skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Personally, I think the solution that could get some kind of market traction would be to sell WiFi routers that can organize themselves into Metropolitan Area Networks. A certain portion of the units is instructed to become 'long-distance' nodes, connecting to other nodes a mile or two away, and shifting large amounts of data between them. Another portion of the units is instructed to become 'medium-distance' nodes, distributing the traffic from the long-distance nodes to devices within a few thousand foot radius, and all devices are simultaneously capable of being 'short-distance' nodes, connecting directly to end-user devices. Since it takes more resources and a better antenna to run a long-distance node, routers capable of acting as long-distance could possibly be distinct from medium-distance-capable ones, and sold at a premium, with an assurance that local devices connecting to it will get better network performance. Apart from that, devices become either long, medium or short-range nodes depending on network and geographical needs.

The market for these devices will of course get its start with piracy and porn, just like any good burgeoning internet protocol, but you can bet local TV stations, radio stations and advertisers would be all over them to get their content out without having to pay the traditional network gatekeepers. Content producers would get free access to the network if they just run a node or two.

Eventually, as the metropolitan area networks become dense enough and spread out widely enough, it will be possible to link the different cities to each-other and start to create another wide-scale network. Until that happens, though, there's enough going on in most metropolitan areas to give more than enough value to a decentralized network such as this.
Is this a serious question?

The correlation between wealth and class is almost 1.0. How can you seriously argue otherwise? This discussion has taken a turn to the bizarre.
Frozen pizzas with pictures of famous chefs on them.
I have a daughter on the way in May, and of all the parenting books I've read to try to prepare, that may be the most insightful thing on the subject I've seen. You just floored me. Good f'ing show, sir - good f'ing show.
Control: There's parental control and control is the same problem you would have with a laptop (at least you won't be able to play flash games ;) )

Software:Schools can apply for the Education program and purchase software at 50%. While I haven't tried myself, I'm sure that if they let you buy in bulk they won't lock your account while you are doing it (if you are an authorized buyer).

Power: Not sure you have tried an iPad but mine lasts days without being charged. Can't say the same about my laptop.

Kids Content: again, parental control.

Also who said that giving each kid an iPad is the only way to use tablets in a classroom. We had teachers contacting us because they were using SyncPad ( http://mysyncpad.com ) in place of devices like SmartBoards (that if I'm not mistaken can cost up to $40,000). At that point they would need only one or few iPads to pass around to actually interact with on the whiteboard when asked, while everyone else can follow looking at the board itself or on their laptop.
It looks like you're totally right to point this out, but the situation is not "you have the right to refuse to disclose a key"; its, "you may or may not also be charged with obstruction if you refuse a warrant that demands a key, and the case law isn't settled".

Since we're talking about PINs here, by the way, this is a moot point; presumably any major LEO can contract out "recover data on PIN-protected phone".
"it's an excellent opportunity for a startup wanting to use Android."

That's an interesting sentiment, especially since a lot of the objections you mentioned earlier have nothing to do with the operating system.

How will running Android instead of iOS ensure durability and stunning battery life, prevent eye strain, and make it theft-proof?
Perhaps you would like to explain what is wrong with morally condemning others when what they did is in fact morally wrong?

If you read my post closely, I hope you'll find that I objected to the "you don't have to do that, there's an easy other way" part. If the poster had just said, "don't cheat, it may be the only way to win this game but you shouldn't do it, it's wrong", well I'd just pass over that comment entirely.
And you'd have to solve the issues of deliberately corrupting DHT nodes, deliberately constructed collisions, and forged copies of the whatever-human-key ends up being used, since it is pretty much out of the question that we will all type in 128-bit numbers for website access.

Note I do not mean this as criticism of your comment, because you can't possibly solve these issues in an HN comment. Just pointing it out. Designing a decentralized network that works at all is a big enough challenge, designing a fully decentralized network that stands up to hostile attacks by intelligent adversaries is even harder.
8MB of Cache has far less value when dealing with modern 3D rendering than you might think. Granted, building HW to deal with HD Video decoding is a huge win from an energy use perspective, but 3D is a different beast that is not vary cache friendly.

To give some idea of cache's relative value a GT110 is a 3 billion transistor chip with less than 1mb of cache. A QX9650 is a 0.82 billion transistor chip with 12MB of cache.

PS: At a minimum it's a 1 - (1/1.2) = 17% loss but adding in bad chips it's probably closer to 25% until they start selling chips without video capabilities. Also, I am not saying it's a bad long term move, just that in the short term it's risky.
They may not be there for some (maybe most) schools, but there are certainly some having success with them. See http://speirs.org/ for a blog of a guy who seems quite pleased with them at the UK school he teaches at.
I am not trying to take a stance for strong copyright. My stance is that there are (or can be) non-artificial ethical reasons to not commit copyright infringement.
I understand that the person had been arrested and was in custody. The question I have is whether or not the police could have demanded the password from his phone if one existed, and what consequences would result from his refusal to provide it. The reference to CBP's searches is that there is some question as to whether or not someone must provide the password to a secured device during an otherwise-legal search.
Years ago, earlier versions of zsnes did not exhibit this bug. However it used to simply fail to render lots of stuff. What was left behind would still look fine, so you wouldn't notice. Think parallax background layers, sprite effects.
I think you're overstating your case. So far, you haven't been put in a position where you had to deliver functional code of some form to win a bid for a project. Give it time.

If you're doing so well right now that you wouldn't even contemplate going out of your way to win a particular client, congratulations. I understand that's not an uncommon position for dev firms to find themselves in in 2010-2011. Just understand that the pickier you get about who you want your clients to be, the more work it will take to acquire those clients.
Well, no wonder you "don't notice touch responsiveness."
"Why is your phone different?"

Because most people don't have 32 gigs of personal data written on scraps of paper.
10 Tweets for building and bounding relationships on Twitter
What justifies assuming a 1% conversion rate?

How many people do you run into walking around town, what would justify a 1% conversion rate in selling products to them? Just because 1% seems small does not mean it's a guaranteed conversion rate.
OT: I'm in Shanghai in mid-January. Keen to meet HN people there - drop me an email if you're around - me@alexmuir.com
The backwards-compatibility with PS2 games was facilitated by the presence of the PS2 CPU and GPU in the PS3 hardware. Newer revisions of the system eliminated first the CPU and then the GPU.

Then they ought to stop selling it as a "PlayStation 3" once it no longer performs the functions of a "PlayStation 3". Call it a "Playstation 3--" or something.

Product model names invoke the very definition of what the product is and does, particularly when the name includes a number. They aren't just attractive words to be chosen by Marketing, even when it was the same company that made the initial definition of the feature set in the first place.

Like I said, it wasn't particularly frustrating or surprising to me to find this out after I bought it, but only because my expectations of a Sony product were so low to begin with. I would have been shocked if this had been Google though.
> What would be the obstacles to taking a porn business public?

Nothing, really:

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/1999/0614/6312214a.html
But something was lost in the progress, something big. That's why us "old-timers" get upset -- the new-timers are missing a valuable piece of knowledge and they don't even know they're missing it.

That being said it is tough for old-timers when things change. Seven years ago you would be considered an utter fool for not knowing this -- because you were. It's hard to shake a sentiment that was so right before and has become slightly less right.
With a side of Bezos, Pets.com, and an AOL-Time Warner merger?
Yes. It's also done by creepy women.
By saying "someone less stupid", you are saying that I'm in fact stupid and you are looking for someone less stupid. I didn't disrespect anybody though like you just did.

I don't care though, you are angry because it wasn't politically correct and I know that.

I'm not a white supremacist, I'm not promoting the superiority of the white race, you can actually interpret what I wrote as saying that Asian people are superior to whites. If you don't like what Wikipedia has to say about brain size, you can change it yourself if you have evidence to back it up.

Aside from this ad hominem, do you have anything to say against my points?
2012: Beginning of the End or Why the World Won't End?
Rats on vacation
1% would be a very badly converting adult site so I would think that would be an ok assumption.
Rich: I am sorry that you did this. Please add the PayPal donate button back onto clojure.org.

I never make large donations to open source projects, etc., but I give small $2 to $10 donations for things that I use. What this allows me to do is to contribute a modest $30 to $40 per year to projects that I use and not feel like a total freeloader.
Ikea’s war on Edison’s light bulb
Yeah sure.I was commenting particularly about awarding scores based on outlinks.

I got down voted, I think because my comment was about web pages and it had got separated visually from the other comments about ranking web pages. So I added it in that my comment was about the discussion that had ensued about web pages.
Memo to Twitter: Popularity Is Becoming a Commodity
Neither did this guy. What are we arguing about? I agree: encrypt your drug dealing receipts; they grey area over obstructing search warrant is vastly preferable to the high-fidelity dump of your transactions they'd automatically get.

Are you suggesting that the plainly visible SMS logs on your phone are in some special digital domain that, in stark contrast to the notebook in your bag, the police should not have access to in an incident-to-arrest search for evidence? That seems pretty silly to me, but that doesn't make you wrong.
There are some epigenetic changes like DNA methylation that can be inherited from parents and effect gene expression in children. Things like diet, smoking, and the age of a mother almost certainly have some effect on the development of her children.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics

I find the fact that your genes don't get a fresh start with your children pretty sobering. Kind of makes you want to go exercise :)

Edit: had a hash tag in the wikipedia link I didnt mean to put there
I felt bad because I later realised the project might be non-profit.
That's weird. The net connection at my dad's house is ridiculously bad. You'll be lucky if you can download at 60kb/sec, and this is what they call broadband (AT&T in Yorba Linda, CA). Yet Netflix movies stream without a hitch or a hiccup.
Facebook has... twice myspace's revenue.

Just let that sink in for a while.
How Shoppers Become Influenced Online
"user:	nickjr
created:	10 hours ago
karma:	54"

Now, just why should I not think that you are lying?
DF -> HN -> DF
While I'm sure it's a factor, I'm not convinced that Facebook's growth needs involve having to increase their userbase in that manner. There are still many ways to monetize the existing one since I don't believe they've done that very efficiently yet.
Adafruit - 2011: The Year We Loose Funding
Carrageenan is on a lot of labels, and I'm often asked, 'What is that chemical?' It's not a chemical. It's seaweed!

Actually, it is very much a chemical. All food is chemicals. It's just perverted advertising that convinced the masses that chemical = "something bad".

For more sad laughter on this topic, the Royal Society of Chemistry's blog has a category for "chemical free" living:

http://prospect.rsc.org/blogs/rsc/tag/100-chemical-free/

They even announced a £1 million bounty for anyone who can find a chemical-free cosmetic:

http://www.rsc.org/AboutUs/News/PressReleases/2010/CTPA100Ch...
An Epidemic is Killing the Bats
Wait... is that good or bad?
That seems vanishingly unlikely during university term time. Accommodation arrangements vary widely by college in Cambridge, but in-college facilities tend to be in high demand regardless.

More generally, does anyone know the story behind this organisation and programme? £5k/founder is nothing, particularly given the commitment for 13 weeks that the programme seems to require and the living costs in Cambridge, so the big question must be what is in it for the founders in terms of other value: advice, networking, etc. The site talks about how intensive the programme is, but is rather light on details, such as for example what the founders will really be doing for those three months and who is ultimately taking ownership of 6% of each company.

It sounds like this could be a valuable opportunity for young entrepreneurs to gain access to useful insights from those who have gone before, but from the limited information on the site and everything-newness of it all, I am at least slightly sceptical about the grandiose claims. 6% of a company is a lot to give up at such an early stage if you don't really know what you're getting into and there's no track record to consider...
DMB makes money by having an utter sociopath for a manager, a fellow named Coran Capshaw. Coran would sell his own mother in the slave markets if she could fetch a few bucks.
I would re-open the craigslist.com "Adult" section.
Most bands don't have this luxury. They make money because they are popular and are able to still sell out venues.
And what about ARM and Apple chips (like the A4)?
Software development environment
hi. looking for input on free/cheap web based software dev environments. i can host on my servers.

the project will have 50-100 developers, each working on their own chunk of code. the dev system should also have a workflow/review process if possible.

devs should be able to checkout/in files. reviewers should be able to review/deny/promote code. system should also have ability to allow users to assign roles for the different functions that are created.

system should also tie into an underlying version control system. ideally this beast would run on linux.

thoughts on where such a cheap beast might exist??

thanks in advance!!
You Can't Turn Off the Machine
It's not even that he may be lying. It is that this is so obviously a disposable site run as a marketing gimmick by a marketer. This doesn't strike me as "Show HN" as much as "Market to HN." Almost every post is so thick with marketing buzzwords it's impossible to read them.

This whole thing seems more like a get-rich-quick scheme than a business. HN has never seemed like a place where get-rich-quick schemes are valued.
I think that is exactly the point the chef was making. Consumers in general are not willing to pay (or can't pay) for high quality frozen food. Look at how many brands are available in the $2-$3 range vs. higher cost items.
Take a look at London and you'll see it's not only dead-ends that get this treatment. I think there's more going on here… the roads I see showing up less prominently here are the kind that are difficult to drive down (I've been looking around my neighborhood, so speaking from experience)… however they're actually calculating this prominence, it's damned clever.

Edit: in fact, it can even be segments of roads. See https://img.skitch.com/20110104-d3k9f76gttjqbtsg94m85qb3nh.j... (that's all the same street if you zoom in)
I've been in love with the Zebra M-402. I've had two of them now for a few years and they're still going strong. They have a very solid metal build, so they rarely break leads and the advancement mechanism hasn't failed me yet.

I will look into those Alvin pencils.
They can sell more services to the same customers.
Just out of interest, what kind of functional code for what kind of projects? I imagine we are talking fortune 500 clients here?
Obtain A Girlfriend - It Does Not Have To Be Hard
Ask HN:  Moving archived files to other media
I work in the medical IT field and on a regular basis paper or online information is moved to another media - microfiche, CD jukebox, or other.

I would be interested in knowing what methods are used or preferred, particularly for small businesses.

Thanks, Steve
Video tutorial: Build Twitter with Groovy and Grails in 90 minutes - Marakana
In a world where porn is mostly free, I doubt you could get a 1% conversion.
Older discusssion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1878160
Sources: Bloom Box Costs $12.50 Per Watt
We still need to fix the code to make it immune to compiler switches.

In other words, "We know that our code is buggy and it is relying on undefined behavior."

I.e., this developer knows it's a problem with his code, not the compiler, but he phrases it as if the "compiler switches" are the things causing the problems. This is classic developer arrogance and immaturity.

Thank God I don't rely on his software for anything important.
It's still a bit problematic. There are two kinds of searches that happen when a person is arrested.

The first is called "search incident to arrest". It's purpose is to identify any weapons, escape tools or immediate means of destroying evidence on or around a suspect during arrest. Removing a phone from a suspect's immediate control is justified under each theory: the phone may actually be a disguised weapon, it may conceal escape tools and there may be evidence on it that the suspect could destroy. Accessing the data on the phone is not justified under any of these theories.

The second is called an inventory search, which usually takes place when a suspect is booked in to jail, a car is impounded or similar. Its purpose is to identify anything dangerous (corrosive chemicals, explosives, etc...) and to protect the authorities from liability for the loss of any property while in custody. Generally, a suspect is presented with a list of property found and asked to sign a declaration that it is complete so that he cannot later claim property was lost or stolen. An inventory search probably does not require or allow accessing the data on a computer or storage device.

The court ruled that it was a valid search incident to arrest, and that the police were entitled to inspect the contents of an item taken from the person of a suspect during a legal arrest. The justification for inspecting contents is, as I understand it similar to the above: to identify potentially dangerous items before storing the defendant's property, and to have an accurate inventory of what property the authorities are assuming responsibility for. Examining the data on a device almost certainly doesn't meet the first standard, and seems very questionable for the second.
I could never use such an online editor for a couple of reasons:

- CSS editing requires a lot of shifting back and forth between preview/css and code completion. A native (mac) app like CSSEdit allows you to open up a 'live preview' that instantly refreshes while you're typing your css.

- Access to your local filesystem

- Although Cappuccino makes for an 'almost-desktop-like' experience. It's still not the real deal in terms of responsiveness and gui-rendering and you can immediately feel that while using an app like this one. It's a great framework for CRM, TweetDeck-like tools, Inventory systems and the like, but not for a task that requires space, previews and immediate 1:1 response on actions.

Could anyone imagine himself using a tool like this?
(As a thought experiment) I find it very interesting that the same flow/dissection can be applied to outside math, as set of tools to solve any problem - even to make those indecisive moments interesting. I just went through the flow to make a 'decision'.
Depending on the degree, you can wind up getting access to things you don't get through OCW alone. As a biology student, I was able to get involved in research and help with tagging & tracking elephant seals, and when I switched to engineering I got access to thousands and thousands of dollars in equipment and software, among other things.

The resources of a full-on University are part of what make it worthwhile, at least for science-y degrees.
Configuring PostgreSQL for Pretty Good Performance
Maybe not allergic to small amounts but if I eat a large amount of MSG I get really thirsty and sometimes it triggers a bad headache.
Is it possible to get information older than a year from alexa? I have a site that got to 970th in 2005 and I would like to see exactly when.
I blogged about a proposal like this some while ago: http://cabalamat.wordpress.com/2009/07/07/using-computers-to...

In the long term I'd like to see that every computer sold in the western world came configured as standard as freedom-enabled: this would mean mesh networking, encryption, a steganographic filing system, etc, out of the box.

This would have two advantages. One is that western governments would find it difficult to take freedom away from the internet.

The other is that authoritarian governments would either have to abandon the free internet and implement their own locked-down and incompatible one, or they would have to accept that they can't control their people's communications. The advantage this would give the west in any future cold war against China is, I hope, obvious.

I'm standing for election to the Scottish parliament later this year. If I'm elected I'll try to get something like this implemented.
Having worked for a computer forensic software company I can tell you that these days they most likely don't have to contract it out even... It's cheap enough that a lot of departments have people on staff who can recover data easily from all kinds of devices.
I read they are going to have 1 trillion ad views this year.
Want a TLDR version? The gist is that unlike the traditional musician business model (get discovered, get a large amount of money up front, produce shippable versions of your product), they actually - ya know - work for a living. DMB incrementally grows their fan base by constantly reaching their customers directly, and selling them shows instead of records. And while the "record" business is dying, music isn't going anywhere. Satisfy a core customer need, work your ass off, and you have a viable business. You don't need to go raising tons of money to have a huge reach.

Hmm, what other thing does this sound like?
Direct link: http://www.stopwilson.com/

The simulation is leaky, all drive letters are possible and they all contain the same thing. There are no delete commands, there is no shell and no text editor, it doesn't come with QBASIC.
Apache Cassandra in 2010: Code, Community, and Controversy