skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The problem is that you can't (currently) replace that nuclear plant with a Windmill (or even a few Windmills) because the power production is still not high enough.

So I don't feel that is an entirely fair comparison.

What if such an event had hit, say, an Oil fired power station - you'd likely be looking at a reasonable level local oil contamination, and probably a large fire. I don't know how much more likely that such an event would be to happen but I am going to guess that safety and fail safes at fossil fuel stations are not quite the same as at a nuclear plant :)

(in terms of your last point; it totally can. But practically speaking it is something that has to start at home. Millions of people can afford solar panels on their home; but they mostly don't bother (and some moan about the lack of action...!). And we could be pressuring local government to introduce housing regs requiring new builds to have solar panels.)
Germany's green party has been trying to kill the nukes there fore quite some time now: the SPD/Greens officially announced their desire to phase out all nuclear power in Germany in 2000, and two power plants had been shut down in 2003 and 2005 and were planned for dismantling.

The CDU (Merkel's party) was an opponent to the phase-out, and has been very open about it since 2008, but I'm guessing they saw the writing on the wall: the Fukushima events can only fuel the already powerful german anti-nuclear movement (we're talking rallies of tens of thousands in recent years) further and there's no point in wasting political capital on a lost battle.
nope, its not, complete reproducable with 3 different phones.
"sometimes it's a vision other times it's a hallucination"

According to Martin Varsavsky, Steve Jobs hallucinates too. http://martinvars.com/post/3761365862/mi-dificil-encuentro-c... (spanish) reads:

"Steve Jobs insisted european mobile networks were worse than american networks, that Apple invented WiFI and that the iPhone is the WiFi product with more sales. Stuff simply not true."
Anything can be done but at what cost? Along with that willingness must also come the understanding that the standard of living for the majority of the planet's population will be lowered, probably dramatically in some places. Renewable energy, to this point, has been much more expensive than non-renewable energy and this has allowed the human species to enjoy a reasonably high standard of living, especially in the developed world. Now, the developing world wants part of that and telling them they have to use renewable energy seems rather disingenuous to me.

Renewable energy is entirely possible but it's a truly difficult problem, not just technologically but from a cost-benefit side as well.
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Depends what you expect.

Copied from below: I like that different phone manufacturers have slightly different concepts of what makes the OS the most functional. Because at the end of the day each iteration will better future phone models as they learn what the market likes more. Instead of what one companies design team likes better.
Go to MoveThatBlock.com!
Given the fact that a lot of us are in high-risk zones a review of preparedness would probably be a good idea.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/14/fukushiima_analysis/... has a fairly sober analysis that shows just the safeguards are generally working even in a scenario not even imagined.

(Yes, yes, one has to imagine all possibilities, but all human life involves some risk.)
The thing is, it doesn't take hordes of engineers nearly a decade to design your web server.
It's a manufacturer-specific serial protocol--NOT standard. You can find the command reference here:
http://www.lantronix.com/pdf/XPort-Pro_CR.pdf

But, if you're really interested in internet-enabling a new product, you'd likely be better off selecting a microcontroller with built-in Ethernet (or an Arduino with Ethernet shield, if prototyping). In my experience, products like the XPort were better for manufacturers looking to internet-enable a legacy device with a free serial port.
You do realize that everything that has happened at the plant since the earthquake, including that explosion, is a direct result of the earthquake, right? That's like saying the airliners didn't take down the World Trade Center, the fire did. There wouldn't have been a fire if it weren't for the airliners.

The earthquake and subsequent effects of the earthquake destroyed these reactors. It's a pointless distinction to say otherwise, designed to soften the blow to nuclear power's reputation.
AFAIK the radiations might come from the fire in rector 4.
I feel almost infinitely more threatened by a lack of electric power than a nuclear plant accident (the nearest one is about 35 km from here, for the record). And that is much more likely to happen; from some perspective, it even seems inevitable.
That one windmill won't provide near the power output of one nuclear reactor. It would be more like an entire windmill farm getting hit. Also, look at what happened to the coal plants; fires everywhere and explosions at the oil refineries. The nuclear plants look far safer to me. Don't try and use hydro as an example of safe power lest we forget what happened in China recently.
By voices you mean Soviet propaganda for not only a poorly designed plant but also a poorly designed plant run poorly.
Noprivacyville
I'm not saying that all registrars or evil, or that all ISPs are; but not knowing which to trust, I go with the one organization that has decried the practice as evil and sworn never to do it -- whois.sc.

I'm sure there are other ethical registrars / ISPs as well, I just don't know of any.
Is Apple Deliberately Slowing Down Web Apps?
You might enjoy reading "Deterring Terrorism: Aircraft Crash Impact Analyses Demonstrate Nuclear Power Plant’s Structural Strength"

http://www.nei.org/filefolder/EPRI_Nuclear_Plant_Structural_...
The events in Japan represent the end of nuclear energy as a viable long-term option.
Linux 2.6.28: autogrouping, faster dcache, transparent hugepages
How did MySpace do such a bad UX job with the new design?
You shouldn't have. I'm using UIAlertView+Blocks for years now. (PLBlocks in the 3.x times)

https://github.com/steipete/PSFoundation/blob/master/Utils/P...

Also check out PSFoundation, great stuff in there.
The reason they campaign against that is that they don't want us to continue running around in this stage of sin (technological development), but to return to grace (in this case back to working 18 hour days with a single failed harvest killing us).

Much of the hardcore environmental movement is using it as a substitute for religion, except in an even more insane way.
I think an octave up (down) means double (half) the frequency of the tone. The usual explanation, I think, is that the Pythagoreans who invented it found this to be the "most pleasing" ratio.

I wonder if there are user studies to back this claim.

I am also at such a low level, that part of your explanation just goes over my head, i.e. what is chromatic scale? Wikipedia says: "The chromatic scale is a musical scale with twelve equally spaced pitches, each a semitone apart. A chromatic scale is a nondiatonic scale having no tonic due to the symmetry of its equally spaced tones." Now very helpful. I thought there were 7 notes! And I don't know any other terms in that sentence (checking their Wikipedia entries doesn't help either, leads to a loop)
Bon Jovi: 'Steve Jobs Is Personally Responsible For Killing The Music Business'
Get a list of tone frequencies and do math with them. You will see patterns, called harmonics by musicians. Doubling the frequency (octave) can be thought of as the same tone playing twice, with an even offset. Our brains can pick up on that and notice that 440Hz is the same as 880Hz (only and "octave" higher)

Interesting fact: The tones of the scale aren't exactly evenly spaced, because of math. Some instruments use true tones and are made specifically for a certain key. Other instruments that can play in any key (like guitar) are never truly in tune.
That's talking about the reactor building (i.e. the outer walls). It's not 100% clear but they were at one point demolishing those walls to help vent hydrogen from the building. But I saw anbother source saying an explosion in that building caused the holes.

(Unit 4, BTW, is shut down & stable, but it is the building with the fire in the spent fuel pond)
The Brazillian news was claiming that a huge nuclear fallout cloud was heading their way and that everyone should stock up on iodine. The Austrian news was claiming that the meltdown was fully under way and that hell on earth was about to be unleashed.

I'd wait until we have clear news about what's going on before making an opinion.
Comparing WP7 to iOS doesn't really make sense in this case. WP7 is, like Android, an OS used by several manufacturers and delivered on several networks. Each manufacturer and carrier has their own acceptance testing scheme. Failure at any step means tweaking and retesting.

It took Android from 2008-09-23 to 2009-04-30 to get to it's first MAJOR update (cupcake, v1.5). MS is pretty much on the same pace. (Note: Android 1.1 was exclusively for the T-Mobile G-1; I don't consider that comparable to the WP7 Nodo update.)

iOS runs on iPhone and iPad, and on a comparably limited number of networks. Yet it took from 2007-06-29 until 2009-06-17 (days shy of 2 years) just to get copy and paste functionality.

The market leader only looks more agile today, after they worked out a ton of bugs. Considering just how well WP7 worked from day one, I think it actually has a very bright future.
The list is quite crappy. E.g. :GData client" doesn't help you unless you really need it. If you search for the little things, like weak-linked yet self deleting delegates, or good image crunching stuff, check out PSFoundation.

https://github.com/steipete/PSFoundation

And if you wanna have it set up for you, just clone the app template: https://github.com/steipete/PSiOSAppTemplate
This is ridiculous! Of course more people will sign up if you make them only fill out two things and force the popup on them, but it completely devoids the concept of 'signup' of its meaning. What you should care about is how many people sign up and use your service. If I was presented with a signup popup like that I would just input a fake e-mail address, try it out once and never come back. That's not what a signup is supposed to be.
I don’t think all those seven nuclear power plants would already have been shut down – more like three or so.

I listened to the press conference this morning and it sounded like their decision to shut down all seven pre-1980 plants had something to do with the relevant law. This law makes a distinction between pre-1980 and post-1980 plants which can be used to justify their decision.

If the government wants to shut down power plants they obviously need some basis in law to do just that. There seems to be a section in the relevant law that allows them to shut down nuclear power plants but arbitrarily shutting them down is not possible. (At least if the government doesn’t want to pay damages to the operators.)

The government probably is worried that a decision to arbitrarily only shut down certain pre-1980 nuclear power plants without a good reason for the distinction would run counter to the principle of equality.
I'd hesitate to call it groundbreaking, and I wonder why it's called "move that block"...
Interesting. I've been using rsnapshot for a while for a similar purpose, although its de-duplication is limited to keeping unmodified files as hard links.

It'd be nice to see a brief comparison of ddar, rsnapshot, and other things that might fit that role.
Strange Loop 2011 Speaker Update
The Syntax for NSRegularExpression is really awful. Main reason why I stick with RegexKitLite.
How to Create Visibility for Your Social Enterprise
KE = 1/2mv^2, so depending on how supersonic they're talking about, it could very well withstand an A380 impact as well as a supersonic F16.
This one is of promise. We are evaluating it and trying it out (and sometimes ripping it out).

http://restkit.org/

"RestKit is an Objective-C framework for iOS that aims to make interacting with RESTful web services simple, fast and fun. It combines a clean, simple HTTP request/response API with a powerful object mapping system that reduces the amount of code you need to write to get stuff done."
Frankly, I have heard that argument many times. I know other fuel sources cause deaths too. Gas tanks can explode, fossil fuels exhaust gasses can be poisonous, oil can leak into the sea, and so on.

And still I'd rather be exposed to all of those risks than worry about one nuclear explosion. As I said, the consequences can be just too horrible, for too many people.

I'd love to move on from fossil fuels to something else, but not something that can cause such disasters.
This chart from Matt's Flickr stream would indicate that Flickr's traffic is growing at a healthy rate.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mroth/5471404089/
Posted this just before I headed off to a meeting. Back from the meeting, and my server is fried :)

Rebooted and back up now. Thanks for all the comments!
Flexibility in an OS to handle a variety of hardware is not a problem at all. In fact, it's a very good thing. Google is letting manufacturers with experience decide the best way to add buttons - or not add buttons - to their devices. Android devices without physical buttons will likely have software equivalents. To most customers, there isn't much difference between a hard and a soft button.
K=1/2*mv^2?

My intuition (as a mechanical engineer, desinging military systems as my day job) is that the F16 going supersonic is far worse. Either way, there is no possible way you have enough information to make any of the claims you just made.

A better question to ask yourself how safe your highway transportation is, because within an hour of my house we've had 15 people killed in bus accidents in the last 72 hours. And that doesn't even begin to count car accidents. I live within 5 miles of over 10 nuclear reactors and they have never and will never scare me because I actually understand the engineering behind them. Nuclear power is not magic. Small doses of radiation scare me far less than the concussions I get from sports I play.
Only re. point two, googling "privacy vs convenience" returns a whole mess of articles, about cell phones, data mining, etc.
"...but all this "reality" keeps creating excuses, delays, etc. Can you imagine how frustrating that is if the product is so clear in your head you actually used it last night? Just get the fucker done! Enough excuses!!! Do you have any idea of the change in the world this will have, and if I give a shit about your kids little league game?!? He's not trying to be an asshole. But if he doesn't say it, he's not being true to his vision. It's a big weight to carry."

Wow, how self absorbed can the author be? Treat people around you like crap or you're not "being true to your vision?" Oh no, he's frustrated so it's okay. Of course if any of his employees responded to their frustration in a similar fashion they'd be canned....
the situation is a little bit more complex in Germany: after the former government negotiated the nuclear power exit with the four big power companies maintaining nuclear power stations, these big four were able to adapt their strategy for the days after, which they did. so especially the concession made by the current government about letting the old power plants run longer than planned is considered to be just a huge gift to these companies by a lot of germans (unexpected bonanza for the companies).
The Harajuku Moment: Fixing your personal broken windows
Do you know who is completely insane? People who think statistics like "deaths per TWh" have any meaning at all in public policy debates. You're in complete denial if you think the populace at large cares.
Could have been "Why is C still used? What are some good, modern alternatives?" heck this works too "Why is HTTP still used? What are some good, modern alternatives?"

Because, sometimes, someone gets something right and a lot of people build some exceptional infrastructure around it and then it lasts.
Ask HN: I'm a 14yo HS student. How can I improve my situation?
Sorry if the title sounds whiny. I'm currently in HS and I have been doing development since I was eleven. I'm doing web development now but I have several limitations. I don't know how I can schedule my time. There always seems to be too much school work, but I know that there are a lot of people like me who do activities outside of programming and manage to found many websites.

I’m facing limitations because I don't have any money to even buy a $20 VPS or a domain name. I don’t have a bank account so I can't buy books from the Internet. What's your advice for overcoming these, what should I do to improve my situation, and how should I schedule my time?
Nuclear disasters are so rare that a single data point of the magnitude of damage provides so much information on our risk assessment of nuclear power that it seems reasonable to idle plants while we wait and see how this one plays out. This is only the third major issue to ever happen.

Waiting this one out doesn't tell us more about the frequency of occurrence (it already occurred), but it does tell us about the magnitude of damage, which is one of the biggest unknowns and arguably why the US caps nuclear plant liability at ~12 billion via http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear_... .

The overt reason was that it was such an unknown that no one could insure it; a cynic might say that the cap was known to be incredibly low from the outset, and it was really just a hidden subsidy towards the creation of fuel for more and more nuclear weapons (this was the late 50s).
Not really. Employees #1 and #2 (Stewart, Caterina) left a long time ago. Several others have left too. But Flickr's still chugging along nicely: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mroth/5471404089/

I just wish people would stop panicking about small things.
That sets the bar too high, though. It doesn't need to be perfectly safe. It need only be safer than the alternatives.
The market is already innovating.

The government doesn't create jobs, it just directs resources from one place to another.

Yes, it's socialist. The government doesn't have that money anyway, it's running at a deficit.
Perhaps you're right. My comment was primarily intended to link to the explanation of the change we made to address some of the concerns people had. Plugging CI was probably not necessary, though this is hacker news and so I thought it was relevant to the discussion.
The real tragedy here is that while it's almost certain no civilians will die from radiation poisoning in this case, there quite likely will be or have already been deaths stemming from lack of electrical power.

But people dying from illness from lack of clean water because their water treatment plant is offline and their hospital is out of emergency power doesn't get TV ratings, pageviews, and political attention like apocalyptic visions of radioactive fallout.
I think he spoke of beliefs about nuclear safety.
How are you going to have facts when they were destroyed?
> And, heck, we might even convince the anti-vaxxer. It could happen.

To do so, make sure you only crush the the mistake, without beating the person down. Not easy to do without de-emphasising your point though:

"You say that 2+2=5, but I think you might be misinformed…" The more direct "No, 2+2=4. II+II=IIII. 1,2,3,4." might be perceived as too blunt, especially if the context is emotional (children, programming languages…).
This is the wrong comparison. You can choose the food you eat, but you cannot choose the energy you use. At least not as easily.
But there are similarities: the industry that sells energy wants to go on running their reactors. They advertise and we belief and consume.

There is also an industry (or industries) that tries to control the food market. We belief and consume. Now look at the rate of overweight people and tell me they do a good job.

As much as I like to get healthy (as good as possible) food I also want clean (as good as possible) energy. Japan shows again, that nuclear power is hard to control. And loss of control has devastating consequences.

This is not what the nuclear industry tells us, right? So it is not the right thing to believe. The same with the food industry, as you dug out this comparison.
rdiff-backup also.
> We can all agree that $75T is a ridiculous number, so what's the legal strategy?

- Mommy, can I have a pony!

-- No, of course not!

- Then can I at least have a puppy?
Sorry, but I'm about to Godwin this thread:

"If Adolf Hitler was such a bad leader why did so many people follow him?"

I think both statements are ludicrous and smell of intellectual laziness.
Btw. I don't like your analogy, I did not conclude from your example that A/B Testing never works. But one example is enough to show that it does not always work. Specifically, the claim "use A/B Testing and your signup rate will improve x%" is apparently not true.
My thoughts on the situation in Fukushima
مظاهرات البحرين
I think saying "magically survive" is being uncharitable to bhousel. What it has made me reconsider is the notion that even if we're able to design a system to withstand the problems we do foresee, it still may fail because of the problems we don't foresee or considered too unlikely.

I know this is almost a tautology, but when the stakes are as high as a nuclear powerplant, it's important to consider. Nuclear powerplants are the poster-child of massively redundant fail-safes. If we (as a species) are not able to design a system to withstand natural disasters when we know the stakes are as high as possible, then maybe we shouldn't play that game. While a massive tsunami is rare, it's not necessarily rare on the time scale that we expect nuclear plants to be operational. Given our track record, perhaps we can expect a serious problem once every 50 years. That's really infrequent - but it still might be too frequent considering the consequences.

I haven't come to any conclusions, and I don't think bhousel has, either. But the past few days have given us more data to churn on.
>I haven't read it, it may be fear mongering material. But then again, if really only 4050 people were affected, why is everyone making such a big deal about it?

They're making a big deal for 2 reasons. First it WAS a big deal. What happened is nothing to sniff at. So making a big deal over Chernobyl is no problem.

Second, the problem is that the anti-nuclear movement is trying to make people believe that it was much worse than it was, in an attempt to use irrational fear to bolster resistance against nuclear.

These are people who have no problem with lies, to them the end justifies the means, they will do anything they can, including breaking laws to stop nuclear power. I've seen this in Ireland not only with nuclear but with the building of a gas plant, a small group of radicals broke into the facility numerous times doing whatever damage they could. And this was just for gas.
Radiation exposure: a quick guide to what each level means