skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
One thing I've found interesting in my readings is that sunscreen beyond ~SPF15 (Zinc and/or Titanium dioxide only, no benzene chemicals) are directly correlated with skin cancer. As the sales of sunscreen go up, so do the rates of skin cancer, why? #1 the main chemical used to 'protect' our skin actually has a breakdown chain to benzene, think all the fuss over Potassium/Sodium benzoate in Coke/Pepsi, but absorbed into your bodies largest organ in considerably larger quantities. #2 Vitamin D is known to boost our immune system, decrease heart disease, etc.

Vitamin D decreases heart disease? Cholesterol + Melanin + UV radiation = Vitamin D. So not only does vitamin D decrease your cholesterol, it also strengthens our immune system, which can actively remove plaque from our arteries.

Low cholesterol diets are dangerous for many reasons, mainly because cholesterol is a key element in synthesizing myelin. Myelin is the insulation on nerve cells, which is why women should never be on cholesterol-reducing drugs while of fertile age and will cause a fetus to develop no viable nerve cells causing still birth or mental development problems.

Similarly, children shouldn't be on low-cholesterol diets until about 25 (when mental development -relatively- stops) or they're at risk of developing serious conditions. Sunscreen again should probably be avoided unless they're going to get way too much sun.
Colleagues. I get to meet and work with a bunch of interesting and talented people, without asking them to marry me (which is what many here likens the co-founder experience to).

Also, my employer has a quite significant sales and client management staff. I don't enjoy sales or client management much, and consequently I'm not good at it (or maybe it's the other way around), so I'm happier when other people do that for me.

I might do a start-up one day. But until then, this is a pretty sweet deal.
Generation R (regretful) to be followed by Generation S (silent and serious).
Do you mind saying what the app is?
I'd think I'd be interested too, problem is startups are just two guys sitting on their computers for the majority of their days. Not sure it would actually be an interesting documentary after all.

The docs on Kozmo and Govworks were pretty good though.
I'd agree that OpenStack has the potential of being a Really Big Deal. They've really got a killer contribution incentive: fix a big or write a good feature and you'll get to use it on Rackspace's infrastructure (or anyone else who hosts an OpenStack server cloud).

Right now that's just a theory, but if Rackspace actually gets it together to have a fairly short release cycle for code to go from OpenStack trunk to running on Rackspace they could really give AWS a run for their money. I loves me some AWS, but having to deal with the typical vendor-client bug fix relationship just blows. The carrot of being able to fix my own bugs would likely make me kiss AWS goodbye for good.
I think health, particularly mental health is certainly a very important consideration. As much as I want to work on my side project, giving up time with my family and recreational time would probably have some fairly negative consequences long term.

Sometimes it feels like entrepreneurship is really only viable for the young and single.
It's getting to be like writing novels. Lots of people do it. The barriers to entry are low. But few can make a living at it.

I don't think few people make a living at writing novels because of competition; if more people wrote better novels I imagine novel sales would be much higher.
Damnit, what if I'm a competent designer but a mediocre/crappy developer? I want to do a startup too!
I have an excellent job where I get to work with lovely people and solve interesting problems. I'll leave the admin, business development & marketing to folks who are better skilled at such things for now, thank you very much.
You'd be surprised how much impact you can have even in a small niche. I've got a pretty small product in elementary education and, depending on your assumptions about how many teachers convert to classroom use after using the site, I've taught between 100,000 and 1 million student-hours in the last year.
You misunderstood me. You have a bad habit of using a lot of words to say vary little little. EX: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1598977

PS: Your comment can easily be read as: to be argumentative I'm doing /this/ on purpose. I believe there are helpful trolls /and I am trying to be one./ It's sitting at the noise floor, so why spend the time looking for a deeper meaning?

Note: The above actually said vary little wasted a lot of words and is intended as an example of what no to do while using vaguely insulting weasel words for the fun of it (can easily be read as etc).
I genuinely wish you the best, but this does not seem to solve any problem that I can see.

If I want a file from someone, the easiest thing is for me to email him and say "send me file X" and he will reply with file X attached.

If he's hesitant to send file X because it contains sensitive information, he can encrypt it first.

If the file is sensitive, I have to decide whether I trust the person asking for it, but assuming I do, I also have to decide if I trust AirDropper and Dropbox? If I don't, then I encrypt the file anyway, at which point I might as well just email it directly.
While I quite like the article, I'm amused to note that 5 out of the 10 "aspects of Modern Perl" are things I screwed up, struggled with, and standardised on - in a project back in the late '90s.

Tests, 3 arg open, strict and warnings were all things that came to prominence (at least in my head) shortly after the Perl4 - Perl5 update. To a lesser extent "best practices" (the same concept but before the book was published) and "care and marketing" were all things being discussed and in clpm back around the same time everybody was worried about y2k issues. Even the OO stuff was well underway, with things like Abigail's "inside-out objects" being experimented with and discussed well before the start of the Moose project...
Definitely worth seeing:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0256408/
I think that you are refering to binaural beats : http://gnaural.sourceforge.net/

You need a stereo headset to listen to this. There is a frequency in one ear and another one slightly off in the second ear. Your brain then merge the two sine waves and intepret both as a single, low frequency "beat" of the difference.
Keep in mind that taxes and such scale non-linearly with income: if you make $100k a year, you'll take home less than 2x what you'd take home making $50k a year. It doesn't invalidate your argument by any means, but it's something worth mentioning.
Thou shalt not follow the null pointer, for chaos and madness await thee at end
You forgot the pony.
Physics envy in finance
This is exactly the way open source is supposed to work.
BigTable seems overhyped to me. When you read the details on the very scarce reported facts (remember, there's no source anywhere to be seen) things either don't add up or don't look that revolutionary. For example their super-secret compression technologies (Zippy in particular.) Also Jeff Dean's talk last year seems to completely miss work on integer compression in the previous 4 years.

Claims on slides and videos don't cut it for me anymore (I used to be borderline fanboy of Google's tech reports, like so many others.) Stonebraker has a great paper analyzing Google's claims with respect to databases (and it doesn't look so revolutionary.) That's why I'd be surprised if Oracle buys Google's hype just like that.
I really like when people acknowledge the difference between passive and active attackers. I really, really want there to be more passive protection by default without requiring every computer/node/server to have a trusted certificate.

I really would like to see a better handling for this in the case of https as well. I want a way to see a mechanism that a site can offer to provide passive communication protection but where the site does not guarantee its identity, thus meaning it's possible for a MitM attack if you're willing to accept that risk.
Please allow me to reiterate:

> You don't understand how patent trolling works, do you? The point is to make it so expensive and painful for the innovator to continue without giving the patent troll a big slice of the pie that the innovator capitulates and pays off the troll.
I got all excited and then it interpreted my volume integral (∰) as a left angle bracket. :(
Hive Media to Attend gamescom Conference, Germany
The other advantage of the third option is that you don't have to write a whole bunch of auth/filtering code to only show customers their own data. Row-level permissions are relatively straightforward in Django, but it's still easier not to have to deal with them.
For a slightly less fringy defense of this view, check out the International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics: http://www.thincs.org/news.htm
We humans do things that we regret. It's part of being human. Unless we are murderers or rapists or something similar, then I don't understand the concern. For every bad/embarrassing thing I've ever done, there are hundreds of good/non-embarrassing things. That is true for everyone.
Why Android devs are losing money, and it’s not due to piracy
http://bit.ly/axJcJp
Why does a site featuring Top 100 Sites of _2010_ looks like it was designed in 1994!
Nonsense! Why just look at mercolaquack.com, which helpfully tells you how he's totally not a quack, merely a victim of a massive smear campaign!

Because THEY are out to get YOU, and only HE stands in the way to stop them, by selling you thing which are "not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease."
If you aren't using Javascript then it isn't the same idea. The whole point of this is that this requires absolutely no installation. It just works automagically when you visit a website.

The main technology hurdle that I see here is that it has to be imperceptible to the user when they "turn on" the botnet feature. This means the browser has to do some analysis of available CPU cycles and keep CPU utilization at a level where it does not affect performance. To do this well, the browser would need to be able to access detailed, realtime systems information, which is not part of any HTML standard as of yet.

(I agree with you on the editorializing/hype issue though)
I actually agree with you that SICP doesn't cover all of compiler construction; but that point didn't need to be made, because not even the book claims to be that.

What it is is a gateway drug to serious computing, including compiler construction.

However, let me just come back to your point that stack discipline is necessary for control structures and non-local transfer of control.

Well, that depends on the execution model of the machine, and I would say explicit stacks are a performance hack, made to model the mathematical concepts of closure and application.

--

Sorry, I had to remove my wordy examples explaining "Scope and Extent", and how they can be represented with environment pointers, and heap allocated activation records.

TODO: Point yet again to the "3 Implementations of Scheme" paper, Scheme being the cleanest Algol variant this side of modern computing.

Then I found this:

http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~pjj/cs211/ho/node14.html
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

I just wanted to get the word out: Dr. Mercola is not a good source for ANY health advice. He's not even a real doctor, he's an Osteopath.
Hubris like this triggers unstoppable nerd rage in me. I can't even imagine how big of a jerk one would have to be to seriously believe they can appropriate the work & passion of hundreds of thousands of developers from all over the world who are giving the fruits of their labors and imagination to the world. Ellison flat out doesn't understand software and thus he deserves to get completely steam-rolled by the open-source community, just like we did to Balmer a decade ago with Linux. Oracle could not be killed fast enough for my liking. For far too many decades Ellison has fucked up the software industry, like a parasite siphoning money off of everybody. Now you may think that's an inflammatory remark and that Oracle really does provide "real" value to their customers. (I've had to use Oracle for real work, and there is not a single thing I like about it.)

Bollocks!

Invert the question: for every dollar of "profit" diverted to Ellison, imagine the lost opportunity cost to the rest of us—what else could those billions of dollars have been spent on other than a shitty, obscenely overpriced database that belongs back in 1983 and that is entrenched into the biggest Gordian-knot of enterprise vendor-lock-in? A helluva a lot more good could have been done in the world if Ellison was a pauper. He might have even been a good man before he had all that money, though I doubt it.

My only question is: how best can the open-source community align itself to cut off Oracle's air supply?

Now that Google is unabashedly marching under the evil flag of Mordor, can't they just open up Big Table or something for enterprise customers, and snatch the pebble from Ellison's hand? Since day one, Google's dominant strategy has always been to take an expensive, over-engineered technology that other megacorps sell, scale it off the charts of those selling it, and then give it away, recouping the difference by becoming the quasi-impartial steward of the Internet.

I don't think NoSQL yet has the traction to put two bullets in the back of Oracle's skull and call it suicide, though as we saw with the success(and then failure) of MySQL, the situation can change in as little as a few years.
wow, i'm surprised by the lack of response here. is HN the type of place where you need to get a bunch of people to vote up your link before anyone notices?
A few thoughts on name changes & reputation
John Smith. Problem solved.
Is it possible to own nothing?
Another one of Python's doctrines is that practicality beats purity. Given the differences between a lot of websites, I can see a one-size-fits-all model going out of the window pretty quickly. Especially so given all of the wa-wa-I don't like the auth/admin/predefined data fields that seems to be going on here...
I was responding to a comment in which chromatic specifically asked for reasons to prefer Python over Perl. As such, "we have all seen the arguments" is needlessly dismissive at best.
> I'd rather everything use SSL

That's not going to happen as long as browsers treat the continuum of security like this:

BEST: Oh nice, a SSL connection with a CA signed cert
COOL: A normal HTTP connnection
OMGWTFBBQ: ZOMG SOMEONE HAS A SELF SIGNED SSL CERT THE
SKY IS FALLING LET'S PRESENT 10 CLICK
THROUGH DIALOGS BEFORE THE USER CAN OPEN
THE BLODDY SITE

As opposed to:

BEST: Oh nice, a SSL connection with a CA signed cert
COOL: Oh nice, a SSL connection, but no CA signing, treat like HTTP UI-wise
COOL: A normal HTTP connection, show the user the traffic isn't encrypted.
I like these[1] for webkit browsers. I'm using them on http://ihackernews.com for the login and reply buttons.

[1] http://mwhenry.com/blog/2009/11/shiny-css-only-iphone-button...
I guess that might also answer something I've been wondering since this began (well actually before, but this case has brought it back up in my mind). If you take some people skilled in the relevant art, and just describe a problem to them and tell them that someone did solve it but not how it was solved, you lock them away to do a clean room implementation of something that solves that problem, and then their solution happens to be the same as in some patent... then isn't that a bit of evidence that the solution in the patent isn't non-obvious?
The quotation comes not from Alan Kay, but Jon Bentley and Doug McIlroy. It's discussed here with Bentley: http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/207000707
Artisanal pencil sharpening
Ask HN: Anyone in SF interested in compilers?
After realizing that I don't know nearly as much as I'd like about compilers, I went looking for a way to learn more. While there is online courseware from MIT and Stanford, I'd really like to meet in person with some people to work through exercises and questions together.

Towards that end, is anyone interested in a bi-weekly meeting with lectures on compilers? I'm envisioning something that has a lecture and hacking time for the latest exercises.
Wow, 20 hours? Personally I don't think I can realistically create much on the side with a full time job. I tend to be extremely tired at the end of the work day. So I think my only option is to quit my job again :-(

Maybe it is also my sleeping patterns just don't align with jobs. Today I simply had to sleep around 9pm (home from the job at 8). Slept till perhaps 11pm. Now I feel reasonably fit, but to be at the office in time, it is time to go to bed.

I experience this kind of pattern frequently.

In fact I sometimes wonder if the biggest mistake of my life was trying to adapt to other people's schedules (also girl-friends who want to go to bed "early" etc). Thereby I wasted most of my productive hours.

My typical work day at the office is painful because I tend to be tired...
People are writing good novels faster than I can read them. Perhaps there's some great, untapped supply of people out there who aren't finding enough that's worth reading, but I'm certainly not in that camp nor is anyone else I know who reads regularly.
Apple $400: A look at Apple's fundamentals, Part II
Give some simple algorithmic problems like "Given a tree in preorder, print it in postorder" or "Find longest increasing subsequence in a list of numbers" and ask the guy to code it in front of you. It will be easy to filter out guys who code regularly and will be able to learn iphone development. It will be nice if you can find someone to interview or evaluate the code written by the candidates.
It stops making sense economically if you consider the high risk of failure though.
A graphic illustration of music industry madness
I dunno - doesn't prior art have to be published?
How I Hooked Google Voice into iPhone VM
And succeeding really makes it a thigh-slapper.
POVRay is a compiler. It takes a specification of a scene graph (give or take some details), and emits an image.

A JSON library is two compilers. One takes text and emits some form of language-specific representation, the other takes the language-specific representation and emits text. Serialization in general is a special case of a compiler.

A syntax highlighter is a compiler. One end of it looks like a normal language compiler, but it doesn't emit machine code, it emits annotated text. There are some fun intricacies related to that that have little relevant to conventional compilers, in fact: http://blog.sigfpe.com/2009/01/fast-incremental-regular-expr...

A web browser is a compiler. (Actually it's rather a lot of compilers.) It takes a web page and compiles it into the necessary set of instructions for the local display library to correctly display the page.

It is absolutely feasible to be an "expert on compilers" who doesn't know dick all about stack layouts on real machines, because you can write 10 compilers without any of them going down to machine language, or even byte code of any type. It's not even that hard. Counting up, my score is at least 5. And while I know what a stack layout is, what its for, and various tidbits about how they work in C, I certainly couldn't stand up to a blistering question session about it; after all, what I've learned about C stack layout was in the using of C, not the programming of a compiler for it.

Yes, when I say things that compile to machine language are a special case, I really do mean that less than 1% of all compilers fit that case. Easily. Probably less than .1%. You are surrounded by compilers and only a rare set of special cases goes down to anything like assembler(/bytecode). For the vast, vast majority of compilers, there is no relevant concept of "stack layout". The ones that do are an important and interesting subset, but when I say "everyone should understand compilers", it's very much precisely because that subset is relatively small. If the only value of knowing about compilers came from being able to hack on GCC, it really would be worthless to know about in the general case, but instead we are swimming in a sea of compilers, and not understanding their principles means you are in some real trouble.
Because I did already asked you for a free ticket for BOS 2008 and none were available at that time.
Since I never take no for an answer,I give it another shot :
"Hey Neil, may I have a free pass for BOS 2010 ?"
No, i'm saying that PWM-encoding data in microwaves produces low frequency beats in the final transmitted wave, similar to the frequency of binaural beats (~10-30hz alpha and beta brain wave range). I was joking that i could iDose with wifi in the same way as binaural beats. I'll try and find one of the papers.
Is it actually just "a bit more time"? I can only go by what I hear from others, but the stories I read in HN comments make it sound like that "bit more" is at least half-time work.
My argument wasn't that they're not large, but rather that if they get bigger yet, they'll probably do some crummy things. For example, it's hard to imagine them having taken the stand they did against Flash, five-ten years ago.
I am working on a social project http://socialpulse.com to educate and empower students and ordinary people how to build social capital by documenting all their social community and academic activities in one place. This will help them to get admission to a good university, get a job as well as build social branding, reputation and even build an online business. The site is free for individuals and organizations and it is connected to Facebook and Twitter. We spend a lot of time doing great things (also volunteering) but we do not document it properly with the date, time, venue and agenda which is very important to build your personality and social standing on an ongoing business. You can create a web profile about anybody or any topic and post your thoughts which get attached to the profile and your wall as well as manage all your social networks on a dashboard on SocialPulse.com

Thank you
Tom Vellaringattu, tomvell@gmail.com
I need one of these for unicode.
That sounds wonderful but unfortunately doesn't apply to everyone.
One other concern is people pretending to be you.

Someone who wanted to harm your online reputation/character and could join many forums pretending to be you and post pics, flames, etc. all under your name using a free hotmail or gmail account that looks similar to your real email account. maybe pau1graham@hotmail.com (a one rather than an L)

For people who don't really know you (like potential employers) that might be enough of a character assassination to not get you into an interview or for them to have general negative feelings towards you. I suppose that's one good reason to use GPG and sign all emails.
Just because you don't have signed certificates you can still protect against MitM attacks. Your browser just has to remember what the certificate was the first time, and alert you it if changes.

Sound familiar? It should, ssh(1) does this by default.
>And Hitler would have never invaded Poland if it wasn't for the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

It is not true ..

"In 1934, Hitler himself had spoken of an inescapable battle against both Pan-Slavism and Neo-Slavism, the victory in which would lead to "permanent mastery of the world", though he stated that they would "walk part of the road with the Russians, if that will help us.""
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact...
I'm starting to get sick with this kind of posts. Please stop.
Who's going to buy cycles from a service like this?
Agreed. He even admits as much in one of the essays he linked to:

"What’s work like now? Writing code. Worrying about everything from our credit card billing to the pile of dirty dishes in the sink that will give us all diptheria some day. Writing linkbait blog posts to get us free PR (like the one you’re reading now)."

http://adgrok.com/why-founding-a-three-person-startup-with-z...