skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Bridgehead, a local coffee shop here in Ottawa, claims their cups are 100% compostable. Assuming that's true, why doesn't Starbucks just switch to these cups? I didn't notice any different in quality.
Interesting, so start a reasonable price until you get a trigger point (e.g. Featured by apple) and then lower price to remain in the top apps.
This is how I previously thought, but I've since reconsidered. The reason is that you can't split your attention between multiple projects without a loss in overall efficiency. The amount of attention given to each of n projects isn't 1/n, but rather 1 / (n^x), where x is some measure of how bad you are at multitasking. For me, I think x is probably somewhere around 1.5, so if I have three projects, I end up giving each an average of 20% of my full attention. The remaining 40% is lost to the ether due to distraction, task-switching costs, and not having one project constantly be the main thing on my mind.

As a result, increasing diversification results in a lower overall expected value of your projects, because you're losing more and more of your productivity to efficiency losses.
Landfill space is not unlimited. I understand that you are talking about US, but some countries (Japan) have huge problems with space.

The less you have the more you should think about doing things right.
I'm doing part time Android work for my old employer although honestly I barely know what I'm doing. It's editing an existing Android client app that they inherited and are successfully selling. I don't know if they're open to hiring anyone else to do the changes (I am pretty cheap) but I really have no time for it anymore and have told them so on many occasions. If anyone is interested, I can make an introduction...send me an email (link in profile)
You are coming at it from the wrong angle. The disposal of inert materials in a landfill is trivial. The problem is that we are disposing of otherwise useful materials, in a landfill. If I'm putting paper in a big pile of paper, and not using it for anything, I'm wasting resources, I could use that big pile of paper for something else.

Landfills can also be a problem, as they can have negative effects on things like local water quality. If we are using landfill space when we don't need to use it (things that are inert and recyclable), it is a waste of landfill space, which we should try to minimize and use for things that actually need to be disposed of safely.
If you're interested in reading about more of these, and how they work I'd highly suggest reading the book Hacker's Delight by Henry S. Warren[1]. I know that I've used more than a few of the tricks in my day-to-day work.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Delight-Henry-S-Warren/dp/0201...
More amateurish than "Smart Bear"?

http://blog.asmartbear.com/pick-company-name-brand.html
whoa, dark art alert!!
The Cause and Cure of slow SQL
It would be even worse if the malicious site was an exact copy of the true Firefox block page. So, when the user clicked on "Get me out of here!" it would prompt to install the rogue AV.
It's a very interesting situation because while it's clearly a "typical evil corporation" move, it's one that's objectively justifiable given the evidence. Because I am anti-putting-sugar-in-everything (HFCS or otherwise), I hope that this will result in more people associating corn syrup with sugar. All the campaigns against HFCS should really have been campaigning against all forms of sugar all along and the association will (perhaps inadvertently) make people more averse of products with too much sugar.
Alternatives to singletons in javascript
I am not very surprised......I like to use a combination of physical and digital copy of a book. Sometimes I just like to write down notes, hell lot of them while learning something new from a book, makes it lot more interesting and engaging.

Once I do some basic learning, its great convenience to be able to search for exactly what I want to refer by using search in the soft copy.

Features-wise, two things would be critical for me to switch completely to e-books:

1) Abitlity to take notes or jot down thoughts on the sides of the pages or markup/underline important sections - can't do without it, it would be too boring to even try reading without being able to do that.

2) Ability to look at multiple pages at the same time - can't do without that too. sometimes its just important for me to be able to look at different pages without having to scroll through the whole lot of pages in between

Coming to think of it, these are not impossible for a dedicated developer to do - probably the pages of interest could be tagged that would allow toggling and can be looked at in multiple windows within the same app window, like looking at multiple files in excel.

somebody gotta try it!
We might be thinking of different time-scales. I've probably never worked on more than one thing on any one day, but if I had to do the same thing every day for more than a month I'd be bored and dragging my feet eventually.
11. Don't publish if you don't want others to copy it?
Yep pretty much all simulation is currently being done with Phil Goodman's Neocortical Simulator (Matlab/C) and NEURON (C + recently a python api) on Blue Gene super computers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Brain_Project . So the mystery of who will use this chip continues.
It's a minimum order of ten, though. How many people here would be interested in splitting a ten-pack? :)
I think the reason many entrepreneurs are young is not so much that young people have inherently better ideas as that young people are in a better position to take some risk. That is why a good fraction of companies that are started by older people seem to be started by older people that already have money in the bank: they, too, are in a position to take some risk.
Internal blog pages with descriptions and stuff is what I've used before, and what I think most people use, which makes me think there's a market here for a good tool, because, at least for myself, those solutions never really worked well. As an example, I once invited someone to apply to a job that I had rejected a few months earlier. As someone wrote here earlier: if people are using spreadsheets (or wiki pages) for problem X, it's a market.

This would add spit, fit and finish. Make it easier to use. Add in easily publishing a page with a job description where people can apply/upload resume. Add an email address where you forward applications that then get automatically organized. Etc. In other words: it would add ease of use and features specific for hiring. (Still trying to determine which features exactly, which is what this post is for, but I've felt the pain myself and I'm sure many people have, so I see the problem part of this fairly clearly. Trying to figure out what a good solution would be.)

Existing recruiting software is aimed at HR and "recruiting". This would be aimed at people like (presumably) you and me, who just need to hire a few people for their team, who want to create their own process. I'm not "recruiting". I'm building a team!

Target market: people like me, ie. I would first go for people in tech firms hiring tech/ux people, because that is what I know best. We all read the "how to hire x" posts, it's not easy. The tools would make it easy to quickly set up a process etc.

Existing recruiting software is aimed at HR, at large companies, in other words, it's "enterprise" crap.
Universal Link Directory
Universal-Link.net is an online community and article links directory that will blast your article links into cosmic cyberspace!
True, but I have a feeling "Mint.com" was not cheap.
Especially when multiple books are assigned for a class, physical textbooks have one tremendous advantage: as distinct objects, they're great for multitasking and reference.

I can't count the number of times I was working on problem sets, and spread out in front of me on the floor or a big table: two or three different books open to relevant pages, class notes, scratch paper, and a laptop for Google. An unholy mess, but I needed all those resources! If they were all electronic, it would have looked neater to an observer, but I would have either needed six monitors or I'd have been in Alt-Tab hell. All my classmates had the same working style, though that may have been a peculiarity of my physics department.

E-books are good for linear reading (ie fiction), and for keyword searching. They are not (yet) as good for browsing and non-search random access, or for being able to look at multiple resources simultaneously. And I had to do a lot of that in college.
For US sales, I think there are two reasons: Verizon and taking over for basic / feature phones. Verizon has put some serious money behind the Droid brand and since we don't have a Verizon iPhone it makes a lot of sense that they are selling quite a bit.

The second reason is a little harder to justify. My basic premise is that many of these phones are going for the same price as feature phones and are being pushed hard. The data plan makes them more money so it is a net win for the carrier. My big reason on this one is the low number of apps bought per phone compared to the iPhone. It seems like they should have higher sales unless people were actually treating it more like a non-smart phone. This isn't really that bad for the carrier or Google, but it really needs to turn around to help more developers. I get the feeling the Amazon store might correct the attitude because of Amazon's reputation and ability to get people to buy online.
Ask HN: Problems/Opportunities in Medicine/Healthcare
For those who have had experience in the medical/healthcare fields, whether as profession or patient, what problems do you see exist as opportunities for clever software/webapp solutions? I'm not just talking about EMRs and implementing huge infrastructure -- even simple and nifty web apps that may serve to a subset of individuals with a particular disease or help handle a job for private practices are definitely welcome.
Has anyone ever considered selling their side project?

There is a market here. It is easy to see it from the point of view of someone working on small side projects around their full time job. The profit of the side project is not worth the time invested in it, and killing it is the best course of action. But you have all that sunk cost (time more than money) and no way to recoup it. Wouldn't you take a few thousand dollars to sell it off?

And on the other hand, if I were to buy up 5 or 10 promising side projects and run them concurrently full time, I might be able to lower costs (economy of scale) and extract some greater value from each one and the profit will be greater than the sum of its parts.
A traffic light with three different color-changing LEDs
Geekery has been cool for a while, but I've always felt that programming has carried a specific social stigma. With a bestselling movie that includes the line "I need to break out Emacs for that Perl script", maybe things are about to change.
That's interesting. What do you recommend they do instead? [I know you're an autodidact, and so am I - apparently you're a lot better at it than I am though]
What are some of the projects that you built using that method? Did you build anything that you later spun off into a better job or a side business?

I'm interested, not doubting.
Great story.

BTW, your dreamhost account was able to handle 100K submissions? not bad!
Great little tool, but of your list of possible features to add, I think syntax highlighting should move to the top. It improves readability and thus usability greatly.
Not a single sheet of paper is made from rain forest trees.

In fact almost nothing is made from rain forest trees. They are usually cut down to use the land, not for the trees.
I've yet to be convinced that anyone making these analogies knows anything about either Windows or Android.

The last Dell laptop I saw had a Mac OS X style Dock, as just one example. Before XP service pack 2 everyone added their own software for doing wireless. I had another Dell laptop that included 2 different display settings in the Control Panel, one of which was simply ignored which was frustrating when trying to get it working with a projector, you needed to use the one provided by the maker of the video chip (Intel I think, but could have been ATI).

Let's not even start on crapware, trialware and "Control Centres" that try to upsell you various services.

Jobs had to describe Windows as "open" to make his rhetoric work, which is a major warning sign. If you have to rewrite the history of Windows so that it's a pristine and consistent experience across vendors then that's a bad sign for your argument too.
ah, good point. i'll make an edit to clarify.
It's my one weakness ;)
Building a DSL in PHP, Part 1: The Pipeline
> My overall impression is that this looks like all bad ideas from Cell BE were ported to Forth language.

What's so bad about the cell? I know developers that express nothing short of love for the cell processor.
Yes, but harder to tackle.

When I read the "how we hire" posts, it's always about the process and how it helps to find good people. If I can make setting up a good process easier, I am presumably also making it easier for you to find good people. That's the thought anyways.

I also think that, after a while, I'd have one side of a market (the people who hire) lined up, and then I conceivably create a hiring marketplace. But that's a different (and harder) problem to tackle.
Direct link to the Chrome extension:
https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/ejpepffjfmamnamb...

It is a bit odd to blame this on Google unless the guy created it at work. From the page: "the work here is entirely my own and in no way endorsed by Google."

edit: disclaimer is on the actual download page!
Paper uses more resources to recycle (especially water) than it uses to make it fresh. It's a feel good thing that does more harm than good.

Putting paper in the ground is excellent from a CO2 sequestering point of view as well.
That's what you get when your WARNING screen looks exactly the same as a screen that a website or app can cause you to display.

I have always wondered how the Mac OS password screen works (you know, the one where you are supposed to enter your system password). What if an app spoofs it? How would the user know the difference visually?
Can't this be blocked on a FB level already? I don't see those "FB Connect" boxes anymore. To be honest, I cannot even remember what setting I changed in FB, but it seems to work. (I also have disabled applications and not sure if this makes a difference but I use Adblock Plus as well.)
Speaking for myself as target market (and assuming there are a lot of people like me): I avoid those "company approved enterprise" systems as much as possible, going as far as bending the rules to avoid them. Wouldn't touch them with a stick, and that goes for most enterprise systems. And then I use some wiki/whatever tool + email to organize my hiring.

I'm not aiming to be the PeopleSoft or the SAP of hiring, I'm aiming to be the Basecamp of hiring.
I don't know why everybody keeps trying to digitize books. I know it's cheaper to give someone a download than to make an actual book, but I'm willing to pay more for a print version. Print versions don't strain my eyes as much as computer version, they also look better in my opinion.

If you try taking notes in almost any engineering class on a computer the symbols are such a pain to input on a computer that it's far easier to take notes on paper. (Plus, I actually remember things that I write. I don't remember a lot of things I type.)

I believe that some things in life don't need to be digitized--textbooks and note-taking are two.
Is it not also possible that cats that fall from higher floors are in fact much more likely to die immediately and thus never see a veterinarian and never get included in their statistics. That would suggest that the injuries tend to cluster more round the extremes at higher floors but even then there could be alternative explanations.
> Fragmentation is not a synonym for choice - in fact it's very nearly an antonym.

Err, not exactly. The word 'choice' doesn't inherently imply that each option must never contain any constraints (even though it is generally desirable to minimise them). In fact if all the options are identical in result it's not really a choice. So why do we have all these different product options in so many categories? Why doesn't someone just work out what 'the best' one is, so we can all save the hassle of having those other options? One reason is that people's requirements actually are different. The benefit of choice is that individuals get to decide on which constraints and characteristics suit them best. The longer term benefit is in the competition between different approaches and organisations it fosters.

Interoperability is a property referring to the ability of diverse systems and organizations to work together (inter-operate) (from wikipedia). To me this sounds a bit like the 'inter' part implies separate entities or 'fragments'. I'm not even sure if the word really applies to a monolithic platform like iOS.
The core assumption here is that the projects are a means to an end, where the end is likely one of the "Three Ps:" Power, Prestige, or Pecuniarum.

Side projects are also like plants in your garden. Some people enjoy the gardening for its own sake, and yes that means they are going to make a lot less money than someone who ruthlessly weeds out anything that isn't going to grow into a massive oak.

p.s. FWIW, I think of side projects as attempt to answer questions. I stop work on them when I think they've gone on long enough to find the answer.
> Well, if we were recycling all our current paper based waste then less rain forests would have to be cut down to keep up with demand.

Rain forests are cut down to clear land for farming in developing countries, not for wood.
not a well thought-out idea. one of the reason current traffic lights work so well is that they can still be utilized by colorblind people. this new idea... not so much.
You are completely correct. The only aspect you are not considering is the "feel good" greenwashing.

There are far far far more important goals than recycling or composting paper.
Even the Pope talks mostly about human well-being and not about scripture when he talks about abortion

I think this is expedience on the part of the Catholic church more than anything else.
John Kotter wrote a book called Leading Change -- it's all about getting people to break out of the status quo one step at a time.

You can find the book here: http://www.amazon.com/Leading-Change-John-P-Kotter/dp/087584...

And he has a blog here: http://blogs.hbr.org/kotter/
What creeps me out about Harris's ideas on this subject are the fact that he concludes we need a world government and a panel of "well-being" scientists to decide right and wrong.

There's no way that could turn out bad, now is there? Sounds like a B- Hollywood script. Spoiler: the scientists are crazy and abuse their power to evil ends. Bruce Willis has to kill them and take over the world government for sane people everywhere.
Sorry, this I'm completely wron... I mean: I was testing if you read the comments before upvoting.

The 1/2mv^2 vs mv points to an exhaust speed as low as possible, to get as much momentum as possible from as little energy expenditure as possible.

Now, if your exhaust comes from the outside world then that makes perfect sense. And this is why you have turboprop and turbofan engines: you slow down the exhaust of the turbine, speed up outside air, and do a favorable energy/momentum trade.

But in space you have to carry the mass you will exhaust. You don't have much choice: all the energy you get from burning fuel will be transfer to kinetic energy of your exhaust (in the reference frame of the rocket).
It isn't linked anywhere though, so it's still an issue.
CERN scientists eye parallel universe breakthrough
Is This Where Talent Come From?
How Can You Tell When A CEO Is Lying?
The problem I see with Harris' approach is that he is unable to start using science in moral reasoning without first adopting a philosophical principle. In this case, he is using the idea that morality is predicated on human and animal well-being. Ok, whose human well-being, that which is best for the majority? Does the well being of salmon trump humans? Is it ok to sacrifice the well-being of some individual humans to benefit the majority?

Although I agree with Harris that religion is no solution to morality, science isn't either. For moral answers, philosophy is key.
Delusions of grandeur, IMHO, are a key part of the drive entrepreneurs need to slug through the pain of building a new business.
Consider for example homosexuality which is in general considered a sin by religions. Well science can tell us that in reality it does no 'harm' to society or the individuals concerned.

Science can't tell us that, really. Even if we had an objective measure of "societal harm", we'd have to normalize somehow for the content of the cultures themselves. In other words, being gay may cause no social harm in a society that permits homosexuality, but may cause significant social harm in a society that does not.

Science can be a contributing factor to discussions of morality, but it is not probative.

At the moment as a species we struggle with:
- the false notion that morality is absolute: it never changes and can never change.
- lack of data about how past absurd moral decisions were made (for example no gays, but slaves are a go)

In light of your first point: are you suggesting that morality is completely relative? Or merely that it is culturally contingent? If the latter, which portions are to be considered quasi-absolute so that we don't slip into the former?

As to your second point: "absurd" by what definition? You are presupposing (by your notion of "absurdity") some sort of measure of "reasonability" that I think you will have trouble defining, especially if you think that absolute morality is a false notion.
If you want this, you should check out the new data binding in jQuery. It enables it in a cleaner fashion (no JS in HTML attributes) and accomplishes the same goal.
How I Used My Summer Vacation to Start a Business
I agree with the sentiment of your post, but I'm really struggling to understand how science has much to say about the effects of homosexuality or slavery.
If there's a simple enough project that can be done using it, I might be able to recruit 4-5 people. That's half the pack.
Great point. I constantly joke that I'm somewhere between being a gazzillionnaire and living in a van down by the river.
My side project scratches my own itch. There's no way I'd want to kill it.
I recently read that book and I really liked it. I was wondering if you had any advice on how to apply deliberate practice to programming. I already have some ideas but getting external feedback doesn't hurt.
You can just share the link. Also, the "multiple recipient" feature is nearly there.
I wonder if health liability doesn't drive this, at least partially. Also, do Starbucks have dish washing facilities currently? That adds a lot of space to the footprint of their small stores (It looks to me as though Starbucks can currently just about be run out of a hallway). I'm not trying to be critical of the approach, I think it's great, it just seems like there might be some nontrivial costs to implementing it.
I'd add to that networking, if you have a solid network of friends, peers and acquaintances that all know your great at what you do, all it really takes is a "hey guys, looking for some work in x, let me know if anythings going" on Twitter ect to make things happen.

Add to that don't stop building things and perfecting your craft, much more valuable than just sending out resumes and you might just find a way to produce a bit of income in the process making your situation less dire.
$19 is the Worst Price Point Ever
JavaScript: Unrolling loop bodies
Moore has been building chips like this for years. Someone must be buying them.