skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> How much liberty are you willing to give up to prevent automobile accidents? children drowning in swimming pools?

I'm willing to give up the liberty to not wear a seat belt and to not go as fast as I want to prevent the majority of accidents. I'm willing to give up the liberty to not put a fence around my pool to prevent most children from drowning. But I'm not willing to let the Government take my car entirely or say I just can't own a pool. So again, as I said in my original point, it's a question of degree not of absolutes.

As far as your last paragraph that's you projecting. No where in his piece does he talk about methods that are and are not effective. The word effective isn't in the piece one single time.
Funny, I made this only yesterday: http://pepijndevos.nl/the-age-of-apis-and-virtual-ghost-town...
The only reason people are as concerned as they are about the federal deficit is because most people have already concluded that there will be no meaningful spending cuts. There can't be. Neither party has enough power to force anything truly distasteful to the other's ideology down their throat.

The biggest drain on our country is defense spending. But the Republican Party will not allow defense spending to be cut. Medicare is off the table because it is part of health care reform recently passed by the democrats, and because the GOP's base is proportionally uninformed elderly boomers who are about to receive S.S.

You can't have a conversation at a legislative level about what roles that government should and shouldn't perform. Until we agree on that, spending cuts of any meaningful kind are not going to happen. The only way out, then, is to increase government revenue, which implies more taxes.
My beloved Github hits the dust
I was under the impression that artificial speciation had been achieved. Have I misunderstood http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciation#Artificial_speciatio...?
It depends exactly how strictly you define speciation. If you follow the 'weak' version of 'these two populations will not normally breed with each other and create viable offspring' then we've done it a few times with flies [1]. We've created populations that will not normally breed with each other.

If you pick a stronger version, where they -cannot- breed, even if you were to preform in vitro or something similar on them, then we haven't quite done that yet.

[1] http://www.jstor.org/pss/2410209 (overview of attempts to record speciation in a lab)
Github is Down
From status.github.com,

"Site is unavailable. We're researching the issue. "
Arsenic is this big: (makes gesture with thumb and forefinger a few angstroms apart), bacteria are this big: (makes gesture with thumb and forefinger a few microns apart).

OK, that's not overly helpful, the point being, you can filter bacteria out of water a whole hell of a lot easier than you can filter out dissolved arsenic.
Well, it sounds like you have good reasons for using your techniques. I think it was a good discussion, in that it showed techniques that work for one situation may be wholly inappropriate for another.

An obvious hypothesis is that if you want to employ programmers other than in the bay area, you're screwed.

For the record, I've also hired folks in Boston, Boulder and Washington, DC with similar experiences. I'll admit, though, that the average quality in SF was the best.
You're right, Larry's is an inspiring story and it's well told on his Wikipedia page. My objection is to the style of reporting in the original article.

I see it very frequently, especially in more traditional forms of news media which have a broader audience consuming information more passively.

In this context it's obvious that one can use the story above to then go and look up each individual story to see the details but as a "news meme" I think this type of story needs to die.
TED talk: Dan Dennett on dangerous memes
He's a lightning rod that potential leakers are likely to trust not to leak who they are. Anybody trying to build a wikileaks clone would have to build trust, especially to prove that they're not a state actor.

But even if you're leaking to a potentially untrustworthy wikileaks clone, there's technologies that can make it possible. (anonymous remailers, tor (combined with other web anonymizing tech), etc) As more people get used to how the internet works it'll become easier for potential leakers to trust those types of sources.

In other words: it's a bit of hassle to replace him outright. His replacement might be a decentralized system of some sort.
Really? What separates you from chat roulette besides one is video and one is text? What is suppose to keep my coming back to your app? There is no value to this IMHO, others may fell different, but don't ask for a review and then down vote the honest ones. After all, I didn't make another account to post a comment and upvote comments that benefit this post.
categories are needed as you don't have a unified community submitting content
Yes, but look at what you are saying.

I fully agree that bacteria, rotifers, and other creatures can pick up genes. This is incredible. In fact, they've just found bacteria that substitute entire elements, which is incredible too.

What I am asking about, is the specific hypothesis:

"all speciation occurred via repeated application of mutation and natural selection, and no other factors were involved"

Now, I realize this would be impossible to test for ALL species, but wouldn't it be nice to have an example of at least ONE species that arose in this way through sexual reproduction? We have been breeding dogs for hundreds and thousands of years, and all of them are the same species! We have been adapting plants and never been able to create new species. Why is it so hard to do it, or it's just that we haven't tried hard enough?

I'm basically taking a skeptical approach here to the hypothesis, you see what I mean? It would be nice to just call it all "evolution" and assume the results. But I'd like some proof, some falsifiable predictions that have been tested.
مسلسل وادي الذئاب 5 الحلقة 18
You're speaking in platitudes. You say...

"That's what it means to "conquer" fear: to control it, rather than letting it control you."

Well I'm sorry but that's silly in practical application. Fear does control us. I don't cross the street when the red hand is up because I fear getting hit by a car. That's not irrational.

It would be irrational if I NEVER crossed a street for the same reason. So again this reinforces my original point which is these things are a question of degree and arguing "against fear" is pointless and counterproductive.
Fair warning: have your Readability bookmarklet ready. The page is black text on a horrendously bright yellow.
Also,

Even if you just started with names, it would be possible to be slightly smarter than just looking for the individual names.

For each name you found, you could scan its immediate social network and see if that contained a match for any of the other names. Putting this together might pull up the whole social graph.

Add more networks and publicly available information and I'd expect a name-list could come close to uniquely identifying each name on the list.

Project anyone?
I second, but that's what the first article posted on HN seemed to suggest. http://skymania.com/wp/2010/11/alien-life-form-is-here-on-ea...
For Rent: 4BR/1+1BA Apartment in Hackensack, NJ, $1,700/month
So, exactly where in the paper did they show that there was DNA that had an arsenic backbone? They just showed that there was arsenic in the sample that they think is DNA, and not very much phosphorus. That could be contaminants. But also, how do they know that sample is the "DNA sample"?
Yea but that point, you are getting around faster than the speed of light. If you can move faster than the speed of light, why would you use radio waves for anything? What if their entire communication/transportation happens in some manner we can't comprehend.

Imagine trying to show an iPad videochatting someone else to Da Vinci. It would be black magic with so many layers of technology that he couldn't comprehend - and he was a smart guy. So in a few hundred years we've blown everything we thought we knew away. Who knows what physics and technology we will have in a few thousand years?
How Would a ‘Do Not Track’ Mechanism for Online Privacy Work?
low cost low resolution bolometer arrays are easy to make if you have even a simple semiconductor fab (http://www.eee.metu.edu.tr/~tayfuna/papers/akin_c20_mems2001...)

The problem with anything built for military/medical/emergency service use, is that by the time you have ruggedized it, packaged it, setup service and support and got it approved by a dozen different agencies - well even a simple flashlight really does end up costing $100
Haha yep. Anyone know of a way to hide that? We might have to save the pic from fb. That would be a pain though.
With no description I almost didn't click on this link, but I'm glad that I did. The title of the paper it links to is "29+ Evidences for Macroevolution, The Scientific Case for Common Descent" and is worth a look.
Honestly, the menu system does suck a little bit, but I don't find myself spending tons of time trying to find cars or remember the makes/models/years. I know "ok this requires 1970s cars made in Europe." ...nothing in the used cars section so I'll do something else. The author on Ars blew it out of proportion a bit.

What is frustrating is navigating around the dashboard page because sometimes the selector jumps to an area I'm not expecting based on the direction I pressed on the d-pad. Also, some shortcuts could have been implemented to make buying cars for races easier but it's not much different from previous titles in the Gran Turismo franchise.

My only gripe with the game has been that you can't invite someone into a game in online play. Call of Duty makes this very simple and GT5 missed it by a long shot. Hopefully an update will fix this but I doubt it.

Otherwise, the game has been great and I'm having a blast playing it.
The Chrome team revs version numbers for development reasons not for marketing reasons. It's a return to the classic, and more useful, use of versioning.
no. we already theorized that, we didn't know. we didn't have proof. now we do; now we know. the actual tangible differences are likely going to be in funding, research direction, and scope of effort on the topic. who knows what future research will generate off of this?

no, the world hasn't changed. sorry. not yet, at least. but its kind of like watching the moon landing in '69 and scoffing at it because you knew it was coming, you've been reading about NASA working on it for years in the paper.
Bacteria multiply just fine (in fact better) with phosphorous but seem to cope with arsenic too. This is in my view a strong indicator of a mistake or flaw in the paper because it'd mean that if the authors' speculations were real, those bacteria would have evolved thus to modify a great deal of their biology just little enough to be able to incorporate both arsenate and phosphorus. It doesn't make sense.
<a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/52420/Science-2010-Wolfe-Simon-scien... the PDF</a> of the paper, btw (I don't like scribd).
That's the "put all 10TB on each streaming server" solution that he immediately rejected because of expense. You can see that the more streaming servers you connect to the storage system, the more important seek time becomes. He did then say "whatever architecture", which is not quite right since the seek bottleneck may not appear until the streaming:storage ratio gets higher than 1.

For a realistic exercise, throw a cost factor into your equation and optimize for cost and latency (aka user experience).
Fair enough. For the record, your dietary assertion was not correct.
Ranting on LeBron - December 2nd, 2010
Yes. "detailed, insightful, coherent, highly varied, but wrong theories of the future" are made all the time.

The really amazing things are not the genius predictions that are right and venerated, but the predictions that are wrong but the predictors are still venerated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus - 1798 predictions of "gigantic inevitable famine" because of population growth. (Industrialization and technology have allowed population growth dramatically beyond Malthusian limits. The same arguments are still made today however.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticisms_of_Marxism - "the socialist revolution would occur first in the most advanced capitalist nations and once collective ownership had been established then all sources of class conflict would disappear" http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/ "labour intensive industries ought to have a higher rate of profit than those which use less labour" (argue about whatever forces you want that have defeated socialism, but the argument continues)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager Malthusian environmentalist Ehrlich predicts hundreds of millions of people starving to death in 1970s and 80s, and a genuine age of scarcity." He also loses 10-year bet against economist Simon. "All of [Ehrlich's] grim predictions had been decisively overturned by events...Repeatedly being wrong actually seemed to be an advantage, conferring some sort of puzzling magic glow upon the speaker." [Wired]

Recorded, detailed, insightful, coherent, highly varied, completely wrong.

Oh, and Ehrlich won the MacArthur Foundation genius award AFTER his predictions were proven wrong...

kb
The new interface is a pain (esp in Arcade mode) but I really do suggest you pick up the game sometime for your son regardless.

I consider it one of the better games for 15-20 year olds because it is incredibly educational with respect to the aspects of driving in general. The game is packed with great technical commentary.
I just looked at that section. They present three examples:

flies - but they say only a "mating preference" was achieved. Well sure, there are different kinds of dogs and they probably prefer their own kind, but they are still just one species.

domestic cattle - this is a non-example, as the article points out, because they are all capable of interbreeding

sheep - two kinds of sheep are apparently different species. However, I would take issue with this statement: "For example, domestic sheep were created by hybridisation"... it seems inconsistent with the other one: "but the initial dates and methods of the initiation of such species are not clear". How do they know they were created by hybridisation?
Anecdote: I'm not smart enough to design software without having an idea of how it can be automatically tested. My design has to prove that it can be easily tested (both via unit tests and integration tests), and I've found that writing some of the tests up front helps with that.
Who's lobbying for the estate tax?
I dinged up my car this week, so I've been taking the bus to work. For the first time in a while I've been able to read during my commute. Instapaper has been fantastic for this. I've plowed through tons of material that was in my "I'll read it later" list (which I rarely find the time to clear).

CastMyClips is an interesting alternative to Instapaper. I really like the podcast idea, which you could effectively use to pipe audio straight to your iPod for your commute.

I'd recommend you target this at people who drive to work. Reading articles with Instapaper is not an option for them, but playing audio through their car's stereo system is. I'd seriously consider using this during my morning commute.
Hmm, I wonder if Google has tech to do that. Thinking...
I second the subscription idea. Probably you could charge like $5(or more) per month with a minimum commitment of 6 months.
"Farmville does it" isn't a valid excuse. Be kind to users. Don't sink to the lowest common denominator.
Check out the game 'Yoostar' which is a commercial implementation of this, allowing people to insert themselves into their favourite movie scenes.
Can someone explain this "always on" in more detail? I don't have much experience with Google App Engine, does this mean apps not used frequently have a startup time? So, if noone accessed the site in the last few minutes, the first user accessing has to wait some time for use?
That's a great idea -- I'll try implementing it. Thanks.
This could be awesome, if done transparently. The greatest appeal of this application is it's straight-up simplicity: you click, start typing and your notes are stored. Feature bloat would really detract from this experience.
Microsoft Research Develops Zozzle JavaScript Malware Detection Tool
Thanks. I had services like instapaper in the back of my head while I was writing this. I also plan on making a bookmarklet so you can easily get text into the service.
Perhaps it is clear that current TSA measures are silly, ineffective and an eggregious infringement of liberty?
That link is down, but you can see the full article at their homepage too: http://gameinternals.com/
Fine for me, 5:03PM EST
Exactly. Read again the 4 steps in http://blog.fairsoftware.net/2010/10/15/how-do-i-know-you-ar...

Either you produce value for the overall project, or you don't. Ideas are worth something, but sitting on one and doing nothing is not.
Why not just a DNS Archive?

Instead of snapshots of how a domain's webpage looked throughout time, you have snapshots of what ip address a domain mapped to, throughout time.

Make it opt-in. Hell, maybe even charge for it.

Make a REST interface that can be queried by browser plugins, other websites, etc., that allows people to obtain the old IP address if it suddenly changes.

Now you haven't broken anything and have provided those who need it with a way to find you, even after a government interference.

You could even make it retroactive. If somebody takes control of your domain, and you didn't opt in to the service before hand, you then submit your actual IP address to the service. The service only accepts requests for IP changes that originate from that actual IP address to prevent unauthorized changes.
Photos Of The Incredible Bombshelter Fortress of The Wikileaks Archives
Channel API: “There is no concept of “presence” for clients connected to a channel. This means the application cannot receive a call when a client connects to or disconnects from a channel.”

Sigh... this reduces the awesomeness quite a bit :|
The Real Mother of Invention
I'm surprised by the strong objection. I understand that the lead scientist is with the NASA Astrobiology Institute, but I still think that despite the important implications for astrobiology, calling it astrobiology is questionable. If neither NASA nor any astrobiologists had been involved, exactly the same results could have been obtained, and the astrobiology connection (though it might be played up because it is an interesting angle) would more clearly be incidental. In other words, I don't think you lose any accuracy or diminish the finding by referring to it as biological rather than astrobiological.

That said, I'm not sure I really want to get caught up on "biology" versus "astrobiology" as terms. I think the greater point (or at least the point I was trying to make) is about communicating clearly and managing expectations. When you say astrobiology or exobiology, invariably some people are going to cry, "What, no aliens? You tricked me!" If that indignance prevents them from trying to understand the importance of the story, should we even bother trying to cater to them? I don't have a good answer for that. Without raising the idea of extraterrestrial life, they might not have been engaged at all. It's just something for those involved in public outreach to be aware of.
It'd be nice to see what it looked like if you changed the shader to take the differential of the Z buffer to calculate surface normals for the person, and use that in the refraction calculations. That way you'd get a 3-d blur effect, rather than the flat silhouette.
The nice thing about G1 is that it has a dedicated camera button (separate from the volume controls).
Groupon Is Getting 79% Of U.S. Group-Buying Visits Vs. 8% For LivingSocial
You're badly misunderstanding my point. I'm not saying this isn't interesting. I'm saying this isn't actually all that interesting when it comes to the Great Questions. It doesn't significantly expand where we already thought life could be. It has not yet established that it is anything other than another evolution of Earth life, which would be a big deal, and from the sounds of it that's still what it is, an adaptation.

This isn't some amazing announcement with profoundly unsettling implications for life in the Universe. It's another in a long series of announcements about how our understanding was limited about how far Earth life could travel. It's roughly similar to how we found non-photosynthetic life around the ocean vents [1], or the recent discoveries of strange life several miles underground [2], or the sky bacteria [3]. I think quite a few people here are not understanding just how many similar discoveries have already been made, we moved on from "all life in the universe will look just like the standard sun-powered ecosystem we live in" quite a while ago.

I guess you could say to the extent this is amazing, we've already been amazed this way. It's cool, but it's a discovery that fits quite comfortably with a number of other interesting discoveries. We're not going to be talking about this in another year. (Except possibly because once people start looking for more examples of this sort of thing I'd lay money they find them.)

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrothermal_vent#Biological_co...

[2]: http://www.livescience.com/animals/061019_otherworldly_bacte...

[3]: http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/news/2008/02/bacter...
very well said.

when i was doing a startup in the 90s, my SO was in law school and she was working even longer hours than i was. so our conversations were often "i'm afraid i'm going to have to work late tonight." "bummer. me too, though, so it's probably just as well." we worked side by side a lot too, and both made it a point to be involved in what the other was doing: i'd quiz her about outlines to help study for tests, she gave a lot of feedback on what we were doing as a startup ... it worked out great.
TrueView Video Ads give viewers choice and control over ads
Of course the system worked. Chertoff's buddies have sold a shitload of body scanners the past year, haven't they?
Wait, what? My original comment got at least one upvote, and then my edit ("For example:..."), that was meant to clarify what I was saying, is getting downvotes. Can someone explain?

I'm not trying to disagree with the OP in general (you can't fight bad logic with more bad logic) but just pointing out that correcting someone's facts can be easier (and with this datum point, possible).

Edit: I like the upvote, but an explanation would be better.