skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
HN: good interdisciplinary MS/PhD programs for tech/culture?
Curious to know if any HN readers have programs (academic or otherwise) on their radars that integrate cultural issues with engineering, experimentation, hands-on kinds of stuff.

I'm thinking of something similar to MIT's media lab: http://www.media.mit.edu/research/groups-projects

I have a weird background (ex-Army intel, classics & international affairs degrees) but have been getting into learning about coding more, fully knowing I'll never be much of a coder or engineer, and wanting to experiment more. But I do want to play with stuff and build more products than do analysis the rest of my life, which is what I'm in danger of being lured into while I'm in DC.

What are you folks keeping your eyes on?
I don't know anything about the neurological side of things, but many forms of meditation are all about attention management.

Put another way: if meditation doesn't boost attention, you're probably not doing it right.
> The best way to make 1 million bucks is to offer some business $1 million worth of value. Or 1 million consumers $1 of value. The way this is usually done is exploiting inefficiencies in the market/arbitrage.

Gotta factor opportunity costs - offering something that people value at $1 for $1 isn't a great deal and you won't get so many buyers. Start looking to provide a lot more than you get in return and it'll be much easier to sell.

Edit: Downvotes? Seriously? Offering to sell something a person values at $1 for $1 to them is a lot harder than selling them something they value at $1 for 10 cents.
What are Carbon Emissions Reports
Acne Topical Retinoids
Hackety Hack is almost at version 1, it uses ruby and is pretty good, it has tutorials and everything: http://hacketyhack.heroku.com/

Others might recommended javascript, because its on every computer, and its rather easy to share code with friends.
"Do the shares revert to ordinary shares as soon as someone else gets 'em"

Yep.
And you, sir, ought to be careful not to be so condescending.
If you are talented, study finance intensely at a top school for a few years, join a large Wall Street firm, and aggressively seek advancement. This is the lowest risk strategy. It's not instant, but it's almost a guaranteed way for a smart person to make a few million within 5 - 10 years.
PR2 Robot Video Competition: The Results
Why, that's easy.

1. Get a job that pays $50,000 a year.

2. Live off the first $20,000 a year.

3. Put the remaining $30,000 a year into the highest-yielding savings account you can find.

4. After about thirty years, you will have a million dollars. Enjoy it!

That is the easiest, damn-near-risk-free, way to make a million dollars. If you can get a job that pays more than fifty grand, you can save more money each year and get there even faster.

But I really hope you're not expecting some kind of get-rich-quick scheme here.
"Just plugging some OCR algorithms into a midi player" is severely downplaying a difficult task. OCR algorithms designed for text aren't likely to be immediately applicable to musical notation, which is pretty complicated, not all that standardized, and often ambiguous. This is the sort of area where deep knowledge really pays off - it's not just throwing together a website.

Assuming any software can be patented, I don't doubt there are some algorithms to be discovered in this area that qualify. Hopefully the patents aren't so broad that others can't work around them.
Trite BS. I don't know what the going conversion rate between pain and dollars is, but I'm sure if you go down to your local homeless shelter you can find someone who has suffered many millions of dollars' worth of pain and doesn't have two dimes to rub together.
Because you did not specify "fastest," the easiest way is to work hard, save a lot, and invest early. In a few decades you will be a millionaire without any problems.
Better article:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/true-colors.html

This is one of those slow news day tropes "rediscovered" and recycled every few years.

In the Hermitage in Russia, there are several centuries old paintings with incidental Greek statuary in the background, painted in living colors. This is one of those nuggets even art historians keep forgetting to pass along.
After upvoting this comment I had a second thought: I think the hypothesis of meditation is that it improves attention, (and that is indeed the point). But has that hypothesis been proved? I can provide my own anecdotal evidence that indeed, it seems as if a meditation practice has boosted my attention span. But this is not really science.
Indian Govt Issues Notice To Google over Insights for Search
You make me wonder if the hate is partly due to XML being used in integration, and integration is difficult and problematic, and vulnerable to all kinds of communication problems.

And if JSON tends to be used where integration isn't very challenging (eg. you control both ends, and the data is fairly regular and simple; or one end is entirely determined by the other); that is, where schemas aren't needed.
Why is there not a Square Root button in calc.exe?
Every piece of Microsoft software that has a customer-visible name --- and many that don't --- have been run through a gauntlet of static source code analyzers, have been reviewed by developers trained in secure C/C++ programming, have been "threat modeled" by internal and external teams to find design alternatives that reduce exposure to threats, and have been subjected to multiple external pen tests, often on the dot release.

The result is demonstrably imperfect, which just underscores the point that we don't know how to produce secure software "in the large".

Here's a shorthand: if Daniel J. Bernstein can't get it right, it's absurd to suggest that any software company's going to do any better.
Film-less Photography (first digital camera - 1975)
It's not really nitpicking, "easiest" isn't well-defined. Quickest, lowest effort, or highest probability of working? I know a way to make a million dollars in the next 24 hours, but its probability of working is very low. I also know a way of making a million dollars with 99.9% probability, but it involves decades of hard work and thrift. I also have several intermediate plans, which still involve a lot of hard work and a probability of success which I am frankly completely unqualified to estimate. And finally I have several high-probability low-effort quick ways to do it, like the grandparent, which are nonetheless contingent on you having other things lined up in your life (eg a millionaire who wants to marry you, or rich parents, or a chest of pirate gold buried in your backyard.)

Which one would you like?
The real numbers are no doubt N orders of magnitude smaller, but 3-4 sounds high. Could we lose billions of dollars a year to crime abetted by software insecurity? Yes.

At a first pass, remember that every piece of hardware and software that every company buys to address these problems is part of the cost. Antivirus alone gets us over a billion.
Nobody's arguing that C++ is a fringe language. Clearly it has huge adoption. But that has nothing to do with whether it's a popular choice for new software. Sorry, it simply isn't.
Could you explain the arbitrary lookahead and backtracking please? I thought UPA (unambiguous particle attribution - or "deterministic" for DTDs) avoided the need for backtracking... Or is it to do with entity references? I've found it simple to write XML parsers, but that's for a common (defacto?) subset, not the full spec.
But there are no such reports. Is the speculation that we are causing disasters without even knowing it?

I suppose we may be isolated because we're still primitive. So it's one of those explanations of Fermi that relies on centralized planning rather than an eco-system. Cool.
And that, in a nutshell, is why some things taste better through a straw.

It doesn't explain why some things don't taste better through a straw like ice tea or beer.
Hello neighbour! Same in Bulgaria, and I'm sure other Balkan countries are no different (no offense).

In China there was a story about retired professor that took care of that - by striking the cars with brick.
> People used to dress nicer.

Rich people used to dress nicer. Poor people used to wear dirty worn-out clothes day in and day out.
OK, that's part of the answer: now why do some other drinks (beer and wine spring to mind) taste worse through a straw?
Selling drugs, but I don't recommend it.
Edit: Now with citations!

Many indigenous Americans prefer "Indian" to "Native American". "Native American" is a term invented by white people to make themselves feel better, by and large.

"American Indian" is the preferred term if you need to distinguish from the people of India.

"Charles C. Mann noted in his 2005 book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus that "every native person whom I have met (I think without exception) has used 'Indian' rather than 'Native American'."[17] Russell Means, an activist in the American Indian Movement, said in 1998, "I abhor the term Native American...I prefer the term American Indian because I know its origins."[4][17]"

"Many of those who are covered by the term strongly prefer "American Indian" over "Native American".[21][22] According to the US Census Bureau, as of 1995 50% preferred "American Indian", 37% "Native American", and the remainder preferred other terms or had no preference.[23]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_name_controvers...
By not asking questions like this.
Conspiracy has a bad canotation. You can have a conspiracy to overthrow some government, you can also have a wacky belief into something which has no base in any reasonable doubt to believe. The latter being the way the word conspiracy theory is used.

There is however no conspiracy here. A national government, the most mighty power in any nation, seeks to arrest a man and makes such intention known to the entire world. A man this is about who we have read only recently by certain people asked to be arrested in defiance of international law and without having committed a crime, a man who was accused by the US government for having blood on his hands for leaking information which apparently has nothing new to say, a man of whom people are speculating as to how the government will be ridden of, the preferred choice of the speculators being to kill him.

A conspiracy is something which has no base in reality. This is beyond that. In this instance there is no base to not believe in the "conspiracy".

Also, it is telling that only hours after an article was submitted here which did not make the front page of HN, an article by CNN on a blog on CNN, asked whether this is a smear campaign that the Associated Press reports that the warrant is withdrawn.

I for one have no reasonable doubt. I wish not to engage in any games of thought. I would rather see this for what it is, an absolute disgrace by a democratic government who is conspiring against its people and their will.
Incorrect. The letter U was simply not a part of the Roman/Latin alphabet. It, and the letter W, were Carolingian-era developments.

Besides: why would "U" be hard to chisel compared to, say, "R"?
This is like saying if we were bothered by engines powered by fuels derived from oil, we would stop using them.

Isn't this the case for a lot of people who drive hybrids and/or take mass-transit? You can always vote with your wallet. I can't stand what McDonalds represents, so I haven't eaten there for 15+ years and won't take my kids there.
My boss, a native californian, told me that he used to take the bike and cycle for about mile, two or more to his school, and then back (San Fernando Valley).
I'm not sure if i missed something when I initially read about the startup Chile program, but i don't quite remember the documents stating they only wanted US entrepreneurs, am i wrong?
I agree that the concept of namespaces is brilliant, but very difficult to read in practice. The rules around the different ways to specify namespaces also seem unnecessarily complicated - I always need to review the XML schema spec, and spend a bit of time on it.

I feel they should be as simple as (eg) Java packages; but the problem has different parameters in Java: there's less chance of collisions in Java, because you're just writing one module; whereas one XML document can merge different sources - it's as if arbitrary Java modules, written by unknown people, were combined into the one file.
I've lived without a car for about 2 1/2 years in Suburbia, USA. The character of my neighborhood has changed. You see more kids outside playing. Teens walk to the nearby shopping center now. So this stuff can change -- and I think it needs to. I think Peak Oil will compel America to make some changes of some sort. Hopefully, we will use it as an excuse for constructive changes.
Actually, my understanding is that "Little Red Riding Hood" is a tale of sexual predation. "Little Red Riding Hood" is a euphemism for the clitoris and it's generally a lot more obvious in French that it's a sexual morality tale.
Scratch: http://scratch.mit.edu/
Here is the area on google maps: http://is.gd/euPUY
Millenium Problem: Navier-Stokes solved?
See: http://nasra.org/resources/RauhResponse.pdf for a contrary analysis.
Apparent answer: aeration (mostly).

Also, sucking a straw forces you to drink in a way that maximizes exposure to your palate, somewhat the same way "pro" wine tasters drink wine.

If you have an hour or two free, get one of those little wine aerators and do the taste test. It's a night-and-day difference.

This also appears to be one of the topics addressed in Myrhvold's epic _Modernist Cuisine_.
It may sound too simple, but you should not hire anybody that you do not trust.

For sure, your faith in somebody is no guarantee that you won't get screwed, but in the end that is a risk that you can not avoid and that you have to take. (Or work alone.)

About your unique implementation strategy: You might be a genius, but I would guess that there are at least some people who would come up with the same or an even nicer solution for your problem, just by looking at your product once it is out. Please do not be offended, this is not intended and I might be wrong.

Thinking about one of my own projects right now.. I could imagine to stubb out some core elements from the code very easily. But perhaps this is not an option for you.

[Edit: About trusting somebody you don't know: Trust your guts. That is at least how I do it. Worked pretty well until now.]
Yeah, but "the government is rubbish" is a wide issue. Even then, if 80% of the people think the government is rubbish but 60% also believe the opposition is rubbish, nothing happens. It gets worse when you drill down to single issues. Suppose I'm mad at the FCC. How exactly do I hold the elected government accountable for the actions of the civil service? And how much weight do I give my grievance with the FCC compared to all the other issues influencing my vote? And how do I tell if the opposition is any better?

The argument that we can at least control the government through elections is usually used to defend bringing something under the control of unelected bureaucrats so voters can simply ignore the issue in future elections in favor of some invented controversy about community centers in Manhattan or whatnot.
Because not all volatiles taste good, or appreciate aeration?
Check out Selenium (http://seleniumhq.org/). It's pretty decent.
Apparently, Jorma Jormakka found an old theorem to be false and exploited it... 14 page paper.. simply wow.
It is so much easier than that. http://giantrobotlasers.com/post/973558561/im-mayor-of-faceb...

58 23 * * * curl -u CELL:PASS http://api.foursquare.com/v1/checkin.json -d vid=VENUE
Sweden drops rape accusation against founder of WikiLeaks
reminds me of uninstalling all the toolbars whenever I get home... You won't believe whenever I see my parents home desktop, half of the browser is taken up by these toolbars..strangely people don't even care about getting rid of them (not to mention dont know what to do with them as well)
From what I can tell[1] you can either charge your personal expenses (insurance, housing, etc) or pay yourself a salary, but not both.

Edit: It also looks can also choose whether you prefer to have the funding as advance payment or reimbursement[2]

[1] Section V, pages 4-5, http://www.corfo.cl/startupchile/download/Technical_and_admi...

[2] Section 4, page 8 of the same pdf
In Brazil, the word we commonly use to refer to the native inhabitants is "índio". When we refer to someone who is born in India, the word is "indiano".

Both words translate to "Indian" in English. Maybe that is why the article calls him an Indian. What word would you use instead, "native", maybe?
Because they pay under $20/hr, offer no health insurance, dental, no vacation, termination at will, and little possibility for promotion or advancement of skills. That and the balance of power is entirely skewed towards some MBA in a monkey-suit sitting in a corp HQ palace hundreds or thousands of miles away, who only looks at numbers on a spreadsheet or pretty pictures on a powerpoint that represent the lives of human beings. It's not only coders who should never be called "resources"—the same basic decency applies to all humans.
> It doesn't explain why some things don't taste better through a straw like ice tea or beer.

I wonder if it's partly cultural - in Guilin, China there's a place called Jack Coffee that sells coffee in a covered plastic cup that you drink through a straw. At first I was turned off by the idea, but after a few days I came to enjoy it.

I'm in Vietnam now, and my first night I met an old friend. He ordered a beer, put two ice cubes in the glass, and poured the beer over the ice. I said, "Beer on ice...?" He said, "Hmm?" Me: "You've got ice in the glass. And you pour the beer on the ice." He says, "Oh, yeah, I didn't get it at first, but now I'm converted."

So I wonder how much it's cultural - also, it seems like a lot of things that aren't drank from a straw like tea, coffee, wine are generally more high status/high fashion type signifier than something like milk or soda.
"Same position in space" isn't well-defined anyway. There's no fixed set of coordinates permeating the entire universe. But it's clear enough what is meant in this case.

I wonder, though, it should be in the same position in the sky, right (after accounting for the Earth not necessarily being in sync with regard to its rotation)?

I'm not sure what you mean "after accounting for the Earth not necessarily being in sync"; since it isn't in sync it won't be in the same position. But if you were viewing it from the centre of the Sun, then yes, it would be in the same position in the sky.
Yes, there are dozens of studies on the effects of meditation. Here's one specifically on attention span:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100714121737.ht...
The story behind Warships - an iPhone app's path to 1 million downloads
The notion that the US endeavors to arrest Assange is itself a conspiracy theory, as there is no direct evidence to support it. What crime would he be charged with?

When you build a narrative on a premise like that, you're already heading off into tinfoil hat country. People routinely assert --- far more credibly --- that Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld have blood on their hands.

Note also that the current headline on CNN is "Rape ccusation dropped against WikiLeaks founder", and the first story under that is "Is Assange target of smear campaign". Of course, this is neither here nor there; the CNN home page is engineered to maximize page views, not enlightenment.

Would you like a screenshot?
At its peak, the company employed a third of the British workforce and was responsible for a huge tranche of global trade.

I knew it was big, but a third of the British workforce? That's insane.

Anyway, I welcome the East India Company back. I realise it has almost nothing in common with the original entity, but I personally might buy their tea if it becomes available here, just for the illicit non-PC pro-colonialism thrill.
The same reason that beer tastes bad from a can--you don't get the smell.
Ask HN: What happened to diaspora? 
The last blog post on diaspora website was more than 50 days ago.

Has the project reached the fate, which the cynical mind of many of us expected, where bunch of college kid rode the latest controversy of the time (Facebook Privacy), to earn themselves a decent "pocket money"? or is it still being worked upon?
...will lead to folks starting outsourcing and service related companies. Not entrepreneurial product based startups.

IMO that is just another type of startup.
Swedish rape warrant for Wikileaks' Assange cancelled
Sweden has cancelled an arrest warrant for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange on accusations of rape and molestation.
Isn't the scale of it comparable to YCombinator?

YC certainly gets a lot of mentions here (not entirely unrelated to the fact that they run the site, but still...).
Map of Upcoming Ruby Conferences
Obviously the entire article is fluff, but there's one thing that sticks out as just wrong:

"No one who buys BlackBerry products actually cares about the BlackBerry OS."

Has this guy ever talked to a Blackberry owner? They seem to be some of the most loyal cell phone owners around. Everyone talks about switching to an iPhone or whatever, but (from the article):

"RIM is still selling plenty of BlackBerry devices -- thanks to international expansion and big sales at carriers."
Harvard Thinks Big
How is it "borderline scam"? How are they hoping to profit at your expense by offering you $40K and then not letting you spend it?
Here is a direct link to the developer's blog with full details on the financials behind their decision: http://edovia.com/blog/2010/08/1-000-000-downloads-for-warsh...

Informative read.
I disagree. I think Microsoft and RIM should team up. Microsoft is supplying Windows 7 to vendors that just don't give a crap about what software is on their phone as long as it's got all the checkbox features (i.e. they offer both Android and Windows 7 devices but won't focus on one over the other). So stop supplying Windows 7 to these vendors and make RIM the exclusive vendor for Windows 7 devices. Microsoft has a pretty great mobile OS in Windows 7 (this coming from an iPhone lover) and RIM has great hardware and a fan base. These two companies need each other.
I agree. BB OS is buggy and does not have even close to the level of developer attention as iOS or Android. RIM should just make the jump now before it fades into irrelevance. IMHO, the most useful features of BB OS could be reworked as an Android skin, like HTC's Sense or Motorola's Motoblur.
Strangely enough this was the sentiment at Google. I was talking to a Googler in a recent GTUG meeting and they told me exactly that: Some people won't change browsers but they are OK with installing a plugin.
I'm not sure what you mean "after accounting for the Earth not necessarily being in sync"; since it isn't in sync it won't be in the same position.

That from some point on Earth (on a similar latitude - accounting for tilt) Neptune would be in the same position in the sky (because other than the tilt, the time of day would likely be different so the longitude of observation should be too).

In writing that, though, I just realized the flaw in my thinking. Not only would the rotation of the Earth not be in sync, nor would its orbit! So the chance of being able to repeat the precise observation at the specified time would be close to nil.
From the standard [6.5.4][String literals]:

"If the program attempts to modify such an array, the behavior is undefined."

Hence there is no requirement to segfault.
Good source for a layman's explanation of how we measure where things are in the sky is Astronomy Cast:
http://www.astronomycast.com/astronomy/ep-171-solar-system-m...
http://www.astronomycast.com/astronomy/ep-170-coordinate-sys...
A two-line shell script with a random sleep interval and a curl call (see invankirigin's on this page) has here put into a cron job does the trick. No Perl necessary :-)