choose to do so on our own.
I will have to think about this theory for a while since it contradicts something that I have accepted for a long time (big bang). I'll be visiting my Dad in a few weeks, and I will enjoy getting his take on this (he is a physicist and a member of the national academy of science).

I do like that it fits better with conservation of energy, and I was never comfortable with using dark matter to explain away inconsistencies between the big bang model and some observations.

It will be interesting to see how much traction tis new theory gets in the next ten years or so.
Finally some of the stuff from fingerworks starts to surface as add-ons products for desktops. I've been wanting something to replace my long dead fingerworks keyboard, so I for one am happy.

Now... if only there were drivers for something other than just OSX.
Clickable: http://www.gatcka.com

I like the concept and simple design. I could see where this would be useful, but it seems like it needs the ability to do threads or at least replies (or maybe I am missing how to do that?). Another question - who can see the delete button?
Ask HN: How does server location and latency effect Google rankings?
Hi All,

As far as I understand, if you have a ccTLD (e.g .co.uk or .com.au) Google will use this to determine your websites locale, and where your site is physically located is irrelevant. Is this right?

HOWEVER - hosting location will affect latency. How much of an impact might this have on rankings?

Thoughts, experiences much appreciated.
I agree. I think his opening commit bits and assigning a person per PEP is a great idea. That opens the development up and will hopefully maintain a high quality of commits because the SME will be heading up the PEP itself.
>"it feels like iPhone 1.5."

This part actually does match what I've seen. I know it's behind iOS 4. But if I could use iPhone 1.5 but ditch AT&T and use the Zune client instead of iTunes, well, that's actually interesting to me.

That said, my iPhone contract lasts another year, and I am kind of hoping there will be a big 1.1 patch in sight by next summer, with some of the core features that didn't make release.
I've been here for a couple of years (I think), and this is without doubt the best site for this kind of chatter. Better than OpenCoffee email lists.

I have to say, I rarely read the articles, just the comments!
> I suspect the recent resurgence of evangelical Christianity in the US is partly a reaction to drugs.

I think it's wider than that: religious fundamentalism is a response to the future shock Alvin Toffler wrote about. Christian (and Muslim) fundamentalists find the world a scary place and want to retreat into a mythical past that has more certainty in it.
You will have to learn some problem solving techniques. In fact, the more the better. You will find that some of them will be intuitive for you, and many of them won't. Don't think of these as "rote". It's training the basic mental skills you'll need to call on without thinking about it. It's like learning to walk: the exploration isn't in finding new ways of walking, but in finding new places to do the same old "left, right, left, right".

I wouldn't worry too much about not being able to derive a proof yourself. At least you can follow a proof - that's still a useful skill. Deriving a proof is much, much harder.
Venture Capital Made in Canada
Of course the Newhouse brothers could do that, but they could do it precisely for the reason they'd be unlikely to: if it's a bad investment, they shouldn't keep throwing money at it. Not saying that it is a bad investment, just that ignoring the problem because it's owned by a rich person who could easily bail it out ignores the way rich people think.
I have heard the same complaint about almost all teachers being women here in Germany (at elementary school level). And of course we worry about paedophiles, I just don't think it has reached witch hunt proportions yet.
>IT COMPILES EFFICIENTLY
I dont know, it just seems weird to be positioned on the right (where the mouse is)... well, won't know till i try it~
My bad, it does say it right in the rules and stuff!
Ed, you are correct. Yet we disagree.

I'm not saying that comments don't provide useful pieces of information to the world at large, searchable and present for future generations to read. Of course they do. I'm not saying (as other commenters have sad) that comments have no value. Every now and then I get some really good pieces of information from comments. But total value and net present value are different concepts.

Case in point: I made the parent comment, then logged off. Today I'm pretty sleepy, so I am having a hard time focusing. 15 minutes later I'm thinking "wonder if they downvoted me over on HN?" so I pop back over. What?!? A score of 15? Perhaps it was because I prefaced my remark with "you guys are going to kick me in the ass"

Take note of the comments. Most, as usual, miss my point or are trying to argue some other point. I have found that when I post a comment read by 10K people, 40 or 50 will take it the wrong way. These are folks that if you try to engage will just argue with you. Close the window.

Ten minutes later pop back. Score up again, eh? There might be a good discussion that hangs off this. Bears paying attention to. But must get to work. Close window.

Five minutes later, back over here again. See your comment. Well heck, I'm not saying it's all bad. I should type a pithy response. Ed has a good point.

Yes, to future generations who are googling for specific data these conversations are going to be a goldmine, hopefully. For us, every now and then, you get something awesome -- just enough to keep you participating.

But overall does the participating directly relate to the work you have planned for yourself today -- programming, hiking, reading, whatever. Or when you find a "goodie" do you use it to justify all the time spent? It's the Facebook question -- people you like, giving you pieces of information that from time-to-time are valuable, letting you feel part of a group -- something good for you or something sucking you in?

Future generations, sure. Getting things you can find nowhere else? Absolutely. But in the present sense, in the next hour, for the next minute -- best use of time? Am I selecting to use it, or is it (and the great people who participate!) sucking me in and then I'm rationalizing?

I can't answer the question for others. Took me a long time to figure this out for myself, and as I am now showing, I am not very good at listening to my own advice :)
Mocked like the Earth-is-flat-believers believers.
You have to know the distribution of user join dates for this to be meaningful at all.

If there are 10x as many users who joined in 2010 as there are those that joined in 2007, then this graph implies that more veteran users are more likely to post.
Polyglot Persistence and Rails 3
EDIT:

the good fellows at @nodeknockout reserved a seat for me, if i can make it there, and provided more info about the event, with which i redacted a better ad:

i would like to travel to San Franscico to participate in the Node.js Knockout, which is a 48-hour coding contest to build web apps using node.js. Might you be interested in sponsoring me?
Node.js is a framework that uses Google's wicked-fast v8 interpreter to let developers create real-time, event driven web apps entirely in javascript (on the server in addition to the browser). It's at the bleeding edge of a number of new web trends that forward-looking developers are extremely excited about.
Over 400 people have signed up for the contest, and they are getting developers by the dozen to follow the contest on Twitter.
The contest the backing of a number of sponsors like Github, Heroku, Joyent, and 10gen.
Last year, Rails Rumble (a similar contest, our inspiration) had over 160 teams of developers participate, and got some good press. One team's entry from two years ago, Gentrify, was covered in a variety of news outlets including the New York Times (via VentureBeat syndication).
You can see more at http://www.nodeknockout.com and get a sense of the developer enthusiasm on our twitter account: http://www.twitter.com/node_knockout.
In return i can provide adspace in the blog i will setup to cover the event, my t-shirts, and possibly laptop, for your logo.
I'm asking for sponsorships above 25€ to a blog logo, 50€ for t-shirt and 100€ for laptop. I'm also open to suggestions that could improve your ROI (Return of Investment).
All expenses are related to travelling as the hosters provide food and drink.

Best regards,

José Moreira
+351 91 867 41 50
irc://josemoreira@irc.freenode.net
http://pt.linkedin.com/in/josemoreira
http://djangopeople.net/josemoreira
I've moved my servers all over the place, from Canada to the US and to Europe, never seen any effect on the rankings.

Yes, hosting location affects latency, but if you host in places where the latency differences are so large that you will see a change in rankings I would suggest that you find a better provider. Unless of course there are no alternatives.
Sigh, it's like being at reddit and seeing people bash Digg. It's not hard to avoid the puns and boobs on reddit. As a gay geek who really doesn't care for bacon, narwhals, boobs or circle jerk puns, I still find plenty of good content on reddit, and honestly it lacks the strange feeling of supremacy that I often get from comments here. Rrddit's subreddit style allows you very easily to exclude the (reddit.com), etc subreddits and filter down to the good ones.

I personally haven't been on HN for a terribly long time, and I'm mostly here to observe other startups and see the tech news that is mixed in with the startup news... I just find all the calls of gloom and doom unnecessary. HN still has plenty of quality content.

That having been said, I'd be happy if every single post mentioning iOS or Android were auto killed for the next 4 months.
Using the word 'addiction' to refer to things that are not physically addictive is one of my pet peeves. He addresses this point somewhat and I realize that it is a very common colloquial use, but it shouldn't be. It strongly conflates the two problems when in reality they are orthogonal concepts that interact.
Exploring a Mandelbox with WebGL
And here is the HN page for it: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1550998
How to track arbitrary events and funnels with Google Analytics very, very well.
I agree with you. It looks handy but dont know till I give it a go and see how useful it actually is.
This is what's known as a "superstimulus" - something that pinpoints our brain's reward and pleasure centers orders of magnitude more than anything that existed in the evolutionary environment. Heroin and candy bars fall into the same category.

Of course, heroin and candy bars aren't exactly civilization-level risks - they're regulated to various degrees, and the people that overconsume simply self-select out of existence. I'm skeptical that an entire society would fall under the spell of a game (even a really good one) before society develops protections against it (through regulation and cultural norms).

Excellent article about superstimuli here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/h3/superstimuli_and_the_collapse_of_...
Zach Klein Rethinks The Delta Sky Club Portal
after review, i'm not sure that this post answers your question, and because i'm very tired it may simply be self-serving and totally useless to you. however, i am taking a gamble that it could answer your question and am posting it anyway.

it's normal to not be able to derive proofs on your own without seeing them beforehand. you don't want to "rote up stuff"? then don't do math, bitch.

seriously.

the only way that you're going to develop the ability to prove things on your own is by reading over and memorizing a lot of other proofs. math is a skill to be built and you will notice the repeating patterns in proof techniques, and then you will be able to prove new solutions yourself.

i totally killed all my math classes in college because i wrote down the proofs on index cards and drilled myself until i memorized them. i spent tons of time in the library doing ROTE MEMORIZATION of all the various proofs. does that make me a "boring tool" who can't "think creatively" and only relies on "lame rote repetition"? no, not at all, i was consistently a creative problem solver. WHY?? because i built the base of explicit knowledge upon which to draw, and THEN i was able to apply it in novel ways. DOING math is INTUITIVE. that it means it's SKILL-BASED and NOT RATIONAL. FOLLOWING a proof, on the other hand, requires LOGIC.

if your problem is understanding proofs, then, just make sure you have a thorough understanding of the building blocks and concepts.

do you know how i made it through abstract algebra? before school started, i sat down at the bookstore and read through the first 5 chapters of the book. then, when we discussed the chapters in class, it was my second exposure and it was much easier to memorize. consequently, i was way ahead of everyone and did minimal work. use your prefrontal cortex and think long-term.

and if you're having trouble visualizing things, try to reduce them into their smallest possible visual elements. for example, if you're trying to understand a proof of something in R^n, then start by understanding how to do it in R^2. Then R^3.

always try to look for concrete examples first. it's often much easier to go from concrete -> abstract than abstract -> concrete. it's how the human brain works. our consciousness is just a series of metaphors for real-world operations.
ok great, thanks for the feedback
Email is in there now -- thanks. I also took down yours, so you'll get an email when its ready. Appreciate it.
If it's 1 to 1 then yes. People cost a lot more to transport on roads than bulk freight so it’s a net gain to the economy.

Edit: The total cost to the economy to send a single person per car is about 60c/mile if you include the cost of maintaining and expanding highways / increased congestion on existing highways. It costs to use busses, but the benefit is primarily from getting people out of private cars and high speed trains are much better at this.
While I agree with the sentiment, slowing down that much isn't practical for most working adults in this country, many of whom are lucky to get a week of vacation per year. Four to six days of travel per vacation instead of two won't work for Americans unless labor laws change to protect our right to sufficient time off.
Review my project:  LitLift 
Over the last few weeks I've put together a simple novel writing program to help authors track the voluminous amounts of data they collect when preparing to write a story.

I haven't finished the landing page stuff yet, so it's mainly just the app, but if you guys could create an account and let me know what you
think that would be great.

You can get it at litlift.heroku.com

The blog where I've been tracking its development is at litlift.com

Any questions or thoughts, please let me know.
Got it -- thanks.
If you take a look at @fringley's Twitter page, there's a comment from Diana Clarke, employee of FreshBooks. It says,

I wonder if Dr. Browne, Dr. Hutt, Dr. Ruiz still want to give you a reference.
Don't worry, I'll ask for you (@fringley).

Now that is low. Women who are able to compete on merit, not backstabbing or special treatment, should be disgusted as well.

Also, more proof that this is a forbidden topic. I can discuss wars, religion, and economic policy until blue in the face. But say anything about gender policies and face the consequences.
Ask HN: partnership agreements in the Middle East and payment processing
We are in the process of setting up our company (with a newly-developed enterprise SaaS product). We have started negotiations with potential partners in our primary market, the Middle East (Qatar, UAE, KSA).

As far we understand, all the partnership agreements in those countries dictates the formation of a new entity where we'd be a minor shareholder. All payments would be flown through through the new company.

From the technical side, as we are now preparing to setup the payment processing (for our corporate Canadian entity), how could we merge the two; The payment processing (Canadian corporation) and the new middle-east company. One further complication is that a new partnership agreement (and new entity) needs to be established for each country we want to introduce the product in.

Any prior experiences or pointers are appreciated.
The cache is invalidated after every vote.
I went to get a elementary teacher degree. I dropped out after a year and a hald. Between being the only guy in a class of girls (it isn't as much fun as it looks) and having to put up with their sh (you think men are bad about dick jokes? try being around only women for the entire day) there is also discrimination from teachers (i had to prove myself every time, and was assumed to be riding on the work of the rest of my group on group assignments), parents were also quite suspicious of me. Though, the kids were great and didn't give a rats ass if I had a penis or a vagina.
That's exactly my point though, most sites really aren't. I haven't used a raster image for a design element in a website in about a decade. The exception of course being a site's logo if it has one, but the logo rarely needs pixel precise layout.
You can't however beat a desktop app in this space.

I took down your email. With your help, we can.
Congratulations. I've always enjoyed your product/community (as a gamer, not dev). I hope GameStop does you right.
I'll start with the latter question: it depends which link you give to your friends: simply click 'Link to this wall', and you will be presented with a list of permissions. For each set of permissions you get separate link. It simply depends which link you give to your friend (it's more of an social thing than technical, I think).

As for threads/replies: yes, this is obvious thing to do, but I wanted to check if it's really that useful and demanded before actually implementing this. The same (possibly to lesser extent) goes for voting.
In retrospect, I should have just linked directly to the redesign - http://www.flickr.com/photos/zachklein/4831151379/

Can a mod switch the URL please?
I don't see how sleeper cars are even close to being a feasible option for those who don't have money to burn. From my experience in the past the cost of a decent sleeper car was equal to a plane ticket plus an expensive hotel for every night in the sleeper. For example, checking Amtrak right now I price a trip from Boston to Seattle at $1300+ with the cheapest sleeper for every night.
For me, my life changed dramatically when I became a dad, the responsibility for something (someone) outside of me gave me real focus. Now, I'm not advocating that you go out and procreate, but it might help to see if you can somehow find a real reason to achieve your goals, since achievement by itself does not seem to be enough.

On another note, people are pretty strange in that we become most energised when faced with a crisis, maybe you've simply had it too easy so far and now you are coming to this supposedly happy stage in your life without enough contrast to appreciate just how fortunate you really are.

If I were you, I'd man up, choose a single simple goal to achieve, one that you can reach in less than a month and then pursue that relentlessly until you've got it. After that re-evaluate and see where it leads you.

Best of luck there!
I spend a lot of time on HN and enjoy commenting quite a bit. I'm honestly curious as to whether it makes a difference to productivity or not, so I'm currently imposing on searchyc's cache for a few minutes to gather some data, and then I'll chart it against evidence of stuff actually getting accomplished and see what pops out.

I don't expect it will really matter either way.

[Edit: Story of my "quick, knock a script to do that" life: I spidered 3,380 comments and then attempted to write them to a file... only to find that fopen was undefined. File.open(). blargh.]
There's also a major issue of right of way. Atlanta has freight lines running right through very built up parts of the city (including right outside my condo window here--I see 6 Norfolk-Southern tracks with at least 100 trains per day). We've already had controversy over the amount of property that would have to be taken through eminent domain, even when just adding passenger lines to the existing rail corridors. There's no realistic estimate yet, but it will be in the tens of billions. Billions spent to tear down buildings and build up rail, for no certain benefit. That's a tough sell.

Markets talk. As the article said, when rail was deregulated, the business ditched passenger and emphasized freight. That's what is in demand. If government has to fund something, that's often a signal that there is not an organic market demand for it.
It should have been a mouse pad you can touch. Probably with a different design for mouse (you just need a metal point instead of trackball/optics).
Presumably, they could halve the costs buy racking a bunch of SuperMicro boxes.

Renting an empty rack is about 200 EUR/month, and you can fill it with back to back mounted Atoms with SSDs for less than 40 kUSD. 160 cores and 320 GByte RAM with some 16 TByte/s peak throughput for some ~2 kW is not that bad for the price.
Calm down Dell is not throwing Ubuntu Linux out
On an overnight flight? Huge difference in performance, at least if you're me. I can't sleep at all in economy, which if you're flying 20+ hours is a really big problem.

I've never tried first class, but I'm sure it'd be much easier to sleep up there, what with the lie-flat beds and all.