skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Currently my brain is wired to have focus one on area at a time. It must be a trip to have an entire field of view in focus all at the same time. Especially if you are looking at something in the near-field and the far-field is two wildly separated visual images.
That's an interesting list of books, thanks for the submission.

How did you collate the lists?

Where did you get the books from? (e.g. HN, other sources?)

It's interesting to see what's not on there as much as what is. I would've considered the javascript books not nearly as important as Stephens' TCP/IP Illustrated, or Tanenbaum's Operating Systems Design and Implementation, but then again how much use would they be in this modern age (for the majority of use cases)?
Taking your shoes off in airports :)

This comic comes to mind every single time I go through airport security with my laptop.
http://xkcd.com/651/
I am not happy with this piechart, nor the numbers. The total percentage goes up to 88.51%, so you've hidden the last 11.49%.
This is a paraphrase of some of the things Michael Porter said in his book,Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance - http://www.amazon.com/Competitive-Advantage-Creating-Sustain... :
There is not much gain in having a first mover advantage by itself. But, if the first mover locks up key resources for success then that gives a sustainable advantage. This can be done by fast followers also. The competitive advantage strategy should be to capture resources so that competitors can't access them. For instance, he mentioned Walmart strategy of buying key locations before their competitors figure out that these location were necessary for success.

Other means of locking in resources may include contracts with suppliers and with authorities or patents. The main theme is to block competitors from resources they need for success.
The only part of this that makes me think that a fork will have to happen is the fact that IBM, HP, Google, RedHat, etc… have got to be more than a little uncomfortable with Oracle in the driver's seat.
If you make it, I'll would use it.
...implying that we'll discover a moral necessity to provide health care to others. This is of a category with the OP's comments about the elderly.

Pretty much all the other comments I've seen reference negative liberty, meaning that it regards our freedom from something, e.g., freedom from censorship.

However, you're talking about positive liberty, which is a fundamentally different thing: it posits that society owes us something.

The arguments for negative liberty are generally easier to make because they only force people to leave you alone.

The argument for positive liberty are much more difficult, because they force an obligation upon everyone. This suffers from slippery-slope problems, and clearly breaks down at the margins. Since healthcare (to take your example) requires the expenditure of resources, we must first determine to what level we are obligated (which is completely arbitrary, as far as I can see). And when resources are limited, it requires that we forsake that moral obligation (in other words, it may place us into a situation for which all possible actions are immoral).
I'm surprised that The Pragmatic Programmer isn't on there. Am I that much out of date that this book is no longer recommended? It completely changed the way I thought of development at the time.
Or anyone who is authenticated and cookied.
> This implies to me that once they cleverly figure out how to embed this tech in something like a contact lens, it wouldn't have to "fill in the gaps" and would grant perfect vision in the full vision field.

Maybe. I have my doubts, though. The abstract to Zalevsky's paper (see my comment on this HN post) ends as follows:

> This is achieved by exploiting the capacity of the visual system for adaptation to contrast as well as its capability of creating a coherent continuous visual field out of discrete lines of sight.

So simply focusing light on the retina is apparently not the goal. Rather, it appears that the brain is being sent unusual signals, which it is nonetheless capable of interpreting. In other words, there isn't just optics going on here; there is also some interesting neurology.

> Wild.

Indeed.
I'm a bit confused. In order for everything to appears perfectly focused, doesn't the glasses have to generate light rays that are just out of focus enough so your lens refocuses it correctly? So the patterns would have to be calibrated for your degree of myopia or whatever?
"Ars Digita: From Start-Up to Bust-Up" should be in the list:
http://waxy.org/random/arsdigita/
Great list of failures. Perfect for mass pre-post--mortem analysis or at the very least, a collection of warnings to avoid for future startups...Thanks for putting that together!
Check out http://ninite.com/. The name is extremely forgettable (I have it bookmarked under mass installation), but it lets you install dozens of Windows apps with one click!
"this idea is designed to employ neural adaptation processes"

Sounds like the glasses from The Jerk.
I do not say I do not test my code. I just see no purpose in implementing code that I hope will work. I need to believe it will work, and if it does not, I am sure that it is an implementation, not an algorithm issue. The first attempt in the article was just silly, and the second was just wrong. I would not waste time writing these, instead I would use this time to figure out the real solution and then I would implement it.
Typically this means there's either a serious XSS flaw or a default password on your router. Someone could, for example, change your DNS settings and start intercepting your traffic.
Agreed, I can't figure out how this can work for all wavelengths. But, then, I can't figure out how it would work at all, so what do I know? Perhaps this calls for a trip to the MIT library.

One wonders if too much reliance on "adaptations of the visual system" is going to cause problems. For example, will you wind up training your brain in such a fashion that you'll need several hours or days of retraining to see with your glasses off? Visual processing is famously plastic, but one wonders what the timescale of the plasticity is.
Ask HN: What hardware/software do you use in your daily life?
Yesterday I found myself browsing through The Setup (http://usesthis.com/) and while I admire the people that are interviewed on there, I find that there's a lot more to learn from the rest of the people here at HN.

So I'd love to know, what does your setup look like? What tools hw/sw make you productive?
Even if the whole field is in focus, only the parts of the image hitting the fovea (in the center of the retina) will be in detail.

That said, I'd still be curious to see how it looks...
Update: I've added the possibility to link directly to an entry in the FAQ.
Adam Kalsey, Founder of IMified, Shares His Journey & Learning on Foundora
What is the point of this post? The numbers don't add up to 100%, and the statement is incorrect if IE got cut off in the lower rank. Looks like people are just up-voting this post because it says "no IE".

Recently, I've been trying to use IE9 beta for my daily use. I rarely see difference or annoyance from chrome. Only thing I would like IE9 to have is...bookmark sync, which is only thing preventing me from using IE9 permanently.
That's a pet peeve of mine and it really gets me every time I'm confronted with it.

The sooner the world will have no borders the better.
You can eat gold. Search for "edible gold leaf".
Consider the school system. I won't go into how bad it is because I bet a lot of readers here already understand that. What's terrifying is not how bad it is but how institutionalized it is. What little political will, what little realization there is that this system is fundamentally broken, becomes drowned in a sea of hopeless politics.

I think future generations will view our schools as archaic and somewhat barbaric, kind of like how things like corporal punishment and child labor are viewed today. Actually, teaching a child a trade is probably less harmful to his character than sending him to the average public school.
> Currently my brain is wired to have focus one on area at a time.

Good point. Using this technology might have all kinds of unexpected effects on life.
Hopefully in the future, people will be more free. They will look back and wonder why it was once acceptable for governments to:

* confiscate huge percentages of a person's work, thus effectively making working people serfs of the government

* conscript people for war

* conduct wars

* require licensing to practice certain occupations

* restrict freedom to trade and tax commerce

* tolerate public unions

* monopolize the education of children

* force working people to provide pensions and healthcare for non-working people

* imprison people for using drugs in their homes
Actually, there are third-party services that have made a business of collecting locations of Wi-Fi routers and I believe Google subscribes to them.
Couldn't agree more with the relevant questions. Especially the first two. Show me you can write some simple code and show me you've pushed a language far enough to get frustrated with it in some non-trivial way.

Of course, after questions like that you still have to figure out whether someone will actually get s* done. That's another matter, but hopefully you can get a feel from their enthusiasm.
> ... doesn't the glasses have to generate light rays that are just out of focus enough so your lens refocuses it correctly?

I would think so. However, it looks like the idea is not just to focus the light. There's some interesting neurology going on, too. (See my other comments to this post.)
So... when is Mashable going to post something about "Life After Google" and "Life After Apple" :)

It's interesting to see Valve there.. I did not know that.
Although documentation is great, too often I have seen it get out of date, especially the big block comments above the functions. It also becomes to understand a big block comment, especially if the comment is too detailed, since you have to keep jumping between parts of the code and parts of the comment.

I like shorter high level block comments and a lot more short comments that are directly next to the complicated parts of code it tries to explain. This way the block comments will stay up to date, and it is easier to update a short comment next to the specific lines of code. Since writing a short sentence about what you have just worked on is easier than adding to a large intimidating paragraph.

But the from my experiences, the beast practice is to write clean understandable code that does not need comments; updating code is mandatory to fix bugs but updating comments is an annoyance. Code reviews do marvels at reinforcing this, especially if the reviews are done through some tool that allows your coworkers to attach comments to specific lines of your code. This way the people can see specific problems and learn from each other. Also the social pressure of having your code definitely seen by others makes you write much cleaner code, as making the same mistakes over again will make you seem stupid.
i really wonder how long the "community" is going to humour these developers. it's really about time we realize that a bunch of people got tricked into giving some students a bunch of money to hack on a fun project over the summer because they were led to believe that it would be something more than it ever was going to be. they failed to produce anything useful, or even a good starting point for a larger project. they have made poor decisions, have been far-from-transparent, and i don't see how anyone in their right mind would want to hop on board and commit a bunch of their time to this project.

is it just the publicity? how long can everyone ride that, and why would anyone with a clue think that's a worthwhile endeavour.

i've read through the developer mailing list and it's a bunch of arguments that essentially boil down to opinions about what this project "should be", and technical discussions by admitted non-experts about topics that are extremely fundamental to the success of this project. with 200K, and a boatload of exposure, they could have spent the summer consulting with experts, planning a viable solution. but they didn't (nor did they ever imply that they would, so no surprise here). i don't mean to sound elitist, but a viable global social networking platform should probably be designed by experts.

i'm not trolling, i'm hoping that people will read this and go "oh yeah, maybe my time could be better spent on other projects", instead of blazing onwards without looking at the big picture.
This (or its equivalent) has been posted before, but its last outing was a long time ago. I've found it a really interesting listen, and I'd like to give it another airing.
Technology addiction.
The brain is extremely flexible in the inputs that it will accept, but one problem of such neural re-wiring is that you will have a splitting headache the moment you go back to 'normal' inputs.

Read about this mind-blowing experiment, where vision was inverted:

http://wearcam.org/tetherless/node4.html
The first comment on that site (by Eric Kvaalen) says:

"Sounds similar to pinhole glasses. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinhole_glasses

Pinhole glasses do work, and they work regardless of your level of myopia.
Some quite valuable info in this article. I can definitely see how it is in the best interest of concerned entrepreneurs to put every ounce of their weight into studying these metrics, inch by inch.
Those are a lot of great links! But I disagree with your "BTW" line:

I don't think factor graphs are more popular than Bayes nets (a.k.a. directed graphical models), at least not in general machine learning (though perhaps in some particular subfield?). Directed graphs are usually most appropriate for generative models, which are very popular, especially in Bayesian approaches. In graphical models, directed, undirected, and factor graphs are all used in their appropriate contexts.

And it's not accurate to say that directed models (Bayes nets) are a special case of factor graphs: there are conditional independence structures that can be represented by Bayes nets that can't be captured exactly with factor graphs. The canonical example is

O --> O <-- O
Transformation of the perceptual world
Wow - that one is great (VC vs. entrepreneur tension/drama). Will add to the post. Thanks for highlighting.

edit: Added to post.
Try Windows Live Sync. It's still in beta, but it has an option to sync IE bookmarks. I think it also works with older versions of IE.
Also known as "lining up incentives". That is, "not getting punished" is a weak incentive (especially when the odds are so low). "Maybe winning money" is a much stronger incentive (even when the odds are low). "Fun" is nice but I bet it would have very little to do with the success of this idea.

Relatedly, I've wondered why pro-follow-the-speed-limit types don't spend more time reminding people about the benefits in terms of gas mileage. On most cars you get better fuel efficiency at 65mph than 70 and still better at 55mph. (Roughly: 100km/h better than 110, and better still at 85.) In days of expensive fuel, it seems like people would/should be receptive to this argument....
Http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&username=xa-4b73010a2e0111c4
Worlds Smallest Instrument (MEMS)
A high average score on your comments will give your comments preference in the search order (this is part of the 'secret sauce').

I've wondered about that… I spend a fair amount of time reading through the "newest" and "ask" lists and often comment on articles that don't end up making the front page. This can really drag your average down. The best way to have a high average score is to comment only on top stories where everyone else is reading, which I think is a bit unfortunate.
Tolkien explicitly denied that anything in the Lord of the Rings was intended to be directly allegorical. As I recall, the books don't talk about mixing races in the sense of subdivisions of humanity; they talk about things like mixing men and orcs, so it's not really the same as miscegenation.

edit: Apparently I didn't recall well enough. Oh well.
Cisco Packet Tracer 5.2 DLL Hijacking Exploit
OP has a point. In my previous job, when I looked around, it seemed like almost everyone seemed be to just coming to the job to get paid. In some pathetic cases, after seeing some really unhappy people dragging it for over a year, I have screamed silently - why don't they go find something else ?

This post makes a point, but its not to be taken literally.
To clarify that a little bit:

You can change the responses from your API without recoding your app, if you design it correctly.

However, Apple will catch on to this eventually, so it won't be a free ride forever. They'll eventually want to approve API changes that your app accesses, and I'd bet they'd yank your app if you change the API (and thus the app) without their approval.

And if your app suddenly starts violating their terms because you changed your API, I'm sure they'll yank it.
Funnily enough, my karma recently crossed the 200 point threshold, but I didn't recall the down arrows appearing for comments. I just logged in to tell you all that there must be more to it, since I've got 200+ karma and no down arrows. But lo and behold, there they are. I'm not sure if those are actually new or if I simply never noticed them before. If the threshold is not 200, it must be close to that.
There has always been a dichotomy between those who understand the science, what it tries to explain, the limits on those explanations, and those who simply latch on to the terminology out of convenience. What the Bleep Do We Know? was a terrible offender in the latter, although a fun exercise in mental masturbation nonetheless. Unfortunately, those who are in the latter camp will not (or cannot) understand the implications of this article...
>> 3. How do avoid being in the same position a year later?

Seems to me the wrong question to be asking. Being in the position where you need to "challenge yourself" (and leaving is one way to do so), shouldn't be a problem, it's just something you need to notice and resolve.

As for the other questions, they are great questions, but you'll only ever find ancedotal answers. The serendipity of how you found the next thing and what it was are the rewards for taking the risk. I usually find the story of how companies or people made themselves far more interesting than what they became.
World's first glasses-free 3D TV on sale
The Engadged title says it's a violin, but it the fact that they built each note on it's own makes me think of it as a piano, or some other hammer/string instrument. It's neat that they can modify the damping factor by changing the vacuum/pressure within the instrument chamber.
I'll start off with my own stuff.

Hardware:

- MBP 13" 2.4 with 500gb of HDD. Thinking of upgrading to SSD. At the office I plug this to a 24", mouse and apple keyboard.
- iMac 27" with a 2.8 i7. It also doubles as the home monitor for the MBP when I need to work on code that I may have on the laptop.
- iPhone 3GS 16gb. Don't see a reason to upgrade to 4 yet.

Software:

- Textmate+Terminal for most programming work
- Photoshop when I need it
- Omnifocus for GTD and task management
- Goplan for online project management and issue tracking
- Gitbox and GitX when I need a GUI for git. Most often just use my tweaked git log output anyway
- Notational velocity for note keeping
- Dropbox, a personal savior. Syncs all my stuff between machines
This reminds me of http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

It's easy to pick stuff that a portion of society agrees with you on, like ending drug prohibition, gay marriage, abortion, or immigration. Even more controversial stuff like ending meat-eating or religion will get nods from a few people. I'm not going to mention anything really crazy, since I'll get downvoted as a nut if I do.

I don't blame most people for having the same beliefs as everyone around them, and I think the future will feel similarly. But while future societies may not judge us harshly, I think they'll contain things we would judge them for. This is because we don't have the future's technology, so certain decisions are already made for us. Most of us don't even think of them as decisions. For example, we can't easily increase a person's intelligence. If we could, we would have debates on how best to use this technology and whatnot. Then, maybe one day it would be considered a form of abuse to not increase your child's intelligence through drugs or brain implants.
yes, that's it
Thanks I have used all of my morning on this one post reading these. Should be distilled into the 25 five things not to do with your start-up.
Ask HN: Have you had or know anyone who has had Lasik surgery?
I wear glasses and have pretty bad eye sight (-8). I am considering Lasik surgery (in NYC). My research indicates that the procedure is pretty solid but everytime I read about isolated cases that did not work out, it freaks me out. Also the pricing seems to be all over the place - from $399 to $3000 per eye - which also gives me pause. A mature procedure should not have such variations in pricing right? So would appreciate any feedback on this.

1. What has been your experience with lasik?

2. How much did you pay for it?

3. Any doctor recommendations in NYC?

TIA
I saw something on CBS news this morning about how they can now put a kind of contact lens INSIDE your eyes. And the woman they used as an example was able to see again only seconds after the surgery was finished. It was amazing.
Unless you have super powers, I doubt you'll have a 'unique skill' that few others have. I'd concentrate on the combination of skills that you have instead.

But then, isn't that what people look for on a resume already? That you have a particular skillset they could use? The only tricky part seems to be making sure you include the ones they want.
The blog post is a decent summary, but definitly click through to the paper.
This sounds like the story of my life. The best way to deal with it is to...leave?
Are you proposing that the US should open the floodgates to whoever wants to come over here? I'm not anti-immigration by any means, but letting everyone in all at once seems like a clearly bad idea.
I agree it does look like link-baiting-after all this is a link to Google's own site.

But since there are two places to search- Code, and curriculum,PERHAPS Curriculum search is somewhat overlooked.
I didnt know about filter:csci before.. I often dont type in 'filter' in my searches.
Also, if this was very widely used, I would have expected to see some mashups,competitors- which I didnt.
Anyways, if there is even one CS grad who got to know about CS Curriculum search through this post, I think it will increase my real life karma tremendously :-) :-)
You should really ask that question on Digg, Ask Yahoo, and maybe the Bing support forum.
In that case this might be ok, although because the OCR isn't perfect it would still involve a significant amount of work if you have more than a few books.
Not to argue the point that Google won in the PPC arena, but it's a little disingenuous to compare Google's current market cap with Overture's sale price in 2003.
Seth Godins books are like the training wheel equivalent of marketing. But no matter what, you will always find at least something in there that might change your perspective, I've yet to see any book that I didn't learn something from.
I, Cringe
In a lot of video games, the entire scene is in focus, presumably because the developers can't know where you're actually looking. In that context, it doesn't feel weird at all (though I wonder if that's part of why some people get sick watching 3D games). Anyway, I don't know if that would translate to real life, since a 2D monitor doesn't give you any stereopsis hints, but it seems not too much of a stretch...
I didn't know you could (legally) earn money for wardriving.
Spades and Men