skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Me and a coworker tried it and also measured our heart rates by hand. It seems to be pretty accurate. I have a HTC Desire and he has a Hero.
Why should I trust or distrust a world government more or less than the current ones?

It's not about trust, but about choice. It's like with any product. Lots of choice plus little vendor lock-in tends to lead to better products. No or little choice plus strong vendor lock-in leads to worse products.

If you combine lots of countries/governments with more open borders, then people can shop around for a government they like.

What is the last time in living memory that people in a developed country revolted against their rulers?

Each time someone gets tired of the government in their current country and decides to move because of it, that is a revolt against their rulers.

The point is there is no need for me to overthrow my government as long as I'm free to move. Violent revolt is simply not necessary if borders are open. If you really don't like the government you have, pick a different one. There are plenty to chose from around the world, and it's a lot cheaper and easier than staging a violent revolution.
I've read it three weeks ago and am still astonished about the impact. I have also ordered "LILA" - which Mr. Pirsig wrote 20 years later. Very much looking forward to reading it.
Man Builds Computer Inside Minecraft
This blog series on getting your stuff made in China by Adam Hocherman might be a good starting point?

http://designtheatre.net/2010/04/01/go-it-alone-how-to-make-...
The computer revolution is over. Today's alpha geeks are hacking genes and cells, not silicon.
Shorl.com uses a system called 'Koremutake' which has roughly the same aim (although unfortunately it seems to be tied to the URL shortener):
http://shorl.com/koremutake

I like the added feature of insertion of hyphens to break up groups of syllables in Peter Braden's implementation.
This is just linkbait. The title should be "why I disagree with Gladwell".
The Future is Integrated, Thoughts on the 1:10 Challenge at Web Scale
I like people sharing cool tiny utility snippets occasionally
We're in the minority here. I planned to dual boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu 10.04, but Windows has served all my non-server needs, and I didn't get around to installing Ubuntu.
repost of http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1738560 (6 days ago)
I should mention I'm into hardware more than software. Unlike software dev, with hardware dev tools, Windows is the common denominator (and often the only supported platform period)
Understanding vipassana meditation
Babbage's Other Woman
Until oil prices skyrocketed, I'd say.
Break your habits: be more empirical
I'm a geek and I've always belonged to the late majority when it comes to new technology. Within my area of expertise (programming) I'm at the frontier, but outside of that area I see technology as something that should be useful.

Bought my first smart phone (an Android) two months ago, but have been using Linux as my sole OS for five years now.

And if I look at my nerd friends it seems to be the same thing. The nerds have the newest and coolest in a thin niche, and outside that niche they don't care.
I think what he's saying is that the original parent might not know what the quality setting was that they were using in the post, and as such the quality setting may very well differ. This would lead to varying file sizes despite the presence of the blanked area.
Very nice. I am beginning to use these summary sites more often.

I did notice one thing/error: Some of the titles for the stories don't show up correctly and are just the URL to the story. Sometimes you can tell what the story is from the URL but this is not always the case, especially for HN URLs.
Inflation receded by 1996, well before oil prices went up.
The fact that many people might share your desire and tendancy to disrespect others doesn't mean that I should accept your nonsensical, prejudiced arguments as a necessary fact.

The base argument that you are using is the same that has been used to validate the chastisement of many minority groups .. in fact all minority groups have campaigned for the right to be referred to using terms that offer respect.

Making a 'stand' and arguing for the right to disrespect someone is far more dangerous than vulgar language will ever be - and I'd also argue that it's more disruptive than violence, as it has an effect which is longer lasting and is more likely to prevent lasting positive change.
A compelling reason to self publish, if possible. Sure it's going to be harder to gain traction but you only need to sell a tenth the copies. Massive advantage if your subject matter is skewed towards the web anyway.
I switched to a FREDRIK after the previous HN discussion on standing desks. In general, I am quite happy with it, but some notes from my experience:

You cannot adjust the height of the shelves without taking most of the desk apart. The increments are fairly course, so it may be difficult to get the height right -- I had to dig up the riser which came with my Microsoft Natural keyboard.

I use it with an IKEA bar stool and often switch between sitting and standing a few times during the day.

picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kuno/5053375629/
I'm not actually taking a position, I'm just pointing out that you're undermining someone else's argument. A rough paraphrase

A: women are excluded from science.

B: no, women choose not to enter science because they are smart enough to realise there are better paid jobs in law and medicine

C: but women enter fields (like your example of "Womens Herstory") which clearly aren't moneyspinners, so you could ask why do they enter those unprofitable fields rather than unprofitable science?

You: Because women make stupid educational and career choices that limits their money making potential.

Me: The original argument advanced by B, is that the lack of women in science is explained by their smart educational and career choices. If you posit that many of them make stupid educational and career choices, you still haven't explained why they don't end up in underpaid science/technology roles.
Thanks for reply.

I see reason 1. as a downside — it allows very messy Smarty-like markup that can generate ill-formed HTML.

2. I think there's little difference whether you serialize first or later. Are all those new fancy DOM traversal, XPath and XSLT APIs really not faster than parsing and joining of strings?
Any reason the quarterly subscription is 3 cents cheaper per year than the annual?
I'm pretty sure the San Andreas fault came first. It just wasn't discovered first.
The different amount of RAM is the last think to notice here.

That depends mainly on the use you have in mind. For my purposes, the Hawkboard's CPU would probably be fine. But yeah, the Pandaboard is quite a beast - twice the computing power of an iPad, if I'm not mistaken. (not counting the DSP)
Ask HN: review my startup touchqode - source code editor for android
link: http://www.touchqode.com

Touchqode is source code editor for use on your mobile phone. Its main idea is to let you think about and work on your code even if you are away from computer. It features syntax highlighting, code suggestions (autocomplete) and incremental search. We support Java (most mature), Python, C++, C# and Ruby (all have somewhat basic support).
Touchqode has just been released in an early alpha version for Android and we are eager for your feedback. If you want to see it in action you can also check out youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O40QQnrNXUk

Thank you
This. I find it is frequently accompanied by a non-trivial degree of condescension and complete and utter lack of understanding about how what they're trying to build would actually work.
The business of software
Maybe this should be done by extending JPEG to support alpha channel?

It might have better chances for adoption than completely new format like WebP.

We'll just have another decade of complaining that IE doesn't support alpha, but we've been there and survived :)
Says "unavailable for your mobile" when trying to install on Samsung Galaxy S.
What I'm talking about is the nonsense we keep hearing about the motivations. I'm very skeptical about this.
We already had way too much government investment encouragement with artificially low interest rates for years. People do not need more incentives to spend. btw, we still have rockbottom low interest rates.

What happened in this crisis is over-investment and over-supply. That waste needs to be rolled back and we need to get back to a balanced budget - which is what Brazil did - it's not even mentioned in that article all the strict fiscal policies Brazil enacted like a balanced budget amendment!!!

The easy money policy causes businesses and people to borrow money they do not have (debt) in false expectation of future profits/income, and they spend money wastefully because they think they have more than they do have.

Now people must save and recapitalize and pay off debt. Some bsinesses must fail. Real estate prices must fall. Public expenditures must be reduced.

People are NOT hoarding cash. Ridiculous. Businesses are saving because look ahead and they know rates will have to increase and the hardships are not over. They are are borrowing at low rates in expectation of higher rates in the future (it would be more expensive to borrow in the future when rates rise)
That project is about 5-6 years old. I remember being exited when I first saw that page. It still is exiting. But not news :)
Ask HN: Fantasy Map Generation
Just wondering if anyone can recommend a good method of generating a fantasy map that actually adheres to real world boundaries? Basically, mucking around building a geosocial game and would like to generate OSM compatible tiles but with an "otherworldly" style.

Anyone know of any Mapnik stylesheets out there for this kind of thing? Or any other techniques?
2010 Physics Nobel Prize (Graphene)
Social Media Facts and Figures for B2B Sales
Pipettors pipette
a calibrated glass tube drawn to a fine bore at one end, filled by sucking liquid into the bulb, and used to transfer or measure known volumes of liquid
Demand should be depressed because it was artificially stimulated before.

ie. if demand for homes was normal and not stimulated by easy money then there would not have been a housing bubble. a dotcom bubble. etc.

Government stimulated demand is the problem not the solution. (see my other post a few msgs above)
Wikipedia is an interesting case study in that not only has it not been overrun by joke memes, but it has virtually eliminated humor from both its public-facing articles and its internal communication. I spent several years as a fairly active member of the community -- never an admin, but enough to get frequent unsolicited requests to voice in on edit disputes. During that time, every word I typed was in that awkward mock-professional tone civil servants use, masked only slightly by saccharine PR-speak when talking to noobs. Jokes were a dead giveaway you were an outsider, and there's nothing more important in the world of WP than sounding like you know what you're doing.

Despite all the annoying pretense and the persistent damage to my writing style, I suspect this sort of culture might be necessary, or at least not harmful, to what WP is trying to accomplish. Formality is a sign that a group of people needs to get something done despite not necessarily liking each other very much. This has always been ubiquitous in the physical world of geographically assigned coworkers, but quite rare on the Internet.
Looks interesting. Wouldn't it be better if you ranked the news sources in descending order of total shares instead of alphabetically?
There are many convenient options for OSX backups. Sure, it's not the same was whatever your XP/2k network is using, but I don't really see how OSX is to blame for your choice to not maintain backups.
Jack Namer Advertiser
I posted my answer here as it is long: http://www.ceondo.com/ecte/2010/10/challenge-web-scale-integ...

To save you one click, the real problem about the web scale is the integration. This is the hard part, this is where things start to break, this is where on can have fun too.
MSI GT663 Gaming Notebook with 1.5GB GeForce GTX460M
Three Silicon Valley places Paul Graham omitted
>> or example, currently its only available over Wifi in the US.

Can you link/quote the part that says that? I can't see it.

edit: Sorry, I read your post wrong. I thought you meant, "skype over wifi is (a feature that) is only available in the US". Rather, I see now you mean, "Those in the US can only use skype over wifi (not on 3G networks)".

I just went through the whole process of skyping myself from phone to laptop, and back again (and getting some nasty feedback!) before realising what you meant!
If you're hardcore you can even get a treadmill to go with it.

So in a recent episode of PAX TV they showed one of the penny arcade creators had a gaming system installed in front of a treadmill. Obviously programming's going to be a lot more difficult while walking than playing a video game, so perhaps program the treadmill to move forward a few feet every 30 seconds or so? It might be enough of a small change that you can learn to ignore the small movement while standing and may keep the body from getting stiff.
Also I believe a balanced budget amendment was enacted in Brazil around that time.
This can work in some places, like South America, but not in others, like Europe. In Europe you get a 90-day tourist visa within a 6-month period, so if you stay for 90 days you must leave for and stay out of Europe for another 90 days before you can return to get a new tourist visa.
Actually, this is completely doable, even backwards compatible, with javascript:

JPEG has support for arbitrary metadata, mostly used today to put EXIF data in the files. IIRC, there's no reason we couldn't store a base64'd or even binary raw PNG file in there.

Once we put it in, we need to be able to extract it. There are EXIF javascript libraries out there, so that shouldn't be too much of a problem, since it's the same idea. I'm unsure if a binary raw PNG file could be used to generate the alpha channel like in the original article, but at least using the base64-encoded bitstream should be possible since that's natively supported.

It's backwards compatible since it uses the same structure as EXIF uses, which just gets ignored by non-compatible image viewers. Something easier might be to store a URL to the alpha channel PNG image in the EXIF, and then use javascript to download that image and use it as the alpha channel.

If I wasn't getting ready for a 2 month trip, I'd spend an hour or two whipping this up. Feel free to take this info and whip something up yourself!
In the contexts where I've worked it's a genuine piece of jargon, a technical term that implies more than would the term "atmosphere".

So when used in that context yes, it's not just an abbreviation, but no, it's not a silly affectation. It's interesting that PG's usage matches (closely enough) the baggage-laden jargon version.
Hmm. Disappointing that you haven't replied.
We've moved on anyway, this is the year of Linux on the Smartphone.
Seems rather bad. I live in Germany and lots of people I know have separate rooms for their babies, for example.

Also I have been told having the baby sleep in the same room reduces the risk of sudden infant death, so I wonder if the extra room really is a result of an evolved cultural advantage.

Anyway, could it be that the US is simply bigger than most other WEIRD countries? A lot of more people would imply more people of the extreme variety. Also, I think you have a lot of space over there. So bedrooms are cheap, too, which would also explain the extra bedrooms. A lot of families in other countries simply can not afford extra bedrooms for babies.

Also I didn't like the pattern of this article of building up authority by stating some random statistical facts, then using that artificial authority to put forward some random theory of cultural evolution.
You don't win a war with just an air campaign. You still need boots on the ground to go after people. Hellfire's work great when the enemy is out in a field with no civilians around. But that is not the case. The enemy is walking around amongst civilians in places like an open market, a row of houses. These are poor places for hellfires because using one there means that now you've got a bunch of people that were neutral on the subject before pissed off at you.
Here is the process of making graphene with a sticky tape -it was posted here a while ago.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=diy-graphen...
I just did a lot of looking into this. First, yes, you nailed it - if you publish with a publisher, you do it because they're going to help you with distribution, presentation, and get you wider reach and impact. It's good for art and exposure, but not as good for getting cash, especially if you already know how to promote or have a significant fanbase.

With that said, a couple of things for anyone thinking of getting into this.

1. You really want your royalties to be based on "suggested retail list price" if possible. That means you get the same amount no matter what price people sell it at. Here's a link that explains more:

http://www.ivanhoffman.com/royalties.html

> The significant question to ask is: "Upon what figure is the percentage royalty rate to be calculated?" In other words, by what number do we multiply the royalty rate? Examples range from "net monies received by Publisher," "gross cash receipts," "the suggested retail list price," "wholesale price," and perhaps other variations on that theme.

You're on net, which kind of sucks, because the publishing house and your incentives don't always line up. Generally speaking, publishers want to maximize their profit across the catalog, and might be happy to "price your work to move" - I won't get into complicated maths about demand elasticity, but publishers sometimes prefer to sell lots of books at lower prices, even if an individual author would make more at higher prices. If you're on suggested retail price royalties, this is a non-issue and your incentives don't really clash at all. In fact, then it's a big win for you if the mark the book down to sell more copies, which they still likely will as it's the current model of the publishing industry.

2. I looked into self-publishing, and you can pick up a 60% royalty rate from Amazon Createspace, but your production quality is going to suck, you're going to need to eat a lot of upfront fees, thus you're taking on a lot of risk, and you're going to have make your own connections with distributors and bookstores and things like that (and you'll be approaching them from a position of lower credibility - they're still quite wary of self-published books).

I was going to self publish, but then realizing what Amazon wanted it's kind of ugly. They want an exactly formatted pdf of what your book would look like, and then the production quality is very so-so. And IMO, Amazon Createspace is the best self publishing route because of its tight integration with Amazon. If you go with a different self publishing company, you're looking at even more hassle trying to make distribution work correctly.

Geek Atlas looks good - congrats on that. I'll pick up a copy next time I'm settled down and not on the road. Congrats on that, it's a cool project and piece of art that I respect, notwithstanding our internet scuffling.
I will second this. Make sure you're looking at the $150 Fredrik "Computer work station", not the $100 Fredrik "Desk". The Fredrik has extremely solid steel support. I've used it for over a year and a half, most of that time as a standing desk, and have disassembled and reassembled it at least a half-dozen times (for height-adjustment of the desk or shelves or for moving). It holds the weight of a 24" iMac, a second display, a stereo receiver, and two shelf-lengths of books with no bending or bowing whatsoever. I even have a habit of leaning on it when I'm not typing, and it's held up to it perfectly.
A brand new TI (or HP) calculator might have a 150 MHz processor and 20 MB of user-accessible storage space, which is quite a bit better than the 6 MHz / 28 KB from my 18 year old TI-85. By Moore's law, we'd expect 9 doublings in that time period, which is almost exactly what we get in terms of storage. It's harder to judge the jump in CPU capabilities (not everything can be measured by clock speed), but we're no more than a couple of doublings away from what Moore's law would predict.

Graphing calculators are probably also overpriced, but that's not a matter of Moore's law, it's a matter of market inefficiencies and lockin.
I urge you to reconsider. The WordPress code is infamous for seemingly endless security vulnerabilities (including frequent SQL injection attacks, which should have been a solved problem on day one) and its popularity means each one found is heavily exploited.
Brave Boy-The Story of Gabe Marsh
A 6-year-old Gabe Marsh from Guntersville, Alabama was born with no legs and one arm.
Hm.. Here's an APK, although i'm not sure whether it'll run or no http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4650425/com.skype.raider.apk
When considering publishing a book, one must consider how widely applicable the subject matter is and how widely the publisher can actually disseminate your work. I just published my fourth book, seventh if you count works that I have written for hire. I do not expect it to do as well as my previous works because the publisher is smaller and the domain of application is much more restricted. The publisher of my first few books is a subsidiary of HarperCollins and runs bookstores itself, so its channels are much more pervasive. This is shown in the royalty statements.

Self-publishing naturally boosts the ROI on small runs, but it is not without its drawbacks. Whenever I have thought of a book that I might self-publish, I question whether it is worth writing. The major publishers know their customer better than I could realistically hope to ever know. If they would not take it on, one must wonder about the market for it. I do not say this to mean one should not self-publish, but self-publishing is usually reserved for pet projects that one has developed as a hobby and want to share. If one is looking for a high ROI on the effort it takes to write a book, the larger publishers are the way to go.

Also, the longevity of one's work is directly related to how evergreen the content is. If one writes something sexy or novel, I suspect one would be lucky to get a year or two of decent sales out of it. I write as evergreen as I can. so to this day, I am still receiving cheques from a book that I published 4-5 years ago that are close to the same level as what I received originally. It remains in the top 3% on Amazon.com. This is highly unusual, but it can be done. You will seldom get rich off a single title, but you can develop several streams of passive income if you write well and can engage readers. My 2¢, fwiw.
A boring project would be to regut an old eeePC with it - x2 the CPU and x2 the RAM. Seems like about the only way I'm gonna get an ARM netbook. :-(

The board is 4"x4.5", but I couldn't find thickness, weight or power consumption. Some specs at bottom of: http://www.omappedia.org/wiki/PandaBoard_Early_Adopter_Progr...
> I live in Germany and lots of people I know have separate rooms for their babies, for example.

Yeah, that was a weird example to talk about. I was immediately thinking, why is that weird? Excited parents are just preparing a separate room for their future, post-infancy child (which isn't unusual at least in the 1st-world, right?) ahead of time.