skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Chemical trick puts solar cells on Saran wrap
Friends treat each other as equals even
when they aren't. This is a lesson I've
had to learn and seeing the flip-side,
I'm damned glad I did.

I can see how you might have that criticism about the linked article, but where in lsc's post did he ever write or imply that he isn't treating his friends as equals?
A sneak peak at the new top processors
Best of the web 2010
Artificial organ could improve control over diabetes
Three reasons wind power could wane
Computer-related Communication Problems Lead to False Arrests in Australia
Yes, HN is the main source where you can read sane comments about technology. Google news and Techmeme are ok.
Techcrunch went down so quickly with its technologically challenged authors, bad site design, mindless comments from fanboys, astroturfers etc.
Ha. I'm a hot girl who went to an ivy school with 4yrs in startups (yes I code), and got completely dissed by Dave McClure when I tried to introduce myself.

Do not approach this man cold. He is mobbed at every networking event being one of the more visible people in the valley. Try to find one of his zillion advisors in the valley, get them to know you, and make an intro. He's completely different if you've been introduced by someone he trusts. Case in point is my co-founder meeting him in Japan and having the best meeting ever.
So this means I'll have to sit through another 20-30 minute system update when all I really want to do is play a game for 15 minutes (all the time I really have for the PS3).

My PS3 is collecting dust because the AppleTV is a better media player and a cheap PC with Steam installed is cheaper than a PS3 and just a few $70 game discs.
Making Applications Scale With Load Balancing (or how the Internet works)
241543903 is the magic number (amusing Google Search 'hack')
Please don't use a {outline:none;}
> And people still think crypto isn't dangerous?

Part of the problem is that most people who have to use it aren't mathematicians. And even those of us who have math degrees may not realize every single one of the assumptions or requirements that go into each operation (especially if they change due to new attacks being discovered).

So just knowing that something is dangerous isn't the same as having everything you need to deal with the danger.

I'm surprised that I've never heard of a cryptography wiki somewhere where people try to list all the requirements for using each algorithm or technique securely in simple terms. E.G. a page on each technique or algorithm telling you which numbers must be random, unpredictable, never repeated, etc. Or telling you that if a person has these numbers, they can do X, Y & Z. Or that if you don't verify that this padding is right, people can forge messages. With citations linking to the attacks.

Incidentally, I'm hoping that I'm wrong and there really is such a thing out there, somewhere.
Just a heads up: It's a PDF.
(Not that there's anything wrong with that :-)

Good paper. thanks for posting. Rare combination of deep AND highly readable.

I started in the middle and read through before circling and back and seeing it was written by creator of HAProxy. So it was even more impressive how objective/ pragmatic he was about different approaches.
How to integrate OpenID into your PHP site with Janrain
Great tips for staying motivated on there. It sounds simple, but I find the easiest thing to do is just not buy the crap food. I find it very easy to resist the purchase, but much harder to resist eating if I know something is in the cupboard - so the supermarket trip becomes the most important thing!

We are currently building a community at http://www.skinnyo.com to help with the other side of keeping yourself motivated - getting friends and others involved and even competing with them. It's obviously much harder to do these things alone..
On the other side of the coin, most Greeks I know would also kill for a four-day week. In fact, they would kill for any work at all.
Reminds me of the file ubygems.rb.
Distinctive traits of functional programming languages
Solomon @DotCloud here - thanks for mentioning us. We're convinced that the "one language, one platform" model can't work as a sustainable business, for various reasons. Heroku has learned that lesson as well, but we're taking a shortcut :)

If you want an early invite, mention HN in your registration and we'll hook you up.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:WiicATO...

Google cache. I was getting a DNS error.
> how could a genuinely good person possibly wish to stop helping others, or not help them to the utmost of his ability?

The point I was attempting to make was that quite often, helping those who are not as good as you are at making money can be profitable for all involved. Hell, even from a "help the most people" point of view, finding a job with a path for advancement for a person is doing a lot more good than giving them resources. Even avoiding the issue of the recipient's self-worth, if I give away resources, I will eventually run out, but if I make money off helping people? that scales.

Perhaps what I should have said was:
"If you feel that your friends are holding you back, you are doing it wrong."

the thing of it is, I believe statements like "person x is better than person y" are largely without content without context. I mean, if we are talking about money, you can say "Person X is better at making money than Person Y" and that makes sense, or "person X is better at lifting weights than person Y" or even "person X is better at writing essays without coming off like an arrogant asshole than person Y" -

I don't know if it was the authors intent or not, but I read this essay as "I am better at making money than my friends, and this is causing some of my relationships to end."
David Hauser, Co-Founder of Chargify and Grasshopper is listed as one of the two founders of PackageFox. This might be super beneficial for ecommerce startups if the service works the way it is stated.
This is my entirely unsupported understanding as well, but I've seen it happen when using backgrounder. On low memory conditions, background apps were killed.
I work a four day week, 10 hours a day (which I am thinking is different from the article's example) and love it. However, I've seen a dozen plus others try it and all switch back so it obviously isn't for everyone.
Lots of people do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_(2009_film)#Box_office
Yes, and I haven't been disappointed yet.
Ways to use both Windows and Linux together
What you don't see here is the inherent double standard in this conversation about women as accessories. The awesome blonde med school girl at the chess game? Accessory. Hot Russian immigrants, accessories. Are women just decor?

What I find aggravating is needing to fight to get men to take me seriously and see me as an intelligent, capable, human being. As long as we have an environment like this thread, we won't have that many women in tech.
I'm one of those who dove head first into NoSQL primarily because of hype. I've learned better. Relational is now my default, and I identify specific cases, specific tables that I know for sure won't need complex querying, and move those to NoSQL.

Though the end effect is that NoSQL still stores 60+% of my data.
I got a few emails about the Compass/SASS on Heroku thing, so I posted it up on my blog in case anyone who didn't email me needs it. Compass and SASS are notoriously painful to get up and running on Heroku, and everyone says to use the Hassle gem but it never works. So here's the SUPER MAGIC WAY: http://jarinheit.posterous.com/the-ultimate-secret-to-gettin...
Actually, it does talk about squeezing a whole week's work into 4 days, so it's probably 4 10-hour days as well.

I've considered it, but I know my productivity sags at the 8 hour mark as it is, so I don't think it's a good fit for me or the company.
Turn Your Website Into a Social Machine
Good advice. I was getting emails from zoneedit (DNS provider) letting me know I needed to pay for more credits, even though when I logged into zoneedit the balance was 0 and no mention of credits being needed. Anyway, the emails where being picked up as spam by gmail so I had no idea the account was in deficit.

A weeks or so before xmas our main domain went dead and took 6hours for most users and up to 24+ for others to be able to access the site again. We provide an on line SaaS solution to schools so luckily it was almost the holidays; things could have been much worse.
This is a terrible terrible terrible idea. You don't want your users to feel that you are exploiting them. It will just pi$$ them off. Just go with a bunch of well placed ads.
I'm also interested, specifically in parsing techniques, especially GLR :) @terseguy
No, there is Skype for Android (which is available for any carrier), it's just "wifi only" in the U.S., but most people should be able to get their hands on the non-U.S. version if they know how to use google.
Is it an environment like this thread which is the problem, or an environment like those discussed in this thread?

Carmen in the eponymous opera and Marissa Mayer at the early Google were each a part of the enterprise as more than mere decorations. Carmen is trading off her looks, but she is using them to manipulate men and not just being looked at. Unfortunately, her character inhabits an environment where women's opportunities are limited.

Tori Amos once claimed to be "The queen of the nerds" or something like that. I think there's tremendous opportunity for women in tech, precisely because there are fewer women. Yes, physical attributes matter. Short men have a disadvantage where social dominance comes into play. Such disadvantages can also be exploited.
ha. i'm actually positing the opposite. :)

chomsky is being pretty honest, while the interviewers (etc.) and the people (mis)characterizing him are being as disingenuous as one can possibly be. again, refer to the vids (the 3rd part is most relevant, plus it's only 7 mins long). would explain MANY of your questions and comments.
I'll sponsor, or more accurately, DDG will.
I spend about 11 hours in office, 5 days a week. So I would rather prefer 4 working days,10 hours each anyway!
I'm not sure anybody is implying it's evil to point it out.
imho, it's not evil, just a little sad to accept things as they are and 'deal with it'.
The Nazi and the Psychiatrist
re: wikileaks/guardian article
the article states this:
"While this does not affect the credibility of the WikiLeaks revelations..."

it's similar to what i mentioned above about attacking hidden motivations (i.e. discussing everything but the topics and matters at hand). the anti-semitic counsel is something important to investigate, but hopefully it's not being used to detract or deflect attention from the contents of the leaked documents.
The aforementioned two friends just don't understand the world of startups and think I'm wasting my time and setting myself up for financial disaster.

Who knows, they might even be right...
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"Every best paper from CS conferences" does not really sound like what this site does -- list best papers from 11 CS conferences, a marginal fraction of how many CS conferences are out there.
CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta falling for faith healing quackery
Wishing u a very prosperous 2011
Somehow reminded me of Kirk, Spock and Bones.

Very moving. Grazie.
Google has advertising all wrong with AdWords, they constantly encourage ad spamming of low value ads, with little relativity to extremely large groups. With the huge amounts of data Google as collected over the years, you would think that they would have created a more efficient advertising platform, where a 6% click through isn't considered to high, where 6% is considered to low. AdWords was, without a doubt, a great business move.... at the time. Times change, I don't see why we have to be bombarded with 1000's of irrelevant ads a day. If I were to see only ONE advert a day, and that ONE advert was for something I was truly interested in, then billions of dollars in useless advertising could be spent on bettering a product. Maybe it's time for conventional advertising to die, imagine clean websites with no ugly, annoying pop ups, scroll overs or sound ads. It's just an idea, highly unlikely to happen, yet it would create a simpler cleaner internet, while cutting down on global advertising spending and driving up conversion rates.
The Messianic Schoolmaster
First impressions

Landing page: no idea what it is. I disagree that conversations only happen between two people, makes me doubt you know how to build a social product.

".....Rest is all noise.Why not cut the noise?" too many dots, isn't clear english, no space between period and W.

"Complete privacy" of what?

"No stalkers" is stalking a concern? what is this?

"No Groups" erm, okay. aren't they useful?

To reiterate: No idea what this is after reading every word on your landing page.

Register Now button too small, fades into background.

Click register

You want my email ... and my friends - what? why?

I go to about page

"Iddhis is a web service, dedicated to connect you with people who you care most. It is a unique service for just two people. No friends, no communities, no groups. Iddhis born because of our own itch. We know how important it is to have dedicated space for special people in life, specially when we are so much used to online conversation that we accidentally update too personal things on social networking sites."

... like email? why is there no screenshots. no benefits listed for me.

Why is one of your founding team a photographer?

The CSS3 is overdone on the footer links, looks weird on mouse over in chrome, the live help link seems weird for a B2C social product.

i like the logo.
مشاهدة مباراة الاهلي والزمالك
The Puppet CookBook
This is a very limited metric. By the same vein Microsoft is the best of the best.
This is correct, thanks to the Wii hackers.
In the early 80's I use to go into a place my dad did hardware contract work every month to help him vacuum out filters in all their CAD machines. Their server room didn't look much different from this (except for more crowded, and probably a smaller footprint) and they even had one teletype box for their tape library backups. I still have a huge plywood box the size of a toy chest (actually, it was my toy chest!) that a 20MB hard drive and enclosure came in.
TBH, I need to re-read the constitution; it's been a long time. I think the original meaning has been greatly diluted by invalid re-interpretations over the years. Sometimes I make statements that overlook this, but I need to stop doing that.
Great idea! BRB, working on sixwords.me
According to http://juniorbiz.com/interview-mark-bao (February this year) Mark has started 11 businesses and 3 foundations, and sold 3 of them already.
I assume from this - one of the earlier comments by lsc:

Having poor friends is /incredibly useful/ - need help moving but don't want to reciprocate? call up your highschool buddy who works at home depot. He'll be happy to help you out for a few bucks.

Though to be fair, it depends on what both of them mean by friend.
Is your username a reference to Atlas Shrugged? If so, I'm intrigued; if not, I apologize---I bet you get that a lot.
I like this trend of making single-page domain names out of what would just be a blog post advocating something with clear points and logic. They feel like they'll have more impact when linking someone to them.
Tell me more. So it's like Facebook, but only between two people? Your landing page needs to reveal more.
Years ago, I had a job where I had a four day week. (Actually four days a week every week, and an extra half day one week in three.) The trouble was, the extra couple of hours per day wore me down; after four days on, I needed an extra day just to get over the cumulative fatigue before I could enjoy the weekend.

The best single thing you can do to reduce working fatigue is to minimize your commuting time. If you commute an hour each way to work, then over a five day week, you've racked up an extra 10 hours -- not to mention the extra expense, and the aggravation periodically inflicted by traffic jams or public transport problems -- and the worst part of it is that it's mostly dead time. (I'll make an exception for commuting to work on foot or by bicycle, as part of an exercise regime.)
Bring on the Gundam style mech fighting games! (Then again, the possible home acrobatics are both a technical and legal challenge.)

EDIT: Perhaps this can be a fixture at arcades? One could have a game where the players are in some sort of harness, allowing full acrobatics in safety. A lower cost version would allow for tumbling moves on a gym mat.
yesterday I was in the position of having to download the driver software for the logitech unified remote receiver in order to get my mouse working.

While I had a working keyboard, there was no way to move the mouse cursor.

I was wondering where the focus rectangle had gone and now I know. Very timely submission indeed.

In the end, I had to temporarily plug another mouse to actually navigate to the driver download page.
"Other than the ability to make video calls to a computer/laptop"

The number of device that you can make video calls to increased from ~10M (iPhone4 and iPod Touch 4) to ~1000M (internet-connected PCs, notebooks, and netbooks).

So if the Skype videocalling network has 100x the devices as the FaceTime videocalling network, then its value is something like 10,000 times greater [1].

It's a bit like stating "I'm not sure how $10 million is an improvement over $1000."

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfes_law
Great article about a lot of the one-up-manship in the software world.
Can we please boycott articles that need a freakin login?
I was at the same party and Dave was not surrounded by baying mobs of nerds, far from it. In general, he had a couple of people from his entourage (who arrived with him) that he spoke to most of the time. In fact, at one point he was clearly looking for more conversation, as I saw him wandering through the crowd alone and finally arriving at our group and joining the conversation.

Perhaps the baying crowds of nerds were in the author's mind.
Saudi British Bank launches Shariah compliant SABB Advance in Saudi
Perfecting Animation via Science
The Plant List
فوائد الزنجبيل
The Year Climate Started Hurting Politicians
LED Flashlight Bulbs for indoor and outdoor lighting
Introducing the UNIVAC Computer
Actually, I wonder at which point you guys notice that your productivity drops. Very often my productivity drops noticeably after 7 hours, already, but it can come back in the evening.

Also, it often drops after lunch, but this also depends on when we have lunch. It's significantly worse if we have lunch around 12:00 than around 13:30-14:00. Our research group loves to go at 11:30 (!!!) which destroys the whole day for me, so a few of us have just stopped eating together with them.

Update: I've added a poll: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2052007
More Scientist-on-Scientist Smackdown
Big Tech Questions for 2011
I know I have seen lots of these, but I can't really remember any of them now. I can think of http://two.sentenc.es/. What are some more examples?
those are good stats. Care to share the URL?
Poll: When does your productivity drop?
After how many hours of work do you notice that your productivity drops significantly?
more (I'm invincible!)
Here is another: http://whatifgoogledoesit.com/
Jonathan Steed about the Instagram hoax
The best job I ever had (schedule-wise) was when I worked 30 hours/week at home.

My normal day would be: get up at six and start work answering emails. Around eight I'd rustle up a quick breakfast and eat it at my desk while I started making the calls I needed to make. Done at noon.

If the 6 AM start time seems horrible, consider this: my commute from bed to desk was less than 30 seconds and being done before noon was a powerful motivator.

However a large portion of my job was traveling to different meetings throughout the state. Depending on the location, these trips could take three to five hours. So, if I had two meetings a week, I'd cut back my "office time" the day before or the day after.

Regardless of how much travel I did, I was done for the week when I hit 30 hours. I was done before Friday 90% of the time.

For about four months of that time, my fiancee (who also worked from home) was living with me. We would often go have lunch together or see a matinee.
65 percent of Internet users have bought content online
the title is wrong. it's not every "best paper": notably all best papers before 2005 are missing for ICML.

in terms of metrics of research quality, not all conferences are equal, and "best" papers are often selected by a relatively small group of people whose decision isn't really validated too much.
Another lesson is to avoid saying amazingly haughty things like, "clever only to people of pedestrian intelligence."

The lesson I've received, after sparking all this discussion, getting voted down, then back up again, is that it pays off in the end to be open and genuine.
http://www.comicsanscriminal.com/
I telecommute as well and basically have the first six hours of everyday by myself, so I feel very productive during that time. After lunch it drops some, but luckily that is also when meetings are so I feel it doesn't matter as much. If I still have time left and don't feel very productive (which happens maybe one day a week, sometimes more though) I usually have some work that doesn't require much mental effort (like administrative or light maintenance) and work on that. If I couldn't define my schedule like this it would probably be harder.
I work between 25 and 30 hours a week. I don't earn a great income, especially compared to figures mentioned here, but it's enough to pay the bills and I'd rather spend more time at home than at work.

It works because we have a very modest house with an equally modest mortgage. We own the car, my wife runs a very tight budget and we don't have many other outgoings. Our largest expense (greater than the mortgage payments) are school fees; we send our 4 kids to a Montessori school but we're happy to pay the money because we can afford it (just) and it's something we both strongly believe in

The downside to the extra time I have, is that I haven't exactly used it wisely - in fact I've mostly squandered it, which makes me sad looking back at the year gone by.
I don't know. I recently borrowed a book from a co-worker, a young mother, about potty-training. They talked about different approaches in different parts of the world. The author was American, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to cross-check what she wrote. (And most people on HN are from the US, that's why I assumed so.)
http://foldr.com/

http://foldl.com/
Some ads pay upon display.

Some ads pay upon click.

Some ads pay upon purchase.

Most people (even those with 3-digit IQs) consider this stuff inside baseball, and don't investigate how different ad networks pay. Pointing out to your audience that the ads pay upon click will inspire a non-zero group of them to click a few ads to help you out.

And frankly, even if they know that the ads are pay per click, mentioning that fact is a reasonably effective call to action.