skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't believe it's legal for a for-profit organization to hire interns in the US without paying them[1]. Obviously that might not apply in other countries.

Anyway, the work you give an intern would depend on the skills and maturity of the person in question. Some interns are going to be unreliable in some way.

When I was an intern I did everything a regular employee would have done, except front-line customer contact (my employer didn't want clients realizing the developer working their project was part-time).

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/business/03intern.html
The Official Sleepyhead Index
Snoozester calculates the Sleepyhead Index by tracking the percentage of calls snoozed against the total number of wake up calls answered for a given area. Rank '1' identifies the area with the most 'Sleepyheads' (indicating the highest ratio of snoozes to wake up calls).
Here's the press conference in three ~10 minute parts:
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hu5dXnCUs7I
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LsihAsX4z8
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nu0VvxuicLw

The lead author gives a talk at 2:26 in Part 1 that I thought was an excellent example of how to communicate science (or other technical subject) and implications to a general audience.
"but they're pointing out that it does show that forms of life different from our current definitions can exist"

Yes, but not meaningfully different from previous definitions. If this is simply an evolution of existing earth life, then it's just another in a long list of things that we were surprised evolved from conventional Earth life, but is, nevertheless, conventional Earth life. It's more indicative of a slight flaw in our definitions, not time for a radical reexamination of our assessment of the universe.

As I commented in a previous message, people have a history of getting far more excited about this sort of thing than they have scientific justification for. This sure looks like another one of those.

Now, if they could establish that this has to be the actual entirely new branch of life that can be provably not traced back to the same Earth ancestor as everything else, that would be a groundshaking discovery.

Those of us pondering the Great Questions were already not assuming that everything has to look exactly like known Earth life to work. There are numerous obvious different, incompatible mechanism that could exist (different RNA transcription tables, the other chirality for proteins) and an unknown and presumably vastly larger number of unobvious different mechanisms even just for basically Earth life before we really go out into new territory. We've already speculated endlessly about silicon life, ammonia life, mechanisms other than photosynthesis, etc. Don't get me wrong, this is legitimately interesting, and would on its own be worthy of HN, but I have to say the implications for the Great Questions are basically zip. Announcing proof that life can only exist in precisely Earthlike conditions with incredibly tight tolerances would be the surprise.
Looks like most people choose to wake up at 6:00 AM
Most common time people choose to wake up: 6:00 AM
The zoom in my browser seems to work fine.
Most theories[1] agree to say that replicating life predates DNA. Wouldn't that mean that we could still have a common ancestor with this life form?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis#Other_models
Ah, it appears you're correct. They are using Microsoft's similarly-named "PlayReady" DRM, which also plays PlaysForSure content. See http://www.homemediamagazine.com/netflix/netflix-selects-new...; it seems that both PlayReady and PlaysForSure are derived from Windows Media DRM 10: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayReady.

Thanks for the correction, sorry for the error.
I just turned on the "always on" feature for http://www.quickbrownfrog.com. Worth spending $9/month on. I imagine this will lead to lots of instant cash for Google from frustrated developers.

Now, if only we could have SSL...
Functional vs. Object-Oriented JavaScript Development
I'm not really sure why revving the major version number so fast on chrom* makes any sense - or makes any difference. By their goals I'll be running chromium 26 in two years.
I was only talking about how the metaphor is actually radically more complicated that the thing it is putatively explaining. People mostly aren't timing their deaths (though history has shown it isn't quite the zero you might expect: http://www.nber.org/papers/w8158), and government taxing simply occurs, there's no customer participation. The metaphor, by introducing those concepts, actually goes wrong.
It's definitely a fine line between taking a "bottom-up performance" mindset and a "premature optimization" one. Way too often, I'll start approaching something with a fast-complex solution, spend some hours on it, run into major bugs, and then quickly turn around, do the simple thing instead and usually get it done in under half an hour.

I have the feeling that I can only really overcome this by knowing the domain well enough that I don't feel the urge to take on such big problems anymore. It seems like there's a vast middle ground of knowledge where you know enough to not be naive, but you don't know enough to understand what you're getting into with the harder solution.
No.

the Ultimate Goal is to create and maintain as much of an ideal society as we can pragmatically attain. An ideal society has no crime. In Canada we've realized we can't entirely eliminate crime, because many of the more drastic measures to "get tough on crime" have harmful side-effects that take us further away from the ideal society, not closer towards it.

We take the same arguments towards cigarettes, alcohol, automobile speeding, and children in swimming pools. Draconian measures that would increase our safety--like banning tobacco, prohibition, stringent requirements to obtain and maintain a license to drive, or banning personal swimming pools--actually move us away from our ideal society, not closer.

We have to "Play God" and agree that someone, somewhere, must die as a result of terrorism. We as a society already do that with our respective health care systems, with our automobils, with the sale of alcohol and tobacco, with the sale of guns, by allowing children to swim in swimming pools,and the ridiculous ease with which we allow people to obtain and drive vehicles.

The ultimate goal is to define what it means to be a Canadian or an American and then to live as much of that life as possible. The argument is whether the goal of zero airplanes downed can be achieved without compromising our Canadian or American identities.

I'll leave it up to others to argue whether strip searches and banning toner cartridges will achieve this.
The tetris effect: your brain brings games to real life
There's got to be a happy medium here. I don't want to be owned by my stuff, but I also think that anyone who says that material things can't make you happy hasn't owned a Mustang GT or a Fender Stratocaster.

If you don't have either of those things, then I think you're right to covet them. :-)
Why Do Google Maps’s City Labels Seem So Readable?
If the headline of an article can be responded to with a simple "yes" or "no," there's likely a lack of content.

In this case, it's 'no.' There's a reference to a previous boycott over Amazon that happened a few years ago around Amazon not showing some GLBTetc-friendly items, and was resolved because enough people supported it. In the case of WikiLeaks I'm fairly certain that those who would even care that Amazon wouldn't continue hosting WikiLeaks would still be a large portion of an online-based population that cares that WikiLeaks exists at all. Not exactly an issue that affects most homes or families in a direct manner. WikiLeaks went to Amazon for hosting, Amazon said yes then was pressured out of it, WikiLeaks found other hosting. If they'd have chosen 1&1 or most other hosts and were turned down, no one would be giving much of a damn.
You can even follow ArsenicBacteria on the twitters.
Same here. His .plan updates were always very opinionated and interesting. I'm happy he is now somewhat active on twitter (@ID_AA_Carmack).
Crunching the Numbers on Big Data
Do you think this has potential? It just launched so the number of people chatting is not quite there yet.
We launched everyAir late Oct, but started really getting users this month after some updates. It is a fast remote desktop app for iOS designed for games and movies. Check it out everyair.net

Getting encouraging feedback from users. We are now heads down working on the next version due in a few days.

Would love HN feedback, email for free coupon.
I take that back, I did hire someone about 11 years ago that just didn't belong in the position at all. It was clear within the first week and we let him go. I consider that my failure though, not the process.
Dear customers, thank you for your support of our company.
Here, there's good news to tell you: The company recently
launched a number of new fashion items! ! Fashionable
and welcome everyone to come buy. If necessary, please
plut: http://www.onseeking.com
You can argue that possibility of alien life is also quite a common idea. Yet a confirmation of that would be considered a major scientific breakthrough.
Pretty stupid article. Of course they're subjective where is the surprise there
Is the Age At Which Kids Get Cell Phones Getting Younger?
The failure of Gran Turismo 5: the power of menus and UI
where is this Channel API I googled it didn't see anything.
JavaScript features
Ponytail Hairstyles
Ponytail Hairstyles are very popular. They are great for women that are on the go or during the hot months of summer.
Considering that the list is limited to "launched or founded" in 2010, I'd disagree that using revenue is the best metric.
IPO Anxiety - East Coast Version
I'm aware; I was working under the assumption that he'd want decent wages even though he is India because 1) he has expensive medical things to pay for and 2) because he wants a stable income for 5-6 years, seemingly something salaried or professional-level. You don't usually get those kind of rates on Elance et al. I wanted to point out that it would be especially hard to him to get good rates on these sites, since if someone is willing to pay a respectable wage, they usually don't want to use an offshore developer.
Well... I released a dud - SMSuL8r.com - sms reminders.

Then I built http://castmyclips.com, which is not quite ready for prime time, but is usable. It allows you to take text (copied from web sites) and turn it into audio. then you can listen to the audio & even subscribe to it in iTunes. It was quite fun to build, and I'm actually kind of proud of it.
Perhaps NASA should be more cautious about holding a press on astrobiology, and with a Science embargo. Clearly everyone will immediately think of aliens, and for good reason. It's NASA, it's about astrobiology, and it's something big enough to embargo Science. They're just asking for all the alien stories. And let's be clear, these are not aliens.
Riak Function Contrib, a Community Powered Function Repo for Riak.
Personal Finance on a Napkin
I don't think I agree with the conclusion that performance will "depend almost completely on the random seek time." You can store the entire 10TB library on 5 2TB spinning drives. 5 drives can easily serve up 500mbps (that's only 60MB/s, one drive territory). So, on to seeking.

2000 streams, 5 drives, that's 400 per disk. Let's say we have the world's worst disks, that can only do 10 seeks per second. 400 / 10 means we have to buffer 40 seconds of data per stream (per seek) and we have to read it in 0.1 seconds before moving to the next stream. 300kbps * 40s / 8 = 1500K of data. 1.5M / 60MB/s disk transfer takes 0.025 seconds, well under 0.1.

I guess that's alluded to by "non standard prefetching", but I don't think it's that advanced. Especially since in a streaming video application, the client software is already going to be doing buffering for you. The bottleneck is bandwidth.

Check my math please? :)
Very cool, well built.. but from a UX/UI perspective, it strikes me as a little bit odd that I would be sticking post-its to a cork board. Maybe a refrigerator or whiteboard texture would be more fitting. Or, so that you don't have to change your domain and branding, you can add thumbtack graphics.
There is no Array.indexOf in IE 6 and 8, LOL. Thank god for Prototype and jQuery.
While the site itself is interesting, I don't like that it posted a message to my Facebook wall without asking or telling me. (I know I gave it permission to but still, I'd like to be notified before that occurs)
I think you mean, "いくつかの日本語"... :)
Perhaps all this denotes is the times when people get up abnormally early hence require a wakeup service.

And what is a snoo-zester anyway?
The most useful of them by far is Rapportive.

It's a Gmail plugin that replaces ads with a contextual
mini CRM.

You should check it out.

I can't imagine how they plan to monetize it, though.
i think that it is meaningfully different from previous definitions.

perhaps all sparks of life would require the same stuff that it did on earth, that is unclear. but it shows that the continuation of life doesn't necessarily require that same stuff. it means that in searching for life, you don't necessarily have to limit it to the proverbial class M planets.
I thought free electrons might have something to do with it, but I'm making do with an only slightly better than high school education in chemistry here.
I don't know how you've done that, and I'd love to find out. We ran an ad, both direct to the media, and through a recruitment agency, asking for a skilled C programmer to join a team writing systems to apply well-known and well-understood algorithms to moderate sized datasets and image data. They were required to be able to write code in an editor and use GCC on Linux.

When they came for interview we asked them to use whatever editor they liked to write and compile code. Some used pico, some used nano, some used vi, some used emacs, one used NotePad on their Windows laptop and transferred the code using a USB drive.

We asked them to write a program that read a file of bytes and write a second file, of exactly the same size, where each byte was incremented by a number. The two file names and the amount by which to increment are to be given on the command line.

They were told in advance that they would be asked to do something like this, and they had 'net access to look stuff up, as well as man pages.

We found that of 17 applicants, 15 couldn't do it.
Like many others, I didn't hit the launch date for my app: seating plan software for dinner events and weddings (http://www.tabletwist.com). I did make huge amount of progress though, and I'm hoping to launch before 2011!
Redwood Systems in Fremont, CA: http://redwoodsystems.com

We make a unified power, control, and environmental sensing platform for LED lights in commercial buildings. We're looking for some interns to start in early 2011 or this summer. Great place to work for those interested in sensor systems, power system design, and user experience.

Feel free to get in touch, mball@redwoodsys.com
I couldn't disagree more. Astrobiology researchers made this finding. If you think it's not astrobiology take it up with NASA.
Apple TV HD Rental streaming problem, still not answered
We not only could have a common ancestor, it seems to me to be almost certain. What are the chances that some other life has evolved with DNA completely independently
I found short preview coverage at http://bitshaq.com/2010/09/01/sneak-peak-gae-channel-api/
I released http://www.searchforphp.com/ and im looking to roll out python java and dotnet versions soon.
Cleaner, Leaner, Meaner: Refactoring your jQuery
I agree we should remove that feature at some point. Let me ask you how is different from how farmville build up traffic.
Your second paragraph sounds right for what I was trying to say.
I'm also tired of seeing HTML5 this and that (as it's mostly grossly misused to mean 'highly dynamic'), but this

<!doctype html>

is actually how you declare an HTML5 doctype. They're also using the semantic HTML5 elements header and footer.

Reference:
http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/syntax.html#the-doctype
http://ejohn.org/blog/html5-doctype/
Just Downloaded Rihanna on Guvera.com-Free and Legal, sweet
The WPM gauge is set to go from 0..120. I didn't expect to have many customers that can type > 100WPM, but perhaps I was mistaken. If anything, I thought that I might end up dialing that down to 0..75, so that most users at the lower-end of the range feel like they're getting a positive result. Maybe I could make that a configurable option in a future release.

As for measuring typing accuracy, that's surprisingly complicated. I wrote up a blog posting on this:

http://quickbrownfrog.wordpress.com/2010/11/22/measuring-typ...

Thanks for the feedback!
Number 1 is so, so true.

After being burned a couple of times on this, the first thought that comes to mind when someone claims to be a subject-matter expert is that they're really an expert in the business processes used by one particular organization. It's very rare to meet someone who has sufficiently broad experience in an industry to know how and why processes differ between companies.
Back in the discussion thread pre-announcement a few days back, I mentioned Mono Lake as potentially being a source for this (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1953749 and http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1953756).

I just wanted to reiterate my suggestion for any bio-geeks living in the Bay Area - Mono Lake is only 2hrs drive from Bay Area and it is FASCINATING.

I would really encourage anyone who is interested in ecology and biochemistry to go check it out if you are passing through to Mammouth Lakes for snowboarding or taking a trip to Yosemite which is next door.
You just missed a big discussion about it in the last couple of days: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1959338
Nicely done. I attempted doing something similar but it was not executed as cleanly as yours. Is there a way to pin items so I don't accidentally move them?
Bad CaRMa, epic failure of Vision '91-'94
Ask HN: Rate my Webapp: castmyclips.com
CastMyClips.com lets you paste text into the site, then it turns into audio files which you can listen to in your browser. It also gives you an RSS feed that you can subscribe to in iTunes (like a Podcast) so each clip is automatically downloaded.

The monthly cost for a full account would be $3-$4. I haven't decided whether to offer a free account, or a free 30 day trial.

I understand the web site needs some serious design work... that is next on my list.

This is a pivot off of a WordPress plugin I wrote (castmyblog.com), and it's now to the point where I need to decide if it's worth pursing and spending some money on, or if I should drop it, so your feedback would be appreciated.

http://castmyclips.com
Yes I was hoping for this. In fact, why limit yourself to Bit.ly links? You could literally index every link coming through Twitter. Future expansion: move from Twitter to all public links shared on the entire internet.
The docs haven't been updated yet. Here this years IO video and pdf presentation:

http://www.google.com/events/io/2010/sessions/building-real-...

and here's the sample app (java):

http://code.google.com/p/dance-dance-robot
http://www.youtube.com/googledevelopers
I don't think the quote from Google says quite what this writer thinks it does.

> Instead, in the last few days we developed an algorithmic solution which detects the merchant from the Times article along with hundreds of other merchants that, in our opinion, provide an extremely poor user experience.

The "opinion" refers to user experience. Which is, of course, a subjective thing.
This blog post seems to have something about that: http://pospapendix.blogspot.com/2008/04/richard-feynman-stor... (it's in there somewhere, search for patent)
I think you might have confused unwillingness to talk about things we don't know with unwillingness to admit the possibility of things we don't know. Having some knowledge in common helps make conversations interesting. When two people talk about a possibility that's in the head of one of the participants, the conversation is unlikely to be on equal footing.
3d printing a chair
You're definitely unusual. Almost everything I own I bought by exchanging cash for the product. Most services, I exchange cash for the service. I generate the cash by doing things I'm good at.

My dad is unusual too though. Say you need a new dryer, he'll go on and tell you that all it is is some heating something or other, sheet metal, yada yada yada. I'm half way to Sears... :-)
it would be a much bigger deal if that element was a replacement for carbon :P
2g iTouch 4.2.1 JB with redsn0w 0.9.6b4 not working
Yes, I agree here. Slightly stronger because though the possibility of alien life is entertained, it's not necessarily the common viewpoint that its widespread and will eventually be found in droves (like I see non-carbon based life). On the other hand, I expect fully us to be looking back several hundred years from now wondering how we could have ever thought we were the along lifeform in the universe. But a major scientific accomplishment it will be when it's first discovered, for sure.
Docs are on their way; just waiting for the push to complete.
Meebo CEO Seth Sternberg On Why He’s Pushing For Website Check-Ins (TCTV)
The site will be great once it reaches critical mass traffic!
http://i.imgur.com/UBA0F.png
Forgot I had clicked the link, was wondering how the technical level of content plummeted so quickly. I need more coffee.
Yeah, I don't know either. Sounds like DNA is the strand/mechanism and using phosphates is all we know of so far. IANAS

But if it's not-technically-DNA-anymore because it can use an arsenate instead of a phosphate, it's still part of our tree of life. That's the part that seems to have dampened enthusiasm somewhat.
You worked for epic too?
This isn't a game, there are no game mechanics built into this. All you do is click the 'Next' or 'Accept' buttons. People will obviously only accept chats with people with an interesting or attractive profile image.

Another issue I find is that I am unable to 'chat' with anyone. It makes me feel like you site is padding with bots that don't speak back to you. They just sit there.

I don't see this site 'blowing' up or even becoming that cool. My recommendation is not to quit your day job. Use your skills on another web site.
Locksmiths
I just discovered Ted Dziuba through your post. This is incredible. He's like a mini Zed Shaw.

http://teddziuba.com/2008/04/im-going-to-scale-my-foot-up-y....
http://teddziuba.com/2009/09/twisted-vs-tornado-youre-both.h...
http://teddziuba.com/2008/11/avoiding-nlp-at-all-costs.html
Yeah that's it. It was Freebase before.
Bill Gates on Climate change, aid to Africa etc (in a book review)
"That was a big success to our current security systems."

No, it wasn't. Saudi intelligence provided the tracking numbers for the parcel bombs[1]. All the billions of dollars that we've spent on airport security did absolutely nothing. As Schneier as argued before, if you secure the one route the attack just comes from another route.

1. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/06/world/middleeast/06terror....
The point of my comment was not to say, "hey everything's going to be great! Throw your money away, you CAN'T lose"

The point was to counter the negativity of the GP with some positive thoughts.

Being positive doesn't mean to ignore risks, or to turn a blind eye to consequences, it means starting off with the belief that you can succeed.
"Most people" implies a majority of people. But the graph indicates that only 8.1% of people wake up at 6am. nitpick
snooze-ster

A snooze is a nap.
Its in the official docs
http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/python/channel/
>have an app on the phone that plays a series of tones on the speaker, which the lock receives and uses as an audio key

The series would have to be time-dependent, or you'd be vulnerable to replay attacks. Or maybe the lock plays a challenge and the phone plays the response.