skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This all ties in with a blog that I just started reading yesterday. It's written by a genre fiction writer that has also made the switch to predominantly ebooks. I guess the most relevant post is http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2010/08/beginning-of-end.html
but the whole blog is really interesting and worth reading.

http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/
Yeah, we have nano-forges. They're called wombs.

Now if only we could re-program women to make iPhones. The late-night trips to the gas station and gravel store because wife has another petroleum and sand-craving would totally be worth it.
People are more likely to post when they disagree with something because what is there to say when you are in full agreement? "Spot on! You rock!"? That kind of non-informative comment HN frowns upon.

Not that I disagree with you. :-)
Somebody just created artificial DNA, put it in another cell, and it self-replicated. So yes we DO know how to do this now.
That's what I've often wondered. Why isn't this a government initiative to take the Library of Congress and provide a digital layer on top of it for public access. Then just turn the regular libraries into community centers without the overhead cost of book storage, purchasing, & cataloging. I don't know about anyone else, but the idea of this being in the hands of a single corporation is unnerving.
So did Tyra Banks - http://www.wwtdd.com/2008/02/tyra-banks-knows-what-its-like/
"we even have really simple mechanical objects (like cantilevers) on the 100nm scale now."

Interesting. Do you have a link or paper name for that?
This is really a straw man argument. If you go read Drexler's blog(e.g. this series: http://metamodern.com/2009/12/19/molecular-manufacturing-whe...), he is very explicit that the path forward is studying natural self-assembly from DNA and then tearing that apart, finding how it works, and modularizing/modifying it for our own purposes. None of this appears to be a "crazy idea" or something out of humanity's reach til long after we're all dead, as this author claims

Drexler's egotistical to be sure. It doesn't make him wrong
"This is an honest summary of Drexler’s Ph.D. thesis/book"
Again, they decry Google for not GPL'ing their custom version of Java. It wasn't forked. It doesn't use any GPL'd code. It's completely from scratch.

The only issue is apparently that it violates some software patents. GPL has absolutely nothing to do with it, and mentioning it is like mentioning that I ate Fruity Pebbles this morning. It doesn't matter one whit.

Software patents prevent competition and this is a perfect example of it. Why should 1 company be able to have the only implementation of an idea? Patents weren't actually supposed to prevent that. They were supposed to prevent people from stealing implementations directly.
I know this will sound like I've been living in a server room for the past decade, but I'm going to go ahead and say it.

Does this feel backwards to anyone else?

We're building more and more on a layer that wasn't originally constructed to support more than text. I understand that the protocols are changing and that web browsers make a relatively great 'standardized' client platform. But in a world of portable, fast languages that can run anywhere, we still spin up our CPUs to turn HTML into buttons and animations with Javascript. There's something that seems hugely wasteful and contrived (hacky) about building more and more stuff on a mishmash of HTML + Javascript + CSS, when their origin (doing entirely different things) shines through so clearly sometiems.

I don't have a better answer, and I'm not even saying HTML5 is the wrong path, just pondering! Thick client, thin client, etc. mess, of course.

Edit: Upon further thought, it's the relatively high CPU use that bugs me primarily. Obviously, some JS engines are better than others, and I know theres a lot of work in that area. Plus, who's to say that JS CPU cycles aren't a legit performance cost for web apps?
How much money could i expect to make with android app?
I recently put together an app (http://www.ruckusdj.com) for rhythmbox to go along with a plugin i wrote for it to control the player via a web interface (http://code.google.com/p/rhythmote/).

The app is aimed mainly at windows users since linux users can get the plugin for free.

How much could I expect to earn if I did an android app and put it on the android app marketplace. The plugin is web-based so any browser enabled web device would work out-of-the-box. I am looking at an android app merely as a marketing avenue. Would this be worth the extra effort?
Rich exoplanet system discovered
Seriously? This is 2010 and you still think like this? Seems almost Victorian in attitude.

Girls, and especially your girlfriend, are not interested in how things work, but in how you feel. They are not interested in solving problems, but in supporting you.

I find it hard to see how this isn't a huge and offensive generalisation. My wife, for example, is substantially more mathematically able than I am (she's an actuary), what do you think her reaction to your comments would be?

Leave to your girlfriend what they are their "duties"

What does this even mean? What are his girlfriend's duties as you see them?
Apple files patent for dual-mode iMac touch
That seems like an excellent idea.
Jobs reprieve at Realtime Worlds following administration
I've been accused of being too much of a stickler on this, but while the ribosome and other biological machinery are at the nanoscale, but they are NOT nanotechnology. If you use the Drexlerian definition, nanotech much be engineered, which ribosome is definitely not. We can certainly learn from natural systems, but that doesn't make them nanotech.

Also, nanosystems fundamentally are at a scale when quantum properties become important, and classical, mechanical rules start breaking down, which makes things really hard.

Having said that, there are some great examples of nanosystems around, from nanoparticles, to polymer drug delivery systems to materials for PET scans and eventually scalable manufacturing of quantum dots etc. The problem is, that breakthrough is always round the corner. Nano's going to be big, but (a) it is not one technology and (b) we need to be patient cause at those scales things are hard.
If you liked Rob Halford, then Geoff Tate from Queensryche should be a real treat. Anything from Operation Mindcrime would be worth a listen.
You have to be really careful when extrapolating like that. For example, you could train as hard as Michael Phelps but you'll never swim like him; you weren't born with his flipper-like feet and extraordinarily long arms. What will probably happen is that you'll just burn out.

The people at the top of any field you will find combine hard work with genetic predisposition. They can be an inspiration sure, but imitating them is unlikely to yield the same results.
You know skepticism is a good thing, but too much of it makes people reluctant to learn and even share things. I just think that an argument is something no one wins. [edit: as arethuza pointed out what I am truly against is cynicism i.e. crab behavior. I know you're wrong because I know what's right and you can't be right because I know I am right. That is exactly the sort of thing that the world doesn't need]

So, whenever I think someone is wrong instead of just screaming it out on them like I used to and sometimes still do. I try to be nice and genuinely listen to what they have to say. If I realize that I'm indeed right I try to gently nudge the idea into their minds.

I am not that good at it right now, since old habits die hard, but someday...
Please link to the evidence of progress in the direction of 'genetic synthesis' meeting 'nano technology'
In my opinion, this is because there isn't a downvote button on stories.

Because there isn't a downvote button on stories, posting a comment that disagrees with the premise of the story has become the de facto "downvote" button.

It's easy karma to get, all you have to do is disagree with the sentiment of the post with barely more detail than "no, I disagree".

Then, when people come into the comments to argue that they don't agree, they see that there is already a comment that says essentially what they want to say so they upvote it.

The newest type of default comment that we're starting to see is the "disarming comment". On reddit this showed up as pun threads. I'm not sure exactly the form they will ultimately take here, but they're usually pretty highly rated as well. In any contentious thread there will be supporters by way of upvotes, detractors by way of the critical / skeptical comments, and people who attempt to make peace with comments that are either light-hearted or attempt to be conciliatory.

It's not just an HN thing though. Any community has these sorts of behaviors. It's just that there isn't a default way for someone to register their disagreement in the same numbers of ways there are for them to register their agreements; especially since comments that do nothing more than agree whole-heartedly with the submission and add nothing new to the conversation tend to stagnate or get downvoted.
Careful, this is one is true until it's not, and then you're fucked:

> 7) The rest of the world isn't full of germs. Many people travel with their own supply of water and an industrial vat of hand sanitizer.

As a rule, yes, you'll be fine in other countries. But especially in third world countries, only eat food that is served in a sealed package from a trusted company or served hot - food that is served hot will be generally cleaner and safer to eat. The big danger is food that sits around all day half-warm: that's where you get sick from. Also, don't drink the tap water in places the locals don't drink the tap water. Don't worry about ice/teeth brushing/etc, it's incidental, but don't drink tap if the locals won't drink it.

/did research on this after getting violently ill in Cambodia, luckily the expired medicine I bought from the untrained pharmacist did the trick.
I'm pretty sure Google Book Search was never intended for puny humans to read. It's for the future Google AI to learn from.
I don't want to take anything away from Google: they bet big that scanning all books would have been worthwhile so all the best for them.

But it seems the usual Google/hackery way of doing things where things are automatised (or semi-automatised), but when it shows (some) shortcomings, they just don't care.

Another example (in my mind) was: the Nexus One customer service.
The ribosome is nano machinery, not nano technology. Subtle difference there, I did not call it nano tech.

And if you re-engineered even a simpler version of a ribosome I'd definitely call that nano technology.
If the goal is to cure burnout, that's only a problem if you feel compelled to continue work on the little fish projects. I find that if I get a new project, it tends to push an old one from my mind, so there's not much more mental clutter than before.
Most of this stuff comes out of Sandia, I just googles for some quick MEMS pictures and found this link.

http://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~database/MEMS/sma_mems/mems.h...
this has been around here already:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1272481
I think the EU tried something like that... not sure what's happened to it in the end.
North Korea Facebook page deleted a second time
I've been long-term traveling and running my startup at the same time for the past few years (in fact just today I set up an incomplete map of my travels for the past few months at my site, turkeysandwichindustries.com), and I can attest that everything in this article is true.

What makes me sad sometimes is that traveling the world for a few months to a year doesn't even cross the minds of many of my fellow Americans. But doing just that is extremely common for almost any other wealthy country. The number of Americans I meet in a place can be counted on one hand; the number of English, Australians, Kiwis, Germans, etc. etc. are always huge. After some thought, I think it comes down to the fear that's being slowly baked in to our culture. People (and I mean Americans) are afraid of what happens if they don't work, of finding a new job when they come back, of insurance, of germs and war in foreign countries, of insanely improbable disaster striking, of getting lost, of running out of money, of bed bugs, of missing friends and family, of anything. Some of these are valid worries; most aren't.

Having grown up in just such a fear-based culture (and having a worrier gene run in the family), I struggle against those fears myself every day. It isn't easy. But the most important thing that traveling has taught me is this: that everything will be OK. You can be out of a job, get a terrible injury (I myself had an accident requiring surgery while in New Zealand), get lost, miss your flight, have your wallet stolen, lose your passport, or worse, and... everything will be OK. Your family will be there for you, your friends will be there for you, other travelers you've met will be there for you, the locals will be there for you. You'll find a job when you get back, and your old friends won't have forgotten you. As long as you've got the will and the spirit, everything will work out.

So get out there. See the world. It's a beautiful, fascinating, scary, wondrous place. Don't be afraid of taking a year off. Everything will be OK, and it will make you a smarter, more even-headed, tolerant, and curious person. And you'll make friends from all over the world that you can visit on your next big trip.
At your service:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v459/n7245/abs/nature08...
I'm an American who has never been to Canada, but I think I get what the author meant. He compared the difference between American and Canadian culture to the differences between states or regions. There is a huge difference between Northern US culture and Southern US culture, East Coast and West Coast, etc. But there are a lot of similarities and those similarities make up "American Culture."
Tried clang trunk and ICC 11.0, both give me the same result I originally posted.

I supposed it could be some weird difference between OSX vs Linux.
Good article! Don't skip the video.

I have written several books, and only a few have sold well, so I have to admit that my net worth would be more if I had spent my writing time doing working (software development). However, echoing the article:

1. writing books gives an author access to very interesting people and experiences

2. writing has a long tail of benefits that often come in the form of interesting work and offers for collaboration
What about liquid glass coating? First step.

"coating one millionth of a millimetre thick – 500 times thinner than a human hair – can be applied to virtually any surface to protect it against water, dirt, bacteria, heat and UV radiation."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/7125556/Liqu...
Alternate view: A bunch of nano machines.

http://mems.sandia.gov/gallery/images.html
I see your point that the video fits the actual usage style. But I had two issues while playing the video.

1. The volume was too high. I wanted to mute the video first before adjusting my system's volume.
2. I wanted to pause, check out the features mentioned in the video for a while and then resume the video.

So I did need the controls. They can appear only on mouse over so that the feel of a live demo still remains.
Wonderful! Seeing all the different pieces of the puzzle in one place has really made me excited again about HTML5.
Refutation: http://www.zyvex.com

Much longer refutation: http://www.rfreitas.com
The Facebook and Twitter apps are actually web services that require a username/password and their apps are merely extensions of their website. Does his app have a standalone service that would justify a username/password? Or would it be equivalent to forcing me to register to play a game like Plant vs Zombies, which has no functionality that would justify password protecting it.
Is there a way to link each of your references to each of Google's Book references? A one-to-one mapping could solve almost all the issues the blog author raised.
Yeah, I'm really glad I brought antibiotics to Peru with me, and Peru isn't even particularly bad. I wouldn't say I got violently ill there, but I did get a case of Gringo's Bane (aka Machu Poopoo) and was moving my bowel 10-15 times a day. Other than that I felt fine, but not being able to leave the proximity of the bathroom cost me two days.
> Attempts to help a user too much may interfere with the user’s ability to form a good mental model of the problem.

I think this is a problem with much of the software I dislike. I have no idea what it is trying to do and why because the software tries to conceal information from me.
Even when I was looking around, I could see that there were a lot of resources. I'd like to see a very short app - 50 lines of code - that shows off the main feature of the framework. More importantly, I need this to be one of the links on the top of the page if it's not on the home page.
If you want to get a sense of Orwell's writings about poverty, but you're not sure you want a whole book, try his essay "The Spike." It's available in Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays, as well as in many other collections or selections of his essays. You can also find it online:

http://books.google.com/books?id=WREtVBBT9lEC&lpg=PA1... (changed link to Google books; removed short link)
I took your challenge. The top 5 posts, in order:

1. "There is no nanotech, stop talking about it and start laughing at it". Top comment: jacqquesm. Character: sceptical ("Nano machinery is real, it exists, it powers the world, it's called biology.")

2. How to minimize politics in your company. Top comment: abalashov. Character: critically supportive ("There are certain problems [...] that simply cannot be solved or mitigated entirely"; "A few points to add:")

3. Rapid prototyping as a burnout antidote. Top comment: riffer (but admittedly only 16 minutes ago). Character: supportive ("Yes, this really works...")

4. Apple seeking to patent spyware. Top comment: ubernostrum. Character: "sceptical" ("vicious lying stinking reeking bullshit FUD")

5. HTML5 presentation. Top comment: sofuture. Character: meta-sceptical ("I don't have a better answer, and I'm not even saying HTML5 is the wrong path, just pondering!")

That's 2 out of 5 which are basically in support of the article, 2 out of 5 which are sceptical of the article, and one (the HTML 5 presentation) which doesn't address the article so much as address a trend which the article exemplifies.

Given that giving a sceptical response is much easier than giving a vote-worthy non-sceptical response (the latter requires specific domain knowledge, the former doesn't, necessarily), I think that's a pretty good ratio.

Sorry for the sceptical response. :)
Mandriva 2010.1 XfceLive Screenshots
Getting Meetings
Yeah, I particularly like the new range-slider input option, it seem much simpler to use than jQuery UI's range-slider. Which is where I think HTML5 really shines, making things simpler, by putting more functionality into HTML you previously needed JS for.
Here's a reason: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1629624
"Broccoli is available"

In some inner city areas, even this is debatable.
How did we get here from academic journal pricing?
Yeah, but we were reusing the cell's own molecular machinery there. What I was thinking of, though I wasn't clear, was all new machinery.
In related news, some types of bacteria proven to survive in space for more than a year. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11039206

I don't think we're anywhere near an "ET" moment, but I'm excited that we're getting some hard numbers on the types of planetary distributions there are. These numbers can feed models that can be extrapolated. If we end up with a billion earth-mass planets in the galaxy? Well you don't have to be a rocket scientist to see the writing on the wall.

If they'd announce the general news that would be one thing. But if it's going to trickle out system-by-system, that is going to be a huge pain in the ass. Isn't it possible for them just to let their hair down a bit, go out and have a beer, and tell us what it currently looks like? Sure beats having to wait!
The apps and winners from the Seattle Open Government Hackathon
Sure, I agree. I think the explanation is simply the usual "path of minimum resistance".

On the other hand I think HTML was meant for text and it still pretty much is. One thing I appreciate of the W3C is that rather than adding things on an existing standard they tend to create new standards. We have HTML, CSS, and SVG for example. CSS has also been modularised, and so was the plan for HTML. They've developed XPath, and MathML, RDF, and so on. For being a 20 years old format, HTML is surprisingly small.

The problem I think it's Javascript. But hopefully it shouldn't be too hard in the future to move to a language agnostic web.

My biggest complain at the moment would be one page apps, and some of ajax, that seem to break the old concept of the url. A small cost to pay though: I hope in the future they'll fix that.
Welcome to the word of organic evolution. Yes, it's messy and inefficient - because nobody knows beforehand how things would turn out. In hindsight, it's not rational to entrust junior programmers with single-handed development of initial versions of HTML and Javascript - but it was the only way these things could come out. Big, "rational", committee-driven projects (e.g. The Semantic Web) failed, and it's interesting to speculate why.
Yeah, I wish Geoff Tate had been one of the singers reviewed in that article. It would have been interesting to see what she had to say about him. Tate has - from this layperson's perspective - an amazing voice.
Go is not a language to write a massive enterprise level program in. It's meant to be used at the system level, and it excels at that. He was right, he really doesn't "get" Go.
And that sounds like what the author of the OP said here:

"I’m willing to bet, at some nebulous point in the future, long after Drexler and I are dead, someone may eventually develop a technology sort of vaguely like what he imagines."

It's been a while since I read Drexler's books, but if I remember correctly he alluded to more mechanical processes than biological ones. The article you linked to is purely biology and not really what Drexler was arguing for.
Yes, exactly. :-)
love that! I'm so going to be using that as a jargon buster in the next corporate symantic symposium navel gazing event.
How much of the drive for electronic voting is driven by big media? The MSM really covers elections like horse races, and at the finish they want to be able to wrap it before people drift off to sleep for another workday.

I wouldn't mind if election results weren't available for a day or two. The ancient Greeks had a completely tamper-proof voting method (and voting was theoretically obligatory). We should likewise be seeking a tamper-proof voting method, whatever that may be. I would also support obligatory voting (with "abstain" as a choice), and media outlets that cover elections like entertainment should be ridiculed.
I wouldn't say that the Semantic Web has failed... it's moving slowly, but it's been adopted more and more. These sort of standards seem to have a critical mass kind of life... maybe compounded by the Internet hype machine.

Microframeworks for example have been very effective. I also hope we'll soon have something like FOAF spreading. Even Digg has made much of its context semantic now (check the source code)
HN poll result:  ~50% have lost at least partially interest in programming.
I don't know how representative this poll is of HN users, but it's surprising given the tech focus of the site.

Poll here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1627390