skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If you're son already understands the distinction between a description and an explanation I'd say he's off to an excellent start.

That being said, I'm not a physicist, but my understanding is that no one know exactly what gravity is. We understand it's effects pretty well from both classical physics as well as via the curvature of space. But we don't know what causes it.

You should go back to your son and tell him humbly that we don't know. I would explain to him the curvature of spacetime using a heavy ball in a table cloth as an example. This unravels one layer of the mystery but leaves other unanswered questions. WHY does an object curve spacetime?? Unanswered questions do wonders to inspire curious children like your son.

BTW, Watch this video from Richard Feynman. He tells an amazing story about him asking his father a similar question about "inertia".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=695Flhmjmg4&feature=relat...
$300 Blogging License?
Never forget the reverse side of this kind of compensation: it's a brake in the way of compensating outstanding performance. That intern that conceived, championed and shipped the FogCreek job board that ultimately brought in $1 million ? Joel wavered in circles for 4000 words before explaining he only got thanks. I wonder if he stayed at Fog Creek.
I'll second that the text is a little hard on the eyes. Won't go so far as to say that I'll blow a circuit reading it, and I'm definitely gonna check Snaptic out, but a easier-reading font would be nice!
But without good metadata, accessing and searching those texts will be an exercise in frustration and missed results.
Africa's Informal Economy Revealed
One shortcoming I see is that some dishonest person could target a competitor/company he dislikes by creating fake accounts and subscribing to events just to make these spend money.

I cannot asses if this is a model that could work, but you need to find a way to prevent abuses which could drive away customers.
A classical case of survivor bias.
Often true, but not always.

For example: Buying meat in India may make you violently ill. Drinking tap water in Mexico is guaranteed to do the trick. While for a colleague of mine (who is used to it): no problem at all.

That said, I generally agree with the fact that health hysteria is totally over the top.

I just returned from Peru where I ate at places, which would be shut down in a heartbeat here (no ginnypigs running through the kitchen allowed, let alone cooking on open fire) with not even a stomach upset whatsoever.

I think the key is just plain old common sense.
As another former Canada / U.S. transplant I agree there is a difference, but it's less extreme. It's almost intra-national, really.

The 'culture shock' between Toronto, Ontario -> Montgomery, Alabama won't be much different than if you were moving from Los Angeles instead. In contrast, the culture difference between Toronto, Canada -> Cairo, Egypt or Bangkok, Thailand will be pretty danged huge.
From what I understand, wages and jobs are about even, given that Germans, Kiwis, English, and Australian pay much more tax than we do. Kiwis and Aussies do get more time off, but only a few weeks more than us; many take a year off to travel anyway. Come to England or Germany and talk to the locals who feel that outsourcing and foreigners are taking their jobs away; I met a Swedish person just yesterday who was talking about how it would take at least 2 months for him to secure a new job as a seasoned mechanical engineer, because since it's so hard to fire people there, it's super hard to get hired. We have it amazingly good here in America, for a lot of things.

Travel is surprisingly cheap, provided you don't spend your time in 5-star hotels. This month in Belgium will cost me about 850 euros including food and rent, which isn't too far off from living with a roommate in Los Angeles, my previous home. Go to Vietnam and you'll live like a king on $500/month. Oftentimes the most expensive part of the trip is the plane ticket. Of course still not everyone can afford to do this; but if you can, then you'll find that doing so will be a landmark in your life, even if it seemed very scary at first.
I have lived in 3 continents (Africa [Nigeria], Asia [India], and North America [US]) and vacationed a few times in Europe [mainly England and Switzerland]. This, IMO is good advice.

Contrary to popular belief, people around the world are good. They are willing to help you out and are less likely to take advantage of the fact that you are new there. There is also a sense of curiosity - about who you are, where you are from and what you think of their lands of origin. It often gets a little tiring answering all those questions. :)

On the other hand, governments and officials especially in third world countries tend to be corrupt and agenda-driven. It's amazing how much money changing hands can do, and this I believe is a big deterrent to foreigners in many lands. You need to be a little street smart and know how to work your way out of a potentially sticky situations.

I agree with other comments on HN that you need to be careful of germs. I spent a year in the US before heading back to India to visit family, and I had food off of a street-vendor. I was sick for the next 3 days (God help me now that I have been here for a decade :D). Living in a very sanitary environment like the US can (potentially) weaken your immune system [1]. Ensuring that the food is sealed, or at the very minimum hot is a good way to avoid some of the pitfalls. On the other hand, I have eaten at locals homes in Nigeria, and don't remember having any issues (it's been a while since I was there).

This article makes me want to drop everything and take off for a few months. Sadly, that won't be happening anytime soon. But if you were to take away one thing from this article - it is that you should travel. Going to most countries in the world does not have to be expensive, and it will give you a good way to find out about other cultures, and potentially give you a new avenue into your own [2]

[1] - I am not a doctor, but this has been my experience. I tend to be susceptible to unclean water and food - even the pollution in big cities like Bombay affects me way more than it did when I lived there.

[2] I was raised in a western culture - watching NBA and CNN, listening to pop and rock music, and reading Archie and Mad magazine. But after coming to the US, I have come to realize that there is a lot of things the Indian and American cultures have in common - even more, that there is a lot they can learn from each other.
HN Meetups in Edinburgh anyone?
I just read about another HN meetup down in London and was wondering how many of you based here in Scotland would like to attend one but traveling to London during the week is just too far?
What do you guys think? Are there enough of us to organise one in Edinburgh?
On T-Mobile you actually pay $20 less per month on every single individual plan if you're not in contract.
Client Satisfaction and Resources
Singularity Economics - What it takes to get explosive economic growth
Hah, something like that. Also wondering why there is no automated way of making such a list. It seems like the information should be out there on various documentation pages, etc.
And why does the mass curve spacetime?
And more importantly they generally don't have high university tuition bills that need paying. Since most people do this sort of travelling either just before or just after university, I imagine that is a pretty big factor.
I would love to know what claim the author is trying to make with this. The $35k-100k bracket and $100k+ bracket are almost exactly the same in every area other than parent income/savings. Essentially, the way the "rich" pay for college is only "different" in that [newsflash!] they purchase a more expensive product and they pay more for it. Um...was this supposed to be surprising? Informative? They do that with everything else, too.
I'm guessing the middle class had more than the poor had.
Here is the Google page on the subject:

http://code.google.com/web/ajaxcrawling/docs/faq.html

All of the apps I am currently working on do not have a SEO or old browser requirement, but I have used this technique in the past.
When it's founded, and every day thereafter. Get used to it!
I just looked at the top three articles and the top comments are all positive.
If there's one they find "particularly intriguing" I'm guessing it's a rocky planet within the habitable (ie liquid water) zone.

It would have to be a relatively cool star, since it would have to be orbiting more than once per Earth year if they'd had time to observe it.

One more guess: they've observed something with moons. The Kepler instrument should, I think, be capable of resolving an Earth-sized moon orbiting a gas giant, once you've watched it go round enough times.
Why It’s a Good Thing People Are Shallow (and 13 Ways to Exploit It)
I've had the good fortune to be able to travel quite a bit in both my professional and personal life. And I really have to echo everything the author says. But three points in particular:

"The media lies" is something everyone should take to heart. It's an astonishing thing to be in a place where the #1 story of the day is happening and not see anything even remotely representing the reporting on it at ground level.

Also, as an American, I can vouch for "people don't hate Americans". Individual people may be rude, or behave poorly, but they're likely rude and poorly behaved to everybody. It's amazing how that one simple act of understanding can completely change the lens you view the world with. There's an old American adage that the French (Parisians) are rude to Americans. Not so! Parisians are rude to everybody, it's just like New York! If you understand that, and get into the vibe, places with rough social interactions like Paris or New York actually become very navigable and pleasant.

And finally "Everyone should travel". I can't express this enough. There's absolutely no substitute for actually spending time in a place. Reading about the Urals is one thing, eating dill laced food from local farms everyday is another. Talking about how South Korea is modern but different than the West's version of modern is one thing, taking the Seoul Subway to a Korean bar and meeting up with a dozen friends for a night of laughter, drinking, eating and otherwise having a good time is simply a different kind of experience than doing the same in the states. All the broad brush strokes are the same, but the particulars...the texture of the event...are all different.
> In general, this is a good thing as taking the skeptical position forces a minimum degree of critical thinking, which makes that comment more useful.

One thing I've noticed is that comments which basically start off with "Bullshit" followed by a heated, not obviously wrong rebuttal tend to get a lot of upvotes.[1] And it can still accumulate upvotes even after another comment has shown that rebuttal to be wrong, and not even wrong in a good way.

Default skepticism is a good thing, but I think we're overly susceptible to assuming that anything resembling a righteous debunking from another HNer is right.

The other thing I've noticed is that if a submitted article isn't popular with some faction, but seriously damaging criticisms have not been forthcoming, then a comment demonstrating that a non-critical claim is wrong, or merely uncertain, will tend to get highly upvoted and treated as if it justified dismissing the whole article.

[1] Recent example: back in the New App Rejection Reason thread, the most downvoted top-level comment initially had 9+ karma, and had the structure I just described. Thankfully, more thoughtful people showed how it didn't make any sense, and it quickly got downvoted into oblivion. But a good number of people got fooled.
1. I define a domain squatter as someone that buys domains and sits on them in the hopes of achieving a (usually inflated) payday, without actively using them except for maybe a scammy AdSense page. In contrast, I think about 90% of my domains are in active use, and the rest have been reserved for projects that are in the pipeline. [And by 'in the pipeline', I mean funding has been set aside and other work is being done on the project.] I own quite a few companies, and once you get into lead generation for those companies (and clients in turn), localization efforts, landing pages, educational materials, etc. - it is very easy to start racking up the domains. I've also been buying domains for many years.

I HAVE sold several domains, but usually only ones that I find a better domain for, or ones where I have abandoned a project. A tiny number of the 'empty' domains were reserved for my existing companies that are not accepting new clients...just to hold onto IP. I would develop them if we started accepting new clients. I have also bought a few domains with the sole intention of reselling them quickly, but only when I had a buyer in mind for a brandable name that had not been registered yet or for a very unique/rare domain that I had gotten indirectly via corporate acquisition.

2. In the simplest case, a registrar employee turned off my transfer block and then moved my domain directly into his account. He also disabled my email alerts.
No, it's not dying. The installed base is huge - it's currently the most popular language on http://langpop.com . Perhaps, if Oracle messes things up enough, its rate of adoption for new projects might conceivably slow a bit.
Remember the Parrot e-Book?

Think bigger, more targeted audience (people who really want the edge on making money online vs devoted parrot owners)

"Cringely: Making 400k/yr profit on an eBook about parrots"

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=516215
I've found that the skeptical comments are a pleasant side effect of the lack of a down vote button.

HN seems to be a fairly scientifically minded community and, as such, wants proof to verify claims. The skeptical comments can be a good filter for the hype that seems to end up in all kinds of articles.

I've always thought HNers were one of the toughest audiences on the internet, and that's why I keep coming back. There are so many bright people who have the energy to research and verify claims, I stand a chance at getting to the truth.

I also know that this is a good community to discuss startup ideas and projects with, because I know I'll get a straight answer. Hopefully I can provide my own healthy dose of skepticism and constructive criticism to the mix.
How would you feel about protein folding if it was at the direction of a completely artificial genome creating proteins that do not normally occur in nature to exact specifications?
It may be “backwards” when considered from a pure engineering perspective (in the same way as other large systems do – a government always seems “wastefully bureaucratic”, and any 500+ year-old city seems like a disorganized nightmare, for example), but I think that’s the wrong way to think about it.

The way the development of the web works is (1) the features that get used are the ones that are shipped (cf. http://diveintohtml5.org/past.html), and (2) the design and optimization decisions of browser vendors are shaped by the uses seen “in the wild”, and in general browser changes try to “pave the cowpaths”.

So the ultimate shape of the technical infrastructure is this mishmash of ad-hoc features that stuck around (and often were radically repurposed for uses well beyond original intentions), the accumulated experience of millions of websites and web authors, and the scars of occasional attempts to rationalize and coherently reorganize things. It doesn’t look pretty when you start peeking at the details, but it works because it slowly evolved from something else that also worked, all the way back to something simple.

Usually, attempts to supplant such evolved systems by “better designed” alternatives fail miserably, because even the most careful best-intentioned designers often miss some important arbitrary-seeming-but-actually-quite-important aspects of the original large messy systems. For instance, this is how I feel about most American city planning of the last 50–100 years, with its endless cookie-cutter suburbs and required automobiles. The goal was to simplify and rationalize and put everything on a coherent grid, and in some ways the new design is more “efficient” than the twisty streets and irregular hodgepodge of shops and apartments of some old-world metropolis. But quite a bit is also sacrificed with the new city plans, and it’s hard to quantify or even understand since many old-city advantages are based on idiosyncrasies and accidents.
The Makery: an early-stage startup coworking space in Brooklyn
I couldn't agree more - here's my take on technique vs. passion: http://www.claudiafriedlander.com/the-liberated-voice/2010/0... Thanks for all the comments on the IO post!
What non-technical users don’t understand about your software
I must say that I love it this way. I see a headline that seems interesting, and there's a discussion, I read the skeptic first comment before all else, because it usually states quite clearly what the author of that headline is trying to sell. It's Anti-PR. I find this useful in more than one way.
I think Kurzweil, not unlike Chomsky, seems like a generally fascinating figure to discuss (early success, strong opinions). His popularity (both positive and negative) can be attributed to a fascination with the character more so than his exact position on one topic or another.

The one thing that I wish he would talk about more is his work in "nutrition, health, and lifestyle" [1]. He seems to make a lot of money off recommendations that aren't commonly accepted in the medical community (he, himself, ingests "250 supplements, eight to 10 glasses of alkaline water and 10 cups of green tea" every day). Why the disconnect with health practitioners? I don't know the guy, and shouldn't make judgement, but find it hard to avoid the thought that he's profiteering off of people's fears and ignorance.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Kurzweil#Work_on_nutrit...
CSS3 is not HTML5
I noticed a somewhat similar effect which I named "ProcrastinaBoost" (patent pending, obviously).

When working on a long/difficult project A, I keep one smaller but equally interesting (ROI-wise) project B on the side, and ensure I procrastinate in a time-boxed fashion on the useful project B only (vs. more classical procrastination).

The time-boxing ensure this stays at the hobby level, and regularly project B becomes difficult too to kick you back into project A.

It also gives me some times to relax and think about the issues on the other project.

To be used with careful time tracking of course :)

This removes a bit of the burn-out feeling, while still working on something that moves us along.
That's actually huge problem around the whole 'nanotech' sphere.

Everybody seems to have a different definition for everything, usually the definitions tend to absurdity depending on whether the person is a skeptic or a 'true believer'.

It's very boring because in the end the terminology should be secondary to the goals and how we go about achieving them.
Using Sketchboards to design great User Interfaces quickly
It's the "really good" part of the equation that is missing, unfortunately...I have only found cheap ones, mediocre ones, and bad ones. There isn't a single one that I have been thrilled with as far as price, customer service, and business practices. Shadiness tends to be contagious in certain industries, and I think some of the ones that pride themselves on their business practices just haven't realized how they can improve yet.
Galois Video: Computers As We Don’t Know Them
The Sun is changing the rate of radioactive decay
If you liked this article and it got you wondering why you aren't traveling more, read Brave New Traveler and WorldHum for inspiration.

http://bravenewtraveler.com

http://worldhum.com
Don't use URL shorteners here. http://books.google.com/books?id=WREtVBBT9lEC&lpg=PA1...
When I was a child, I read a SciFi story about one guy, who built such an arm. Then using this arm under the microscope he built a set of microscopic tools, etc.

Later in the story he fighting with bacteria and viruses, but because of the feedback of his microscopic arm, he was injured and almost killed by these tiny creatures.
We represent clusters as a type of node. So if your other nodes have coordinates in a space, there will be distances between your clusters. Or they can be part of a graph traversal, etc.
Radiohead did it pretty successfully. They are probably the largest credible band in the English speaking world.

Mr. Stross has indicated that he's not ready to 'do a Radiohead' yet. I can understand why.

I spent ten years working for a (very) independent UK record label (Warp) and am now managing an artist.

Self publication on any scale is still not as easy as it looks. You need a group of skilled people around you to make it work. Oddly enough, that group of people starts looks a lot like a record label, or a publishing house.

If you have found a really good (or perhaps even tolerably good) record label or publisher, one that you trust, that pay you good advances and royalties, that have good people on board that you enjoy working with - then self publishing doesn't look like that attractive an option. It's certainly not an easy one.

Having said that, I think Charlie should give it a shot sooner rather than later, because his fanbase will be disproportionately well connected, which reduces the effort of marketing greatly.
I don't get the point of traveling all at once (months at a time or more). It seems to me that most people that do so, visit dozens of countries back-to-back in a relatively short span of time.

I would think that everything ends up being rather similar.

I travel ten days at a time, with 6 months to a year in between international trips. Most trips only include one or two countries. Anything else would be a cognitive overload.
A Klemperer rosette of planets, each with its own small artificial sun?
For some people it can also trigger dumping syndrome: quicker-than-normal evacuation of food from the stomach, peaking insulin and dizzy spells.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastric_dumping_syndrome
Track social media buzz with free widgets from ViralHeat
It's way too much. Complete overload. And, unfortunately, as the parent poster mentioned, despite there being a wall o' text, there's not much actual information.

You should be able to answer this simple question: where do you want my eyes to go first? Right now, there's a few different headlines and buttons competing for my attention. When that happens, I often don't bother figuring out where I should look and give up.

I think you have the attitude that someone is already interested in what you've done. If that's true, then more information is better. You need to come at this from the perspective that most people won't care what you've done. You need to convince them you did something cool. Make sure that after five seconds of being on your site, they know what you think is most important.
I wish more sites had this sort of simple page for an archive.

It makes it so easy to search on a given word or words when you remember where you saw something, but don't remember when you saw it!
* If you are a co-op member. 1 time $20 fee.