skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The Day the  asked for a Raise
I, the

Penis, hereby request a raise in salary for the following reasons:

I do physical labor.

I work at great depths.

I plunge headfirst into everything I do.

I do not get weekends or public holidays off.

I work in a damp environment.

I work in a dark workplace that has poor ventilation.

I work in high temperatures.

My work exposes me to contagious diseases.

Sincerely,

P. Niss

The Response Dear Penis:

After assessing your request, and considering the arguments you have

raised, the administration rejects your request for the following

reasons:

You do not work 8 hours straight.

You fall asleep after brief work periods.

You do not always follow the orders of the management team.

You donot stay in your designated area and are often seen visiting otherlocations.

You do not take initiative - you need to be pressured and stimulated in

order to start working.

You leave the workplace rather messy at the end of your shift.

You don't always observe necessary safety regulations, such as wearing

the

Correct protective clothing.

You will retire well before you are 65.

You are unable to work double shifts.

You sometimes leave your designated work area before you have completedthe assigned task..

And if that were not all, you have been seen constantly entering and

exiting the workplace carrying two suspicious-looking bags.

Sincerely,

V. Gina
Has anyone used Tropo in a serious capacity? I'm currently using Twilio for SMS, but Tropo's integration with various IM services and very slightly cheaper SMS pricing may be compelling enough for me to switch.
Around the World In 24 Hours
Today we will take you on visual tour around the world in 24 hours with the help of amazing photographers from different parts of our planet. They will guide you through the dawns in the ancient landscapes to the lights of modern metropolises.
The IRS is annoying, hampers business and is very ineffective, but there is at least some good in it.
You can read it in more detail by checking out his blog post:

http://scobleizer.com/2010/11/12/why-google-cant-build-insta...
The UK is is as bad as the US is. Don't wear a backpack on the tube in London because it will be empty when you get off.
I used to think that shopping on a Sunday was a "Good Thing" until I lived somewhere where I can't. Almost all shops are closed on a Sunday. If you need food there are a few supermarkets open.

What I found that after a few months of adjustment, the shops being closed on a Sunday was a good thing - people don't automatically gravitate to shopping. They do other, more relaxed stuff, like meeting friends or relaxing. It's a bizarre case of less choice is good.
Except last I checked you couldn't include people in existing threads.
And I don't give any amount of fecal matter that people are scared

And that is why I hate and despise such a sentiment. It highlights what is wrong with society that it is ok to push a position through fear. People are controlled through fear, and persisting that method of making a point is only prolonging the problem.

You're no better than them.

I apologise for being blunt, no offence intended.
"devastated" is an extreme, hyperbolic, maudlin way of describing it. Devastating would be a good description of the effect of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Not on being patted down by airport security. That's called "being patted down by airport security", coupled with being emotional about it.
Could be that he's bought multiple versions of the kindle - perhaps a v1, a DX, a v3 - and has no pressing reason to get rid of any.
Bad science hasn't prevented the anti-vaccination movement, the creation movement, etc, etc.

You may take issue with the science - but you would be missing the bigger picture: this is about politics, not science.
Really cool stuff! Check out the timestamps from the SEM - you can see he was doing the pictures in opposite order.
Can someone explain why a Ram Disk has any advantage over cache based disk?
Facebook Connect has a long way from being the "identity manager" I speak of, and it's integration with applications as it is now leaves a lot to be desired. There has been backslash because 1) it's a mediocre implementation and 2) the lack of openness on behalf of Facebook and their methods are not in the best interest of either the users or the applications that could use this system.

Facebook could have become the central hub in which you can manage your identity (in an open way of course). Facebook could allow you to easily do anything on the web with fewer clicks by means of integration with other sevices. Instead they rather have you locked in to using their services and implementations and that is what I don't agree on. I wished it followed what I want, but whatever they do I wish it was adding value to the experience instead of just creating a more locked in ecosystem.
Get attacked for breaking your software tests.
A more detailed and BS-free list than the average one on this topic. I think all of these are good explanations of the problem.
I'm sure there are hundreds if not thousands of developers that could say the same of Microsoft.

Its probably the same for Walmart suppliers.
The method may be the same, the intend is different and no real harm is done, unlike the tsa.

Look I would love to have a rational discussion with people about this, but that will have to wait until they come down, people who are already scared shitless can't think straight, so either we step in and direct them -- though means one of us like -- or we let the politicians do so for us -- and end up in a place we have even more.
Using the original Symbolics Keyboard with the Mac
True enough. It's quite hard to find them but I found one that apparently came from a site called InfoWars - isn't that some whacko conspiracy theory website?
That's an unusual selection in general - there's comments that don't even describe something that occurred - just someone complaining in general about the TSA policy.
Pune. If you are looking for a vibrant startup community, Pune is the place to be. It may not be as big as Bangalore but its far more vibrant.
He doesn’t and can’t use a last-view snapshot. He uses an empty UI with no content and no buttons, consequently it cannot be misleading. I would prefer that massively to a cheesy splash screen and a last-view snapshot, the only problem is that it doesn’t always fit.
Silicon Valley also owes much of its existence to the defense industry.
From the article:

"As a group, employees who are asked to work long hours are the above-average workers;"

Nonsense. Employees who work longer hours are, (IMHO) the below-average workers who can't get the work done in the time allotted. Whether they do it of their own accord, or are asked to stay behind and finish.
1: My daughter just moved into her own house today.
2: Wow, awesome! I should call them to congratulate her! Whats the new house number?
1: Oh, she doesn't have a landline, she just uses her cell phone.
2: That's the scariest thing I've heard so far today.
1: ???...

To the newest generations email is an antiquated technology that has no real use among their peers. Eventually they might get some email address for college/professional use, but that's practically akin to a fresh college grad now getting a fax machine because "its what we use at the office".

Not shocking.

Edit: Unless by "the scariest thing" you mean the idea of xyz@facebook.com becoming the default for the >17 crowd, in which case, disregard my nonsense.
But Gmail has a good spam filter. So, you could use Gmail's POP features to connect to and download your Facebook emails.
It flags them as a company that cares about technical competence

I bet the tasks being sent out are most probably something in the vein of parsing a CSV file or (in case of Atlassian) writing a simple JSP or trivial XSLT or what have you. Not the best check for competence.
IIRC, one of the reason Judit Polgar is so good at chess is because she uses the part of her brain that recognizes faces to remember certain board configurations (ever wonder how people can recognize faces they've seen briefly before so easily?). Her memory was trained from a very young age, but I'm not sure if the "rewiring" of her chess memory was intentional, or if it was just a case of the brain adapting (probably the latter).

They once did an experiment where they sat outside with her and a truck drove past with a particular chessboard configuration on the side. She glanced at it, then recreated the entire board in a few seconds. Then another truck drove past with a different configuration and she couldn't recreate it. She remembered the first one because it was from a game she'd seen before. She'd never seen the second one before so she couldn't remember it.
Maybe the supplement is not worth it, but the ratio of omega 6 to omega 3 has been shown to be important. The proper ratio should be somewhat close to 1:1, but the current western diet is more like 10:1 (10 omega 6, 1 omega 3)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12442909

Western diets are deficient in omega-3 fatty acids, and have excessive amounts of omega-6 fatty acids compared with the diet on which human beings evolved and their genetic patterns were established. Excessive amounts of omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) and a very high omega-6/omega-3 ratio, as is found in today's Western diets, promote the pathogenesis of many diseases, including cardiovascular disease, cancer, and inflammatory and autoimmune diseases, whereas increased levels of omega-3 PUFA (a low omega-6/omega-3 ratio) exert suppressive effects. In the secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease, a ratio of 4/1 was associated with a 70% decrease in total mortality. A ratio of 2.5/1 reduced rectal cell proliferation in patients with colorectal cancer, whereas a ratio of 4/1 with the same amount of omega-3 PUFA had no effect. The lower omega-6/omega-3 ratio in women with breast cancer was associated with decreased risk. A ratio of 2-3/1 suppressed inflammation in patients with rheumatoid arthritis, and a ratio of 5/1 had a beneficial effect on patients with asthma, whereas a ratio of 10/1 had adverse consequences.

Also, http://www.physorg.com/news198518697.html
I'm not sure 20% is worth the hassle, to be honest. I did an experiment like this recently with our project compilation. Our project's pretty big, 875k LOC Java according to SLOCCount, and takes around 15 mins to do a clean build on my workstation. I tested putting all the source, output dirs and ivy cache in a RAM disk, and was really surprised that it made less than 20% difference. I guess disk caches are really good these days.
The technology inside the Google self-driving cars
Wandering Minds Less Happy Than Focused Ones
You have lots of upvotes, so what you are saying must be interesting. But I can't seem to get it! Can anyone explain what's this about?
Deduping Facebook
I think it genuinely addresses some of the design flaws of css (too much repetition). That can't be bad. But I'm not sure a new syntax needs to be created for the job. I'm having a little play with using plain json to represent css in a similar style: http://github.com/twfarland/son (on node.js/express). There are still some things I need to add (firebug integration, creating actual css files) but it seems helpful so far.
I definitely agree. Especially when I'm passing my code to designers who are scared of code.

Giving them a template file with something like {$CustomerFirstName}. Which they can then move around without fear of breaking the page makes sense.

And let's be honest there aren't that many websites in the world which have to really worry about the performance implications of using smarty.
OS X 10.6.5 update breaks PGP WDE preboot authentication
Yes. Even the article says they do not want people to stop taking DHA supplements.

Our boy is one month old and my wife has been taking DHA supplements for more than half the pregnancy. I was actually looking at DHA supplements for infants when I came across the above article and it being very recent one caught my interest. It is yet to be seen if DHA makes him smart but as of now we are very happy with the little dude :)
Unfortunately this email arrived in my inbox 24 hours to late.

Hope others are more fortunate.
Canabalt soundtrack is free now (pay what you want)
I must say, I've gone back and forth with templating engines for PHP. I've never really bought it, but I do like the experience I had with haml in Ruby.

Recently, I really like the look of Moustache Logic-less templates - http://mustache.github.com/ - yet to try it though.
Sorry, no. You've really missed the point I'm afraid.

A little bit of knowledge, as they say...
meh, Instagram seems pretty useless to me. Google builds more cool stuff in an average month than Instagram ever has.
back in that era all of the successful players - you know, the REALLY successful players like Yahoo, Microsoft and Excite (!) had web-mail clients that were basically startups they acquired.

It was only Google that really built a killer web-mail client from scratch in-house.
Although this is already the case with Google Profiles - the url is the same as your gmail account name unless you opt out/change it (most people don't)... yet google handles the spam well.
I was only bullied once in school. I retaliated, give him a busted lip (he beat me harder, though), and noone messed with me after that again.
Business 2.0 speak, perhaps with a hint that web email at this point is OLD NEWS?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backscatter_X-ray

Well, it does use x-rays, they are called "x-ray backscatter scanners".

Serious scientists have expressed concern. The concern is with the fact that inadequate testing has been performed, and comparisons made with other radiation sources are flawed because they take the absorbed dose and average over the entire volume of a person. Anyone in radiation safety understands the important number is the dose absorbed in specific portions of the body. In this case, the x-ray radiation is absorbed in the skin (minus the very small scattered fraction), not your entire body volume, resulting in a much higher local dose than you would expect if you modeled the exposure as uniform through the volume.

Since the x-ray source strength is quite low (assuming the machine isn't multifunctioning), the health risks to occasional travelers are assumed to be low. Maybe frequent travelers or airline employees should have greater concern, or those at risk of cataracts.
The cheapest small-traffic solution I've found is to hook one or more phones to a PC and communicate with them via Hayes AT commands. Can look a little hacky, but once you have the box set up, you don't have to worry anymore. Switching "gateways" is the same as switching sim cards.
Aside from the merits of this story, has anything that was branded "killer" by the media actually ended up being even moderately successful?

(The various iPhone killers, Facebook killers, Google killers, and so on come to mind...)
Richard Feynman Video - The Douglas Robb Memorial Lectures - Part 1
Preventing Brute Force Attacks With BlockHosts On Debian Lenny
I hear their legal strategy is: "If you invented facemail you would have invented facemail." followed by writing a cheque for a tenth of what they just raised.
Great article, but I'd like to contest a few points.

4. Google forces its developers to use its infrastructure, which wasn’t developed for small social projects

One of the advantages of working for Google is that you get access to this infrastructure. At times I wish Google would start offering a raw BigTable service alongside/instead of the richer, but, limited App Engine services.

6. Google’s engineers can’t use any Facebook integration or dependencies like Instagram does.

I don't know if such a policy exists, but it certainly doesn't seem to apply to projects like YouTube which integrate fine with YouTube.

7. Google can’t iterate in semi-public.

If anything, Google have proven that a large company can iterate publicly. I can't think of a single other company that has had as many perpetual betas as Google...

P.S. Corrected link to Instagram: http://instagr.am/
Facebook makes almost no money? You're insane. Facebook is making a billion of profits a year, and that's a 3-5-fold increase on last year. They're not shouting about it on the rooftops (why should they?), but they're clearly on their way to having a business that makes just as much money as Google (however it is they're doing it) and so will probably command similar valuations.

This reminds me of the few years before Google IPOed, when Google were deliberately keeping quiet about their profits so as to not generate lots of competition for themselves, but were quietly putting away hundreds of millions a year and multiplying that each year.
> Write a Hello World application from scratch. No C library, compiler, linker, nothing. You get a hex editor.

"To prepare a donut from scratch, you have to first create the universe."
German 'Fleshmob' Protests Airport Scanners
The next step is obviously to do away with clothes altogether once entering an airport...
Sorry, but this is stupid. Your Os already caches files in your ram. No need for a Ram Disk.
GoogleReader.vim : vimscript for googlereader
"What they did to me, in full view of everyone else in line, was like being sexually assaulted all over again. I was in shock. I hate myself that I allowed them to do this to me. I haven’t been able to stop crying since"

Am I the only one who thinks this is just a slightly exaggerated reaction? Why did she let them do it if it's such a sensitive issue for her?
Then it's just setting some bits in the video memory to "on".
20+ Beautiful Windows 7 Themes
Windows 7 is now becomes very famous in the world because It is the first Operating System of Microsoft which has been developed by keeping users feedback in mind. After failure of Vista because of slow speed, It is more popular among Windows users. Any ways If you are the User of windows 7, then definetly you want themes to make your desktop beautiful. That’s Why today i collect 20+ beautiful windows 7 themes for you. Enjoy!
huh?

Google have built instagram. It's standard on any Android phone. [photo] -> [share] -> picasa/twitter/facebook/gmail/etc

Unless I'm missing something, instagram is a 'feature' that should be on any smartphone. Not surprising it's not on the iPhone though.

(First I'd heard of instagram as well. This is an interesting way to get PR).
"Devastated" is an appropriate description of a sufficiently adverse emotional response.
I've been using a Ram disk as the TEMP folder on Windows for more than a year and the overall speed of the system is quite better than without it, and certainly quite less disk activity. You can change the temp folder location in the enviroment settings.

The advantages besides speed are, the temp folder cleans up every time you restart, it's also useful for storing anything disposable, an archive you'll need to download only once and use its contents, and useful for doing anything potentially unsafe for your regular disk.

The disadvantage for setting your temp folder to the ram disk is that sometimes, some programs will try to store a lot of data on the temp folder and fill it up (I use 384mb), but that's something you can usually change in the programs' settings.
I think you're confusing the IRS, which collects taxes, with Congress, who levies the taxes. "Don't shoot the messenger" and all that.
This is very true. I'm 20 and I've never used my personal email regularly and I'm sure most of my friends haven't either. We've always used MSN or AIM and more recently Facebook to keep in touch.
Juniper Learning Portal - Juniper Learning Portal - Learning Portal Home
Ask PG: How is a user's average on HN calculated?
A recent post did better than my usual submissions, yet the average hasn't changed. Is the average calculated at a set of intervals?
> what kind of person would apply for such a job, knowing this was one of the duties?

An unemployed kind of person, perhaps with a family to feed and bills to pay.
Good comment.

> Ya think?? And even though you realize it, you're still planning to do it? I'm sure the kid will be VERY grateful when he grows up.

Unconventional names get you teased as a kid, and remembered as an adult. I think it's a good tradeoff.
Maybe they can, maybe they can't, but do they want to? I'd bet Google's going after fish so big that two guys can't do everything from start to finish.
Don't visit Delhi, Bangalore, and Chennai. You'll not miss anything. Instead visit places like Udaipur, Trivandrum, Kandalampadu etc.

From http://airbnb.com you can get decent accommodation.
Getting to QED, part 2: deduction and arguments
Ask HN/PG: How often does karma average get updated?

6 points by pg 6 days ago

I don't know. There's a background process that runs every 45 seconds and picks a random loaded user to update the average of. Empirically, not more than every couple days, at best.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1875635
...but he can properly explain why he can't.
Think of it this way. Imagine that Apple just came out of nowhere and released the iPhone, iPad, and iPod line. Do you think their next move would be to launch a line of proprietary computers?

If you pitched that idea to Jobs, you'd probably be looking for work the next day. It would be that dumb.
Much of there SG&A is from a salesforce. Their product requires people to spread the word.
This is all so terribly foreign to me... almost nothing I read here makes sense. In the Romania I grew up in if you had serious trouble with other kids you just talked to the teachers or your parents, and they'd solve the problem. Worst case would be a parent to parent chat.

I think I was under 10 when I upset a girl who lived next door. Don't remember really what I did, but I sure as hell remember her father chasing me three blocks, only to tell me very gently that it wasn't nice and he'll have to talk to my parents if I did it again.
Algorithm pioneer Laszlo Lovasz, wins Kyoto Prize
I know how it works, but the trend to replace the US dollar as the world reserve currency is already happening, being driven primarily by China and Russia. Be it a currency basket, IMF SDRs, 'petro', or something else, they're working on alternatives. It won't happen overnight, and the effort may ultimately fail, but it would foolish and complacent of the US to count on having the world reserve currency forever. A multi-polar world eventually won't accept it, both b/c of the Triffin dilemna and balance of power games.
Trauma is not rational. It's like a beast inside you. Sometimes you think you can handle it, but then you find out you can't.
Doesn't both merge at some point?
I wonder if it is possible to mathematically model what characteristics of an environment are relevant to be able to build an effectively Turing-complete mechanism?
Not when you get it through Facebook Connect authorization.
You're right there, no disagreement from me on that point. I should have qualified it with Post-Industrial Revolution, which is what I meant. After humans learned on a widescale that a viable alternative to stealing wealth is literally creating it.
Most Startups Should be Deer Hunters
Seth's Blog: Hire an architect
Wow this blow my mind, i have a CS degree but never imagined this level of miniaturization.

See Believe
IPad magazine apps: the death of a collection
Have you encountered many spammers with @gmail.com addresses?
Not only that, it was also that Smarty2 is PHP4 code, and in recent years anyone reasonable moved to PHP5 and its' reacher OOP features - you still could use Smarty there but a) it could produce some technical problems B) it was totally not cool.
In the meantime some other template engines were made (e.g. Dwoo or Twig) and they were better written, probably faster and have some great, new features (template extending).
What further undermined Smarty's position was that php.net stopped to support the project (though I don't remember when it had happened exactly, might be well before 2008).

But aside of all of that, the 3rd version of Smarty puts it back on the right track.