skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
No, I'm not sure, but it does physically match the cards and readers in the article.

With no foil, the badge is read at 3-4".

With a single slice of foil ~18"x12" held in front of the sensor, the badge is read at ~1" (a noticeable reduction in signal).

With the foil folded in half and the badge in the fold so that it forms a single layer on both sides of the card, it was effective (could not read the badge).

With the badge in an aluminumized mylar antistatic bag, there was no evidence of a signal reduction (read at full distance).

I would theorize that Maxwell hasn't failed us, but the signal is weak enough that the foil attenuated the signal sufficiently to disrupt reading. The RFID reader works by modulating the sensor tuned loop by detuning on/off, which is going to be a pretty weak signal.
Peter Cooper’s Online “Introduction to Ruby” Class Starts January 10
If they track it by using consumer credit reporting bureaus, they track your balance as the amount shown on your last bill, regardless of if it was paid in full or not. If that is the case, I would assume a decent chunk of this is debt that no interest is being paid on as well.
$5-a-Gallon Gas by 2012, Energy Shortages by Decade's End?
Ask HN: Read or Jump Right In
I am new to programming and have decided to start with Python. My question is should I read up on the programming theory first or should I just jump in and start building things?
Another thought: is it possible there's exposed circuitry on the card that the foil is shorting out ? You could try wrapping it with a plastic bag before enclosing it with foil.
Those extensions may not be very interesting for the consumer market, but scientific applications will probably see more benefits.
Despite being someone who's probably central to that "not a lot of love", I have to agree.

Also the "private newsletter" bit is a little misleading, since it seems like all the podcasts will be available for free, you just have to wait a week.
Let's not conflate "unfunded liabilities" with actual current debt load though. While both dollar figures, they are wildly different in nature.
For every person in this guy's situation, I wonder how many others have hacked servers and are totally unaware?
Founder Conference 2011 is on with Guy Kawasaki and more
I created this project in about a day, using Node and web sockets (via socket.io).
I'm really impressed with how simple Node is to work with and npm is very handy too!
I'd love to get some feedback - thanks.
The preprocessor hack does not compile to code that would decompile back to an if() statement. The i/1000 code does not compile to code that would decompile back to an if() statement. The ctor hack does not compile to code that would decompile back to a loop and an if statement. The i<1000 code, on the other hand, does compile down to code that decompiles back up to an if() statement; that's because it's just a compact way of writing an if() statement.

I'm not being a "language lawyer".
I've experienced two bugs.

1) a warning that two of my messages failed to send wouldn't go away after "clearing" them in the status bar. Had to go to settings and clear all data and force stop the app. Not critical, just very annoying.
2) when auto-completing a name and selecting such name, it actually adds the next person in your contact list as the adressee.
Love a little humor. Companies that are honest about who they are and what they look for. A good example of this is the hiring page from Stackoverflow (http://stackoverflow.com/about/hiring) and Carsonified (http://carsonified.com/jobs/).

It's also important to identify the culture and energy within the company. Employees should get a good feel for how they will interact with other coworkers and what their day-to-day activities might include. (Mustache Mondays anyone?)
How much of this growth derives from uptake of IE 8 or 9, whichever comes standard with Windows 7? I bet there's a direct correlation.
I would rather order it from anyone but Amazon, who has been started removing "offensive" books from the Kindle store left and right.
Perhaps you could try out http://learnpythonthehardway.org/index

It appears to be a good mix of 'reading' and 'jumping in'.
FYI - we specalized in high-volume, complex search solutions for a breadth of customers. We can probably help you out here.

Cheers,
Zach
Lightcrest.com
Back when Berkshire Hathaway only had Class-A shares worth thousands of dollars, there were a few investment firms at work on similar vehicles to allow ordinary investors to buy fractions of a share at smaller prices. Berkshire responded by issuing their own fractions, at 1/30th of a Class-A share (since split to 1/1500th), because they wanted investors, not investment firms, owning the shares.

It's interesting that now Facebook is doing a sort of converse of Berkshire's actions; that the pain of a public company is so onerous that having a bank involved is apparently seen as an advantage.
99 percent of what? Browsers ever made? Visitors to your site?

I read that Microsoft added the StartCom CA to Windows in 2009. So I would assume that people browsing the web with ancient, unpatched versions of IE will have problems. How big a deal that is probably depends on your site.
If you are adding a logo be sure to link to the site as well. This adds a SEO + traffic benefit and makes a request for removal less likely.

We put logos of integration partners and they are generally quite pleased. Our homepage is a PR5 backlink which is pretty valuable.

I would not recommend using customer logos without asking first. However, I would assume that most would be happy to get the SEO juice and any traffic that comes along with the link.
Irrational laws for irrational investments.
I don't have numbers, but I'd imagine that Google gets paid more when you do a search and click on AdWords than when you do a search, click on a content farm, and then click on AdSense. In the latter case, they have to split the income with the content farm.
Irrelevant, but do you think Facebook is worth 1/6 of Apple?
What prior experience do you have?

In general, I'd say jump right in: Dive Into Python http://diveintopython.org/

The best way to figure out how to make things is to make things. It's rewarding to be able to get stuff working from the get-go, and tinkering with that, trying to bend it to your will motivates you to understand how it works.

However, if you're familiarity with computers is very basic, you may want to do some reading about how computers work and the abstraction layers a program has to deal with; for example, do you know what abstraction layer Python is at?

Side note, you might find it even more fun and rewarding if your first programs are graphical http://raphaeljs.com/playground.html instead of being text-oriented, command-line programs that Python is most suited for.

If so, try learning JavaScript, that link uses the Raphael library, which you can find out more about at http://raphaeljs.com/reference.html
HTTP ETag
TechStars and Twilio Announce “Two for One” Contest
I would add Skype as well
This is probably obvious, but I tend to pay more attention to job listings that describe "what's in it for me" as opposed to "what's in it for them". For examples of the former, see most companies that post to niche job sites like 37signals, GitHub, etc. For examples of the latter, see, you know, Dice.com.
Let us know if you need long-term, load balanced infrastructure on a gigabit pipe.

Regards,
Zach

Lightcrest.com
Write rails migrations right from the command line
Let the record show that pg is hereby formally invited to speak at the Founder Conference :-)
What's the point of owning a driverless car? Apart from luxury/status, it should be far cheaper to rent one as you go, in the driverless cab fashion.

Also, I can't help but cringe inside when people act as if the only benefit of living in the city is less commute time. As far as my life goes, I'd trade more commute time to live inside an urban centre with all the facilities at a walkable distance plus all the nice benefits of density.
I keep telling everyone that I don't need to learn to drive - we'll have automatic cars in 10 years or so thanks to Google.
I run a hosting firm that specializes in secure, complex managed hosting infrastructure. Give us a ring when you're free.

Best,
Zach
Lightcrest.com
Italy Announces That YouTube Responsible For All Content
He might have considered citing any of the myriad academic projects that did exactly this (the brain-dead obvious cite would be Cfront and ObjC, but there are better examples in the literature).

One of the reasons this approach isn't more popular is that it limits what you can do at runtime in ways a virtual machine doesn't; C (and the basic blocks emitted by a C compiler) are very hard† to work with, whereas VM instructions almost by definition aren't.

† But not impossible; see, for instance, Dynamo/RIO.
I love the concept of: rooms which go places.
Execution shapes ideas
Send Better Automated Emails
This article seems out of date given the existence of llvm.
But if something is made of a product (say wheat, which this vodka is) then it also stands to reason that there should be some flavor imparted by the materials it is made with. The definition of vodka as having 'no flavor' is just silly because every vodka out there has a flavor (your tongue knows there's something there), but just generally that flavor is one of bad alcohols that have been poorly distilled.
How about instead of telling everyone that, you take the other side of my $1000 bet that you will not?
Clicking on a link in a Google search results page creates a redirect URL that leads back to Google itself and logs the visit to your Google Web History if you are logged in. Its not a simple matter of referrals to third party websites. Its a personal detailed silo of personal information that Google sits on and can only stay private as long as Google can make good on its promise to.

DuckDuckGo, AFAIK doesn't log your searches or correlate your searches with a user account.
I got the joke. Just pointing out that MSFT did distribute a lot of the cash, which is something that people have started to mention as something Apple might be pressured to do by shareholders.
I just ran "MGET key1" and it returned "FOOBAR". Has this happened to anyone else?
Pretty light on information.

For a better, somewhat Scheme-specific intro, check out http://matt.might.net/articles/compiling-scheme-to-c/ .

For an ML-flavored one, "No Assembly Required: Compiling Standard ML to C" by Tarditi et al (http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.43.7...), and its bibliography.
Pitchfork scores for 2010 infographic
This is absolutely brilliant. A million thanks
Coupons distributed to existing customers are quite effective. You have a list of people who are already very interested in what you have for sale and you know are willing to spend money for it. I have gotten offers plenty of times when I wasn't actively in the market for the goods in question, but then started browsing and purchased something. It's also a good way to keep mind share with your customers.
I still don't get why anybody would invest in a company at $50 billion with no knowledge of how much money they are making.
Supporting privacy is one thing and I'm appreciative of Google's stance. But when we're talking about personally identifiable information we're talking about a binary. Either you're personally identifiable from the data being stored or you're not. The bottom line is that I'm identifiable with the data stored on me by Google but not by the data stored on me by DDG. Google has made this decision to store identifiable information in order to improve the usability of their search and DDG has opted for a different route.

I will point out that there is nothing wrong with that. Google is not for those with strong privacy requirements, just as all popular operating systems are not for those with strong security requirements. Google falls at one point on the privacy/usability continuum and DDG falls at another point. But as far as the article being unfair to Google goes, I'll have to disagree. You are identifiable with Google's data and that's a reality.
Paraphrasing Joel Spolsky, every time Facebook figures out a way to make 10 additional pennies from each of its users, it adds a recurring $50MM income to its cash flow. These are apples/oranges comparisons, but Facebook is worth a lot.
Looks interesting. Few initial thoughts;

- I'd really like to see a demo or something before signing up (classic "Show HN" feedback)

- Even signing up wont show me how this will work, as I will have to wait for my first email. Right now all I get is an empty calendar

- My calendar appears public. As I haven't received a reminder email yet I don't know what information will be public, but I'd personally like to keep a log like this private (or possibly be able to flag which items should be public)

- Perhaps the calendar data could be exported to Google calendar and/or other calendars people use?
They need it to start sending dozens of "Facebook CDs" to everyone, because that worked so well for AOL.
Companies can be forced to go public when they reach a certain size? What? Really?
I don't know if the article is really about making tea (likely not) but in our family everyone agrees that there is only one true way to make tea - that's how my grandma did it, that's how my mom did it and that is how my wife does it - 100% reproducible taste case!

Time for Tea!
I really like this article. Yes, if Google can pull off AI solutions like cars that drive themselves and appliances that cook for you (all are pretty straightforward problems that can be solved with programming) then they will really OWN.

The problem with the former is the huge liability risk. When a car's breaks fail, we blame the car manufacturer. Imagine if a car crashed, or caused some sort of accident -- any accident! The blame would rest solely on Google's shoulders, whereas right now it's split between the driver and the car.
'One of Wall Street's savviest investors', GS, put hundreds of millions into Webvan, too. Maybe they're savvy on Wall Street, but that doesn't mean they are savvy tech-wise. They do know how to make money, however, and ethics need not be an obstacle. Hey, that makes them a great match for Facebook!
So you guys are dancing around really the only question in my mind after reading this story, which is: "what is the deal with Kevin Rose?" I don't pay any attention to Digg whatsoever. What's HN's take on him? Is he worth paying attention to?
Out of curiosity, did you consider skipping the signup requirement/process? Instead, just having a user put in their e-mail address as the only step?

Then it might work like this:
1) user enters email
2) you send daily "What have you done" emails to that address, they reply (which you can uniquely key to your database/calendar)
3) you email out the intended results, or if at a later time a user wants to log into the site to see a fancy calendar/history/graphs/charts, etc., at that time they could complete the signup process

I wouldn't say the signup is prohibitive in any way, and I admittedly did not investigate what features are part of being logged into the site - just a thought as less burden on signups seems to be a growing trend.
Bunnie, the original hacker of the first Xbox, was brought on as council by Microsoft to help improve security for the Xbox 360. You can see the results if you ever get deep into the security models of the two.
"Duh". If there was a career shift before the recession or indeed at any time that they could easily make to a higher living standard, they would have done that. And then in the recession, that would be the baseline we were measuring from.

In fact it seems to me the recession dominates here, not the question of career shifts. In non-recession times career shifts will be made to raise living standards and you could write the complementary article.

I'm not sure what's "news" here.
Ask HN: Best PM/code hosting/bug tracking solutions for a RoR Startup?
Specifically, a startup with a small number of coders using Ruby on Rails, Heroku, and Git.<p>The goal is for tools that get out of the way and naturally lend themselves to best practices such as Test-Driven-Development, Continuous Integration, and rapid Agile iteration.<p>Cost doesn't matter. Developer happiness and efficiency does.
Exactly. And speaking as a developer, I've not once had a positive experience with a recruiter. Not a single time.
Thanks! I had missed that...
Enter, Google Alarm: http://fffff.at/google-alarm/
I'd say google IS an AI company. They do doc classification, nlp, speech to text, vision, etc. They may not be great at some parts of it, but their systems are constantly being trained and getting smarter as they release more products and acquire more data.
I specifically didn't include them in the total for just that reason
An article like this isn't complete without a browser compatibility list.
Care should be taken to test across multiple platforms (especially mobile!) when using SSL configurations other than the classic 1-domain, 1-ip, 1-server setup.

The problems with SNI have already been discussed here, but we've also found issues with older Android browsers getting certificate warnings when using UC certificates. Specifically, there are issues when using a wildcard UC certificate (so one can have both https://root.tld and https://anyvar.root.tld) on Android OS's prior to 2.0.

Also, if you use StartSSL, be sure to configure the intermediate CA (in addition to a root CA) in your server's config. Again, this was an issue where most desktop browsers worked fine, but a handful of mobile browsers failed or had extended load times.
Ipad competitors
Developer happiness and efficiency does.

Ever seen Field of Dreams?
Similar fees in NYC, plus you'd have to do about 10 tax filings throughout the year.
Older versions of the PS3 support PS2 games. They dropped support around the time the Slim came out.
Thanks for the feedback. We were just discussing your first two points -- we'll do something about it soon.

As for the public vs private calendars, we weren't sure what people would prefer: public, private, or option. So, we opted for what we have until further notice. I'll put do you down as wanting the calendar private.
Not sure I agree with all of it - but I do like the design.
Voice Over IP: Setting Phone Service Free
Visual Transistor-level Simulation  of the 6502 CPU
That's my point. You are not simulating Taubes' point. You are simulating something strictly simpler and completely different. He makes an argument based around a feedback mechanism and your model completely lacks a feedback mechanism. (You and quite a few others, really.) You (all) have skipped the step where you engage with the subject and actually listen to what is being said before you cut straight to trying to disprove it.

How do you expect to convince me or anybody else of anything with that approach? I am happy to listen to arguments against his point, but you're the one building the strawmen here.
> The Ackermann function grows extremely quickly (quicker than any primitive recursive function I believe)

This is correct. It was basically invented to show that primitive recursion is not capable of computing every computable function.
Any HN perspective on the alleged DRM features built into the chips?
I did consider that and, in fact, would work. It was just quicker/simpler this way (django auth out of the box as it stands). We will likely move to that signup flow soon.
Social media in general seems to be a fad. Maybe I'm wrong, but I just have to wonder out loud. When Farmville and fart apps are worth 50 billion dollars and everyone is into it, I just have to shake my head and wonder if we are squandering some great technology while this fad passes

Don't get me wrong, there's a time and place for this sort of thing, but it seems too front and center today.
> On the same token, I wonder if that could mean better performance... I found that running Yellow Dog Linux on it was awfully slow.

The hypervisor is minimal in terms of overhead. The biggest impact comes from the fact that the PPC core in the PS3 doesn't do out-of-order execution. You'd be downright amazed how huge a difference this makes.
The Quora Button: Coming to a Website Near You
What is a Christmas tree machine?
Do as Richard Branson said when asked how to become a millionaire

"Start with a billion, then start an airline company"
Amazing answer this question has spawned. I particulary like this statement, it somehow puts things into perspective:

"First: understand that the disaster has already happened. This is not the time for denial; it is the time to accept what has happened, to be realistic about it, and to take steps to manage the consequences of the impact."
Long term investments is more or less anything that they intend to hold for more than a year, including equity stakes in other companies. With their continuing large cash position, large cash inflows and quick accumulation in the category it's possible that they've been buying a combination of junk and t-bills.
Do you happen to know how much (roughly) it costs to have a business registered in Switzerland?
Google's compute power is other-worldly

Actually it's not. I could cite hundreds of examples, but here's one: when I wrote a blog post about getting a huge traffic boost for my startup following on some Mark Cuban in PR Newswire, I titled my post "take the elevator, not the stairs", and Google AdSense served ads for Thyssen elevators. That's how smart it is.
Yep. This is why I turned of text to Twitter: something bad happened once...
This isn't just a matter of advertising. Your search history is an incredibly personal and detailed profile of who you are, and governments have a history of trying to use that sort of information for $badThings. See: US DOJ request for search engine histories in 2005. There's a reason why librarians fought so hard to keep your book checkouts private when the Patriot Act passed. Search histories have a potential for abuse and their privacy should be an issue.
How I rebuilt 7books from scratch in 4 days
Oh another (more probable?) possibility.

Goldman invested into FB - so they can now act as marketmaker for their customers.
"Goldman is doing nothing more sinister than creating an ad-hoc venture capital fund and using it to invest in Facebook. Does every California public employee also count as a Facebook shareholder if CalPERS is an LP of a VC that invests in Facebook?"

A venture capital fund is diversified over many investments -- that's why it's a fund. A venture capital "fund" that invests only in Facebook is a fund in name only.

Also, unless you're a lawyer specializing in securities law, I doubt you know the answer to your own question. State employees can (and do) initiate lawsuits against CALPERS, and CALPERS has sued public companies on behalf of state employees. The pensioners clearly have some rights as investors.
This basically exists for source code now: http://www.google.com/codesearch
IPhone still king; new smartphone buyers opting for Android
3000 dead birds fall from the sky in Arkansas
Carriages with compartments are one of the reasons I prefer travelling by train over other forms of transportation - they're basically an implementation of the travelling room concept, albeit non-private. You usually have to share the compartment with up to 5 other travellers, but a handful of people in a small room tend to be much quieter (and more friendly) than dozens in an open plan carriage. Sadly, compartments are increasingly rare nowadays, even in first class. I assume they're less space efficient in terms of passengers/m².

Of course, if you can afford it, you can get one like this... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Royal_Train
That's depressing... I hope you're wrong.
You can bet that Goldman would have got hold of Facebook's financial statements from it before making that investment. You don't invest a few hundred million dollars before kicking the tires first.