skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> "Congress has written its own accounting rules — which would be illegal for a corporation to use"

It stupid to treat a Federal Government (of any nation with it's own sovereign currency) like a business when it comes to accounting. The nature of being the entity that creates a lot of the money (in the form of Treasury bills, banks create the rest via loans) means that doing this type of single entry accounting just doesn't make sense. Unfortunately this kind of article plays great for USA Today, where anything that terrifies the readership is great for business, like any other mass media outlet.

To see what I am talking about, check out this peice.[1] I'll even quote the relevant part:

> "When government spends and runs deficits, it credits private bank accounts more than it debits them, thereby increasing the savings of [dollar denominated] US financial assets of the non-government sector. In fact, non-government savings [...] can only increase if the government runs deficits, and they increase by that exact amount. The reverse is true of surpluses. Government surpluses necessarily reduce non-government savings by that exact amount as well.

Therefore, the projection of a $5.6 trillion government surplus a few years back was also in fact necessarily projecting a $5.6 trillion drop in non government savings! For all practical purposes, this was a ludicrous projection, as there is no way private savings can be reduced by that amount without virtually eliminating everyone's retirement accounts and in the process eliminating private spending, employment, and income."

[1] http://www.cfeps.org/pubs/sr/sr0402/sr0402.html

The rest of the policy proposals and case studies: http://www.cfeps.org/pubs

By definition, running government surpluses means sucking more money out of the economy in tax revenue than it puts back in. At first this would be done by buying back all those treasury bills that make up the debt, taking trillions of savings away from private holders of said bills. Then, with nothing else to do with the excess tax revenue, the government would have to start buying assets, which would remove said assets from the private market, effectively sapping wealth from the private sector. In the end, all assets would be owned by the government. Of course, there isn't any real danger of this actually happening, but I'm trying to point out that the government will never get it's act together or be profitable like a business like so many people seem to desire. It just doesn't work that way.

What matters is that the government has enough tax revenue to pay interest on the money it creates (treasury bills), which it does. In fact, interest payments as a percentage of tax revenue are at the lowest point in the last 15 years.

On the other hand, I totally agree with the guy from Harvard:

> "Accounting matters, the deficit number affects how politicians act."

If it takes a big scary (and meaningless) number like the National Debt to keep them from going hog wild on the pork, then so be it I guess.

As for Social Security and Medicare: http://www.cfeps.org/pubs/sr/sr0501/sr0501.html
getting your own dedicated short code is expensive and takes a while (~2-4 months).

i'm not familiar with the process, but in theory you can apply for a direct connection to EACH carrier (i think you need insane volume to even attempt this and even then approval is not probable).

after you get your dedicated short code, most people turn to aggregators that solve the volume problem for you (i.e. clickatell).

others bypass the dedicated short code route for cheaper / more immediate results with a shared short code (i.e. textmarks) -- accessible with a vanity keyword.

you can also try setting up your own SMS gateway w/an open-source like Kannal. add nokia phones for extra style & fun points as desired.
The Wonderful World of Web 2.0 Whining
They got their data from Indeed, which means "Cocoa" matches any job with the word "Cocoa."

http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=cocoa

A lot of non-programming positions out of Cocoa Beach, FL, are bringing down the average: teller, front desk agent, sales manager...
okay, in summary, I wanted to say.

In Perl $ means scalar, @ means array and % means hash

Those are variable types, you learn them by looking at the variable syntax or name

The value pointed to by those TYPED variables can be more complex, you can have integers, floats, strings, references, reference to a string, reference to array, reference to hash, array of strings, array of references etc .....

but the variable type won't tell you about these complex structures, it will only tell you that the value is $ scalar or @ array or % hash ... and in that there is no confusion, all the variables you mentioned above are typed scalar and can only point to values of type scalar

I understand your problem, since a scalar can be a reference to an array

you want to think that $ref = [] points to an array
but it doesn't it points to scalar which happens to be a reference to an array!

you can for example do this

my $ref = [];

$ref->[0]= 0;

say $ref->[0];

$ref = {};

$ref ->{0} = 1;

say $ref->{0};

but you can't do this

my $ref = [];

$ref->[0]= 0;

say $ref->[0];

## $ref = {};

$ref ->{0} = 1;

say $ref->{0};

because in $ref ->{0} = 1 the assignment is to value referenced to by te scalar, and this value type is not a hash and can't have a hash member {0}
World's first play based on an Internet search log
Why did China’s scientific innovation, once so advanced, suddenly collapse?
On the server side (Helma/Rhino) I do a lot of functional-style JavaScript anyway, so jQuery feels very natural to me. It does have a lot of sugar, but playing with the DOM needs it. Crockford described the DOM as having been written by people who like Java[-esque things] and hold JavaScript and its style in contempt. I can't speak to the history, but the actual W3C DOM standards are such that that could certainly be true. The W3C DOM is not plain old JS. The W3C DOM is a verbose, clumsy API direct-ported from (essentially) Java into JavaScript.

> then it becomes so habitual that you forget how to write "regular" javascript.

I wish that were true. Unfortunately, I still have to drop back to W3C DOM for performance often enough. For a recent feature I added, 6 lines of jQuery becomes 24 lines of JavaScript, but the speed goes from unacceptable to acceptable. (What am I doing that jQuery's not fast enough? In this case keystroke-by-keystroke search and manipulation of a 6000-cell table.)
Deadly Domains 
"Companies that assign addresses for web sites might be giving security measures a miss when they assign names in certain domains than in others."
MLM for dummies.
I prefer jQuery. It's the fastest growing javascript library. It's the newest javascript library on the list. It runs fast, and most importantly; it has a very simple and readable syntax.
Python. PHP is really good for hacking things out, and there's a case to be made for using Python for the back end programming, and odds-and-sods of PHP to extract data into templates and so on - but fundamentally if you have real code to write, use Python.

PHP ain't bad, but PHP code is fragile. The language, over a year or two, meanders about breaking code willy-nilly, and that alone is good enough reason to steer clear of it for serious applications.
The Five Questions Companies Ask About Social Media
Nightmare on Microsoft Street
For all you UK based programmers: http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/
Try this: CSS: The Definitive Guide, Third Edition (http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596527334/index.html)

and this: CSS Cookbook, Second Edition
(http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596527419/index.html)

These books are a pleasure to read and they are really cool.
Google encoded on Code 128
See Google encoded on code 128 for barcode (just 4 fun)
The T-Shirt History of Mozilla
hey, I'm looking for people who are interested in server side javascript and jquery to help give some input on a framework I'm working on. The framework is about a month old but the core concept is already there.

if you or anyone is interested send me a email (tunde.ashafa AT gmail)
You wanna know what I use to make the graphics on this website? Microsoft Paint. Seriously. All of the graphics on this website were either made in Microsoft Paint

no wonder it looks like so 1980s
The kid wasn't even around in the '80s:

http://www.thatsanderskid.com/about.html

Now that makes me feel old...
PHP's lack of first class functions

Thanks for that lil' tidbit.
Microsoft: "... We will outsell the iPhone. We will outsell the BlackBerry."
no offense but, ms paint or something similar was in the 80s though..

people with talent should use something that can help them show it off and spend less time
because using any library is always going to be less optimal than a custom solution.

When I started learning js I just decided it would be worth more to learn js, rather than any library. Now I know js there seems little benefit on learning one of the js libs.

Of course this is all just my personal opinion and experience.
Are you saying java is a bad choice?
A great message. Most of us invariably get caught in the rat race, every action merely one to make out CV's better, and the number on the monthly check higher. Though what makes us humans, and good people is not the ability to buy a bigger house, or have our names in the headlines of the week, but the capacity to reach out - reach out to those who need us, and to make the world a better place for all of us.

Thank you, JK Rowling. And thank you, ashwinl.
i never used Perl, one of the few languages i havent even tested.

so it has a culture of libraries people say but what kind?

making a lot of really high-quality ones like in python or just spewing out tons of buggy libraries with poor documentation and it is hard to find what you need or something in between?
Getting started with gnuplot
If you're a total beginner, the Head First HTML is pretty good. I know some people don't like the style of these books, but for HTML & CSS, I think it worked well.

http://www.amazon.com/Head-First-HTML-CSS-XHTML/dp/059610197...
The Breakfast Manifesto: The New Science of the Loneliest Meal
c.f. http://www.lulu.com/content/116824
Couldn't agree more with the two points:

1. the absence of a mercantile class to foster competition and self-improvement; the sheer size of China compared with the smaller states of Europe whose fierce rivalries fostered technological competition.

2. an education system that fails to emphasise improving “character”.
> 6 lines of jQuery becomes 24 lines of JavaScript, but the speed goes from unacceptable to acceptable

Have you tried JQuery 1.2.6 yet? I've also had to drop down to raw DOM for performance, but I've found that many features that were unacceptably slow with 1.2.3 (mousemove events, $.map) have gotten quite usable. Events no longer copy the whole event object, map is linear time instead of quadratic, and I've heard $.extend got a major speed boost which'll speed up construction of all jQuery objects.
NFL Combine.
The 10 Brainiest Places to Retire
Anyone has an invite? I'd like one :) alx.girard@gmail.com
While only a tiny slice of HN readers are at retirement-age, I thought the list would be interesting: no Cambridge, MA for example.
"software update" on a single computer? And no mention about whether it was XP or what...
CSS, the language, is relatively simple. CSS, the kung fu, is a matter of learning how tons of edge cases and tricks come together.

It's best to treat it like other programming languages: go find some websites that you respect the look of and ask yourself how did they make that effect?

Then skim through this stuff: http://alistapart.com/topics/code/css/
Hilarious. That's why C programmers are down in the $60,000 range

http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=c&l1=

http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=c

Because it's hitting things like A/C technicians. This blog article is nearly worthless for some of these languages.
Not as good as "Larry Ellison's speech" at Yale:

http://www.snopes.com/quotes/ellison.asp
Agreed. I signed up to Pwnce right after I signed up to Twitter, but quickly decided I couldn't be bothered with Pwnce since Twitter was clearly fine and had more users.
China certainly had a merchant class. The problem was that merchants were powerless compared to the official class, who could thus confiscate any surplus they generated.

Results: (1) The merchant class is unable to accumulate capital to finance new technological development. (2) Ambitious kids become bureaucrats instead of making something people want.

(Britain reproduced this result in the mid 20th Century.)
How are they tricky to implement from scratch :/ The animation effects you talk about are pretty simple mathematics.

eg

function timerMethod() {
currentFrame = (currentTime - startTime) * numFrames / animationDuration;
}

And to do 'easing' as you call it, you could just use sin/cos, or a small lookup table.

The main reason to duplicate effort is to firstly learn how these things work, and secondly to get a better solution matched more optimally to your use case.

I personally like the DOM... theNode.parentNode.removeChild(theNode) makes quite a lot of sense. But it's probably a matter of taste that one.
http://siteanalytics.compete.com/www.cashblasterpro.com/?met...
You won't find any hackers who use sweeping generalizations. Oh, wait!

I'm a hacker. I use PHP. I use Python. I use C++. I use Java. I use JavaScript. I use Prolog. I use C#. I use whatever language or tool is best for the job and I innovate with them however I can. I love getting my hands on new SDKs for every language and framework, learning their quirks and implementing fun things with them.

There is skill in any language you choose to use. That's up to you, not the language. In fact, a "bad" language require significantly more skill to use successfully and securely.

Now, I'm not going to disagree with someone if they provide cons/pros for different languages, PHP has its faults, maybe even more than other languages. But it strikes me odd that you'd be upvoted so much for saying that no hackers use PHP.

The presence of "novices" aren't going to scare away someone who likes to code and get the job done in clever ways. I'll also note, as someone who runs a game scripting community around Python, that novices produce some of the cleverest little tricks and really shouldn't be shunned anyway. We were all novices once.
i've been playing about with this, it's very slickly implemented. love the in track comments.
What, you couldn't tell Albus was gay from the first 6 books?

It's not canon anyway, so you can go on pretending he's straight or asexual or caprasexual. Hell, I pretend the epilogue doesn't exist, and that is canon.
This isn't true in my very recent experience. I was recently (briefly; hired now) looking for a job in the DC metro area, and I find that even places that want you to primarily use Python or Java seem to also desire PHP experience, presumably because they have lots of legacy PHP code.
It's accurate, but he's cherry-picking events from both books to illustrate his points. The above description could be Ursula LeGuin's Wizard of Earthsea series as well. Hell, Orson Scott Card stole the ansible from LeGuin's Hainish novels.

Without the school aspect, it could be Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. Without the flying in mid-air, it could be Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic books or Sherwood Smith's Wren's Quest series.
It would be more surprising if it wasn't also the last.
Lispers can expect $77k/yr salary on average?

http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=lisp&l1=&tm=1
Article is right on all points except prominent in-game ads have been around much longer. Go play Wipeout XL (1996) for the PSOne. It was literally plastered with Red Bull ads.
The 2nd result still has pretty big influence on Today's China and Taiwan.

Most current industrialists in Taiwan were kids treated by school administration as not worthy of higher education. While most government officials holds advanced degree from North America, Europe and Japan.

The absurd part is people with advance degree may not be capable in build up business empires but creating tons of bureaucrats that prevent entrepreneurs to move ahead.

-- edit --

I am not sure when the confiscation of merchant wealth exactly happened in Song dynasty. But in Ming, Qing dynasties (those not so innovative eras after Song), confiscation is a huge motivation for ambitious kids to get into government system. And in theory, all confiscation goes to Emperor, but in reality emperors allowed confiscators to get a cut from it.
Desktopography
Log in page
Hi. I have a question. Many website nowadays grays out everything but the log in form when a user clicks on "Log in." Elance.com is one example. Do you know what javascript library they use?
Digital Forensics: 5 Ways to Spot a Fake Photo
for my $0.02 worth...

as far as i can tell, the author is on point. twitter is pretty much a place to waste time on. and yeah.. there are a number of people who do bitch about it.

ain't self importance great.
Apple relents on iPhones subsidy
For one thing, this would make the free/open versus proprietary software issue a lot more crucial than ever before. I can imagine accepting software updates (for software I have opted into) from a well-run open source project. Of course the idea of mind=software is itself only a very loose metaphor that fails to capture the nuances of development of an embodied mind. But I could imagine some computer extension to the brain that would add new cognitive potentialities to the existing repertoire of brain structures. Who knows, maybe it's not that far off? There are already direct brain interfaces for very simple kinds of control of machines.

If a programmable brain extension acts like other high-level brain modules then it should create a new range of abilities rather than dictate a rigid behavior. The former is something that could gain wide acceptance, and the latter would be an unethical way of enslaving people. The unethical rigid control of behavior also seems easier to implement with current knowledge since much more is known about low-level brain and spinal control networks than is known about high-level cortical abstraction.
It seems like the more unique the programming language word, the higher the salary goes. For example, "Erlang" nets $99,000.

This service is useless until they add predicated search.
Post my MSCS, developing for a defense contractor in C++/Unix/Qt in a median COLA area, I started at 70k. So I don't think I'd say that career programmers are going to end up in that salary range. If you can't beat that over the course of several years in this business, you're doing something wrong.
According to their source, Elance use YUI containers combined with a bit of custom JS. This isn't anything special though - it's reasonably simple to write something similar from scratch and there's plenty of alternatives (e.g. Thickbox, a Lightbox clone, supports iFrame embedding).

In future, it's worth putting a more explanatory subject line rather than simply "Log in page", and I'd be surprised if you couldn't have found this with a simple Google search to be honest.
It says "since April 1st 2008"... isn't it simply a joke? That's way to ridiculous to be a serious scam...
Maybe it stopped when they decided to start putting more effort into pirating, counterfeiting, and reverse engineering everything created by other countries rather than doing the work on their own?
This is super misleading. For any big company the "Salary" is different than the "Total Comp" compensation: You may only make $70k base but make another $30k in stock. Also companies like Microsoft have crazy benefits that make this sort of survey garbage.
I'm also curious what happened to the Middle East in terms of technological development. They seems to be at the top of there game several centuries ago, but there doesn't seem to be as many technological or scientific ground breaking research being done. Anyone know why this occured too?
User gscott posted this first http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=212028 but now it has disappeared.
Paralysed man walks in Second Life
My pet theory is current technology advancement in Europe, North America and Japan is part of benefit from capitalism. Other region that lacks of capitalism will start to get religious or political authority into innovation process and which just won't work.

Below is a joke when I was a teen to talk to my friends. When I watched those anime series from Japan and super hero tv cartoons from U.S. I found a big difference in villains. In animes from Japan, villains creates evil robots and organizations but no author ever clearly explained how villains sustain their criminal activity. And most villains goal is to conquer the world and it is never mentioned the financial obstacles. While most villains in american cartoons clearly state their intent is to get the money to enable their plan to conquer the world.
Yeah this is a simple javascript, theres tons of variations just search for lightbox.

Also, this isn't the most usable way in every scenario. It's alright for login boxes if you want to drive more towards the signup process. But you just as easily add the actual input boxes and eliminate the need for a lightbox... which saves a few clicks and won't make them have to figure out how to close the pop-up.

Or you can use both, for example: have the login input boxes (username/pw) on the top right and when they click on an element that requires a login (for example adding a comment) then the lightbox will pop up.
Google Earth Beaten By Autorendering From Photos
Scalable Network Programming
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleflip
Amd vs Intel: AMD launches external graphics card box
__FILE__ in JavaScript
As a long time Hacker News reader and a native chinese student here under chinese education system, I have to point out that the education system (especially higher education system) in China has big problems compared with that in western countries, this definitely will affect the future of China.

1. Decisions in universities should be made by professors, not by government officials.

2. Many professors simply are not qualified. I see this a most critical problem. The top students prefer to go to industries rather than to be a teacher in schools.

3. Students should not be forced to take a course on Marxism, a course on Thoughts of Mao, a course on Theories of Deng. From my experience, nobody listens to teachers on these classes, nobody will take these courses seriously, they just try to remember them a few days before the exams. This is really a waste of students' time, students should learn serious economics and philosophies instead.

It's not that we are not smart, or not diligent, it's just the current system that hinders our advancement.
Solid State Storage Becoming a Theme
Fortunately I don't often listen to music controlled by these big companies.
Because their innovations were based on an intuitive, rather than mathematical, understanding of the world. You can only get so far that way. They didn't have a Galileo.
There are currently two 8-year old children with 3 parents each
Well, I am setting up JungleDisk + S3 when I get back on my mac.

Anyone else?