skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That comparison is not correct.

The chernobyl plant exploded because of a instantaneous power excursion to many times the rated maximum, and it contained a huge amount of Graphite (=Coal!) which caused a fire that dispersed a lot of fine-grained core material.

The activity in the reactor core(s) in Japan right now should have decayed to a heat-output that is a few % of their rated power and, to make up some vivid comparison with the reality as we know it: The reactor core should look like what you get if a blacksmith puts glowing-hot iron (which in the reactor-case magically heats itself up constantly) in water, the resulting steam bubbles are what creates the increase in containment pressure.

Even if there would be another hydrogen induced explosion there's no chance that even a tiny fraction of the amount of radioactive material set free in Chernobyl would be released to the environment.
Verizon iPhone here says 11:52pm (it's really 12:53am). Hopefully this fixes itself at the real 2:00am.
The scenario is slightly more complicated: power loss, loss of backup power sources and not being able to solve either of those two issues before the secondary backup power source, the batteries, ran out.

We're dealing with what is almost the worst case scenario the reactors are prepared for. That the reactors should be considered lost in such a situation is by design. How is it an engineering failure if everything operates as it was designed to?

And as far as I can tell, there's still a very real risk
of meltdown/containment vessel breach

There is, but that is the worst scenario that the reactor is prepared for: that the fuel rods melt through the bottom of the containment vessel. There is secondary containment with a huge heat sink down there. Damage will still be contained. But as they are now pumping seawater into the reactor, we won't get to test that bit of engineering.
Like. I do these type of time-saving calculations in my head whenever someone like the bus driver drives too slow and fails to make a light, thus costing everyone on the bus an extra minute of their lives.

You actually saved 24 minutes times, say, 3000 students, which is 24*3000/60/24 = 50 human days saved over the span of four years. Not to mention, this hack may well have lived on since you've graduated, so that's many more days of savings. Nice.
Never do anything to kill time.
That map is a hoax:

http://theorstrahyun.blogspot.com/2011/03/millions-of-americ...

http://ny-popculture-politics.blogspot.com/2011/03/japan-nuc...

http://solarimg.org/?p=716
if you have that kind of scratch to throw at the problem, why are you not buying your own hardware?

I mean, outsourcing is great if you need to scale up fast, but if you are at that kind of scale, you will quickly save a lot of money if you can move some of your longer-term load off to your own hardware. Your monthly cost is going to be a rather large fraction of the capital cost of the hardware, and difference between the capital cost of harware+co-lo fees and what an outsourced server rental will charge at that scale is more than enough to amortize out the cost of a good sysadmin and a hardware grunt or two.
That's not a bug — that's a feature! (if you're a time lord)
Carnage on I-95 After Crash Rips Bus Apart
1) Own a business suit. It hacks other people, because whatever problem you are trying to get resolved does not happen to the sort of people who wear business suits. It also hacks yourself - you'd be amazed how hard it is to sound like an absent-minded twenty-something when you look like the CEO of a multinational. (Trust me.)

2) Writing letters - on paper, physical letters - is the most underrated professional skill there is. Every bureaucracy in the world is a machine to turn letters into things you want. When possible, hand-deliver the letter while wearing a business suit. (Not joking.)

3) You will end up like the people you associate with. Choose friends carefully. (Want to lose weight? Make thin friends. etc, etc)

4) Crock pots: cooking without all the sucky, time consuming parts.
Can you expand on how one would get started writing such a script? I've been meaning to do something like this for a while (partially as a legit exercise, partially for fun).
I'm debating his email, which is exactly what this entire topic is about?
I'm in Vietnam right now. If the South Vietnam/United States/South Korea coalition had beaten the North Vietnam/Soviet Union/Red China/North Korea coalition, it would be a much nicer, safer place to live.

For that matter, why were they in such a hurry to gain independence from France? I mean, who do they think they are?

the fact that Vietnam is more like North Korea than South Korea since the Southern side lost to the North in that war - and it's ruined the country.

This assumes both an idyllic pre-war state, and a uniform teleology of socioeconomic development, neither of which are grounded in reality. A key difference between Vietnam and Dubai is that Vietnam hasn't been pitching itself as heaven on earth or the ultimate playground for adult children, and you seem to resent its failure to do so.
There's no containment dome.

http://i.imgur.com/CckjP.jpg (X)

The reactor is the red cylinder in the middle, the containment is the pear-shaped cavity it sits in, closed on top with the yellow hood and connected to that torus in the lowest-level which in case of an accident is supposed to condense the steam back into water, thereby removing heat from the containment.

The part that's exploded is the flimsy metal "hut" on top of the concrete building.

(X) from another HN comment I can no longer find, sorry, no attribution for who posted it initially
My favorite speeding ticket escape hatch goes something like this:

1. Get pulled over for speeding.

2. Have your windows rolled down when the officer walks up to your car, hands on the wheel, &c.

3. Preemptively, "Hi, officer. I know I was speeding. I'm sorry, but if I don't get home and go to the bathroom right now, I'm going to need a new pair of pants." Delivery matters, obviously, but it's not hard.

4. Get sent on my merry way.

100% success rate, for a far smaller sample size than I should have, given how I tend to drive.

That said, danilocampos' advice holds. In the one instance where I was caught speeding egregiously, playing the situation as described got my ticket reduced below the magic "10 MPH over" threshold, where the violation is typically also reported to your insurance carrier, leaving aside the reduction in ticket cost.

Moreover, that was after he had to chase me for almost half a mile. His car was an unmarked Mustang, with no siren and recessed flashers, so I simply didn't see him until he pulled in behind me and blocked me into my parking spot at the office.

He was obviously expecting a worst-case scenario after a chase like that (hand on his sidearm as he approached my car, &c). My courtesy and honesty helped defray would could've otherwise been a deep pile of suck.

(I also don't speed much on that road any more. Go figure.)
This presumes you haven't had your ability to flag revoked by the powers that be.

I would argue that mine got revoked for taking an actual interest in the quality and scope of submitted content. So, take that into consideration when trying to help.
As someone who lives in Shanghai, 1850km away, I wonder if I should go a bit further away as a precaution? During the Chernobyl accident the nuclear clouds reached up to 2500 kms away from Chernobyl...
Dave Winer has been trying to do an open source version a while ago but didn't get too far — but I can really see the need for this. http://scripting.com
Thanks! I didn't know that, and now I've learned all sorts of things to speed up my github workflow.
I think that the greatest problem with nuclear is that we are still using reactors that were commisioned over 40 years ago!

Why the hell have they not been replaced with newer, safer, more effient reactor designs?

I'll tell you why, environmentalists. We need energy, we NEED electricity. Because of this need, and the fact that we can't build any new reactors thanks to the green lobby we are stuck with old reactors(which become riskier with age).

We cant turn them off because we need them and are not allowed to replace them.

The green movement, because of it's anti-nuclear stance is putting increasing number of lives at risk. If they were worried about safety they would make sure old plants are shut down and replaced with new ones. But they don't want this, they will only accept wind or solar.
Time to move to Sweden
I totally agree with you. Frankly, it is not an illusion.
rads, milligrays, sieverts. how many different measures of radiation are there?

Does anyone have a good feel for how much risk we actually face in California from a total meltdown in Japan?

Thanks.
Show HN: Automatic Twitter Translator
No iPad for you
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ah, ok. Thanks.
Yes, this part of the article was incredibly hilarious.
Whenever possible, pass off laziness as efficiency.

Don't be afraid to take your own path. When I decided to switch research topics during grad school, no one was actually doing what I wanted to do, but I was able to convince a couple profs to work with me, successfully have them apply for an NSF grant on my topic, and form a brand new research group of questionable officialness.

I think this has been mentioned before. When purchasing stuff in (US) stores, you can generally swipe your card and enter your PIN before they are done ringing your items up. Makes things go a little faster and you feel like you're in the know.
As some of you might know, trains are very crowded here in India. I take a train to work. My simple hack is a marked position on the station where I stand when the train arrives in order to be the first one to grab the handle of one of the marked compartments that I always get in. After the people on the train alight, I can sneak in quickly. Using this hack, I am the first one to get inside the compartment 90% of time, no matter how large the crowd is.
Do you think Oracle needs SEO? They're quite popular on their own.
Or just a bug due to the setup process of UIWebView or "offline" webapps not enabling Nitro where Safari's usage of webkit does.
You should probably move away to avoid the air pollution in Shanghai.
I don't think kj is saying teachers aren't important, just that there might be a better way. And remember, only a 'tiny fraction' of people were on Facebook at some point.
2) Writing letters - on paper, physical letters - is the most underrated professional skill there is. Every bureaucracy in the world is a machine to turn letters into things you want. When possible, hand-deliver the letter while wearing a business suit. (Not joking.)

As intriguing as I find this idea, I couldn't help picture it a bit creepy to write and hand deliver(I can do one or the other). Then again, that's probably why it works. What context have you done that for?

I very rarely write but do have a handwritten journal which incidentally everyone in my life wants to read though I mostly figured it's to find what I've written about them.
I put this together really quickly to keep up to date on the Japan earthquake situation from my Japanese friends. They post in Japanese which I can't understand, so by adding the hashtag #en the translator will automatically translate and repost the translated tweet to their stream. Hopefully this will help others out as well.
"The goal of any system is to perpetuate the system." Someone smart said that, but I can't remember who.
Depends on the prevailing winds, which I think generally go from west to east in the northern hemisphere, but no idea how things actually work in that area.
Dominant winds go to the Pacific, even if there is meltdown and containment breach, California is more at risk than China is.
Your brain is a very elastic thing. I've found over the years that I can reprogram (for want of a better word) my head and my personality.

Case in point - Up until 5 years ago I was petrified of needles. My mum used to have to inject herself twice a day due to diabetes until she moved to a pen when I was a teenager, so you think I'd be happy with needles. Oh no. I was scared out of my wits by them. Petrified that they'd hurt more than anything going in. Of course, when I had to have an injection for anything I'd look at it, tense and terrified so the experience would be horrific. I reprogrammed my mind to avoid tensing up, not to look at it, to focus on something else and to accept that this is going to hurt, but not as much as my mind thinks it would, and after a few injections I'm now able to have them without freaking out. A couple of months ago I developed pericarditis and had to have a catheter - normally this would freak me out, but I knew that along with drawing blood samples it had to happen and I had to let it happen so I dealt with it.

I also used to get very stressed out very easily and had a quick temper. I realised that I needed to do something about it as I could flare up and it would upset those near to me. I in effect forced my mind to realise that when I got angry, upset etc. over something that I could not change, all I was doing was upsetting those around me and raising my blood pressure over something that I had no control over. Getting angry at this point has absolutely no chance of any form of positive outcome. Thus, if getting angry doesn't help solve the problem, but not getting angry at least makes you feel better about the issue and better prepared to address the problem, it's much better not to get angry. It took several months of working on it and I do occasionally get wound up easily by some things but I'm definitely a much calmer person as a result.

I've done heaps of other things to my mind and personality in the hopes of making me a better person - becoming more sociable, more comfortable speaking in public, no longer wanting 'stuff' in my life, all with pretty good success.
Socks tend to become lonely, loosing their other half, which makes you end up with lots of single socks in the drawer.

I ditched them all and purchased 20 pairs of the same socks. I never pair them up, but simply dump them in the drawer after washing.

This way I don't have to pair them up and I never have to quest for "the lost sock(tm)".
Check out this graph with more devices:

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph4191/35571.png

Tegra2 phones do better than Tegra2 tablets and the iPhone4 does better than the iPad 1. Look how well the iPhone 3GS does due to its lower resolution.

In short, higher resolution screens are penalised by this benchmark.
I'm not doubting your story but maybe it's to do with intentions? A slimy salesperson who fakes warmth and friendliness in an attempt to ingratiate himself would rub me up the wrong way as well, but when done sincerely I really appreciate it and make an effort to do it for others too.

I suppose it is possible that everyone i know secretly resents it and gossips behind my back about my creepy touchy feeliness but I don't think so. Indeed, they reciprocate, which would be pretty counterproductive if they actually wanted me to stop.
To be fair, the plant has operated through thirteen [1] previous earthquakes in Japan since its first reactor reached criticality in 1970 [2].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Japan

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_I_Nuclear_Power_Plant...
Howard Schultz protests too much that he avoided Starbucks "losing its soul" while introducing sorbet, smoothies and Starbucks-branded instant coffee.

In 2011, Starbucks has as much soul as Seattle has an NBA team.
An HTML5 game in the Mac App Store
Agreed. Although it is a bit bothersome, I think I will do that from now on.
The reason these plants haven't been replaced with newer ones is NOT environmental lobbying - it's because no-one has figured out how to do it economically. Decommissioning a highly radioactive power station is extremely expensive. When these things were built their proponents optimistically expected the decommissioning problem to be have been solved by now - but it hasn't.

I fully expect US nuclear power stations to end their useful lives by being sold to shell companies that promptly go bankrupt, leaving the problem (and cost) of rendering them safe to the usual suckers - the taxpayers. For generations. And generations. And generations. Our descendants are going to curse us for this for ever.
Ruskie Java coder lifts inaugural Facebook Hacker Cup
To see what compiler compilers are meant to do, you have to look back at the 60s/70s. Back then, people implementing a programming language wrote their own lexer/parser, in some kind of spaghetti code. Compiler compilers fixed this by providing a means to
(i) give a grammar in a declarative fashion (i.e., so that you can still figure out what it does, without getting entangled in the states of a GOTO-heavy and implicit state machine)
(ii) make that grammar run well.

The alternative approach is to have (close to) no grammar at all - this is why Lisp's S-expressions are such a fabulous thing: you can describe anything that you could describe in a context-free language, without any heavy grammar lifting necessary.

The relatively new trend of using GLR parsing (i.e., parsing fully context free languages, using chart packing) is necessary because people need to parse grammars that are not designed to be in LR(k), for example a general parser for COBOL that allows it to parse several dialects of it.

In general, you want to avoid both the problem of having to jump through vicious hoops to get your grammar into LR shape (which defeats the point of (i) - it makes your grammar unreadable and difficult to implement), and the problem of exponential parsing times - which you don't care about when parsing relatively unambiguous 10-100 line fragments, but which will be in your way once you're dealing with realistic programs of 1000-10000 lines.

To do that, PEGs (or more generally top-down parsing - this has been around for ages, including Prolog's DCG grammars) need to introduce some means of limiting the backtracking to avoid the exponential blowup that you'd get there; however, wrongly placed cuts (i.e., instructions to disallow backtracking) destroy the declarative nature of the grammar and could introduce nasty problems.
I, I cannot write my accurate feeling to the article. It is amazing as web interface, but these images almost make me cry...
> In France, a kiss from a pretty acquaintance can generate a frisson

Isn't that true of most places?
Excellent workshop on the subject of deployment and scaling of django apps by Jacob Kaplan-Moss

http://ontwik.com/python/django-deployment-workshop-by-jacob...
Too lazy to create reviews for a final? Create a google doc with a chapter number on each row and email your class asking x people to signup to do y chapters each. When done have em paste it into a master doc. Boom! You have a crowdsourced study guide!
I think in some cultures this may be seen as insulting, if personal space isn't as freely given as part of the culture.
I have forced myself to stop checking mail, facebook, time, etc. on my mobile after I have decided to rest. I have slept better since then.
Auto Transport Encinitas, California
What's the bet they'll be taking a 30% cut of each donation, as a facilitation fee.
I thought it was the industry who wanted to get the profits from existing reactors instead of investing hundreds of millions to shut down a site and billions to build new ones.

The environmentalists just think that the new ones don't solve the underlying problems of security, waste disposal, etc.
Use a vertical monitor for your code editing. Having twice as many lines of code in front of you at once makes a big difference. Most skeptics haven't really tried it.

Stop wasting time obsessing about the best coding setup and the best editor. I've seen very poor developers with incredibly advanced typing shortcuts that they spend hours perfecting. They still write shit code (maybe they do so faster...). I use the standard configuration for an editor I like, which is a text editor only, not an IDE. I think the extra seconds here and there I spend typing repetitive parts of code give me time to think about what I'm going to do next. If you've ever spent half a day writing macros that save you milliseconds, then you're fooling yourself into thinking that you're increasing your productivity. And as I've mentioned, "lost time" isn't lost if you're spending it thinking about the problem you're solving.

Limit your use of debugging tools. I'm self-taught and in my early years of programming (Pascal) as a teenager I just didn't know how to use a debugger. It's given me a 6th sense in figuring out where the problem is in the code when I encounter a problem. Developing that ability makes you work faster because most times you know immediately where the problem is, instead of hunting things down in the debugger in a systematic fashion. Next time you're tempted to immediately fire up the debugger, just don't and try to figure it out only by looking at the code.
Get your self tested for ADD,

I know this sounds weird but up 10% of people have it.
And with treatment,I got tested and my coding started to become more in depth.

My concentration is more then i can ever imagine. Before I would work 30mins 30 mins(a life hack I got from HN previously) off like a previous. Now I can work 2 hours straight with even better results from what I would do in 4 30 min work sessions.
Great video and a beautiful composition using very simple rules. I'd have liked to have seen more about the circle of fifths and harmonic structure though, because this is where the relationship between music and mathematics starts to get really interesting.

I don't, however, agree that this is what Pi sounds like. The composer could easily have applied any one of an incalculable number of different rules, and come up with something which sounded completely different..
Help Japan
Something I put together tonight to help Japan and their losses. Spreading this link would be greatly appreciated.
Exceptional teachers work more, and provide much more for their students. However the vast majority of teachers are not exceptional.

As a thought exam think about what are they doing off the clock? Most likely grading or setting exams. The best and youngest work over their pre-packaged lesson plans and augment them to the best of their ability. However these are the best, the top few percent. The scan-tron crew do none of this.
Agent Orange? I'd guess that it MAY hamper the population and development growth slightly...
I'm not supporting a technology which has these kinds of worst case scenarios happening.
This interface is so good it's freaky. It's too good. It makes me feel almost responsible for the power of that wave — even as every rational cell in my body begs me that this is not so.
Have a little chime that goes off every five minutes. If you're not doing something worthwhile when the chime goes off, then start doing something worthwhile (for me that's whatever's next on my to-do list.).

www.online-stopwatch.com/interval-timer/ works great.
As someone who lives in California, 8800km away, I wonder if I should go a bit further away as a precaution...? ;-)
None, unless the radioactive slag is magically aerosolized and propelled in to the upper atmosphere, then carried swiftly across the Pacific.. A meltdown on its own will only cause local damage.

Take a look at our discussion last year of the concept of a banana equivalent dose: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1429524

The extent of milk contamination as a result of the Three Mile Island meltdown was that a glass of milk was 75 times less radioactive than the average banana.