skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Turns out the optimistic reports upvoted by hacker news were polyannish. There appear to be 2 borderline catastrophes right now -

1. In reactor 4 spent fuel rods are burning and radioactivity is being freely vented in to the air. NONE of the optimistic reports suggested this possibility but I see a prophetic article at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/world/asia/15fuel.html.

2. Reactor 2 has had an explosion that has damaged the core containment structure - something we were assured would not happen.

Why were engineers so optimistic, while the ground reality is so much worse? Probably the complexity of the system escapes us and look at small parts of the issue and assume they are under control. In reality many things are interacting and the combination can overwhelm defences. For eg. as water is being routed to reactors 1, 2 and 3 to prevent meltdowns, the spent fuel rods are overheating.

Hubris strikes again.
Some technical details about Usenet during the coup: http://groups.google.com/group/talk.politics.soviet/browse_t...
This is actually quite useful. Speed would improve the overall user experience. Also, I'm not too sure what the links are at the bottom of the page?

All in all, great first start. It'll be powerful once you start including other domains (.me, .us etc)
Other headlines today from jezebel.com:

Pete Wentz Discusses Divorce, Thanks God For Charlie Sheen

Woman injured by Dolphin jumping into her boat

ABC Casting for "Stem-Cell Face-lift" Show

Al-Qaeda Expands into Women's magazines
When are companies going to figure out that whenever 'social' gets bolted on to an app there's a backlash? Why do we all keep trying this over & over? Do we actually see this increasing sales? Or is it just a general feeling that since Facebook is worth XX billion, we'll be worth more if our experience is more social?
Show HN: ThreeAbout.me - Three things you want to be known for
Hi HN,

My friend and I created ThreeAbout.me this weekend as a great way to condense your accomplishments into three easy to understand sentences. An online resume or business card of sorts that you can be proud of and is easy to consume.

The inspiration for the service came from our experiences networking with people that we didn't know anything about. What if they just told us the three things we should know them for?

We also wanted to experiment with reducing signup investment (no passwords, for example).

On the technical side, ThreeAbout.me was written in Python and Django. We use Postgresql for storing aggregated signups but everything else is stored in Redis. Would I use redis again as a replacement for an RDBMS? Probably not, so I'm curious to hear if others had different experiences.

We hope you enjoy it!

(I've linked to our two profiles as examples in the comments.)
Clickable:
http://threeabout.me
http://threeabout.me/max
http://threeabout.me/ben
Nice idea, but I'm too scared to post it. For some reason, I just know that goatse would get on there.
See jaysonelliot's comment here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2325377

This is hard to say without attacking something that is clearly great and helpful to a lot of people, but I think its fair to say that businesses and people all over Japan are currently putting in unbelievable efforts and singling out Apple here just seems to be putting the most bizarre western tech community lens over the thing.
Spending that $300 on new and upcoming bands is not the only other option though. If iTunes etc weren't around and one was only presented with the album at the front of the music store, personally I'd be spending the $300 on beer long before buying Bieber's latest.

The biggest problem facing that new and upcoming band is not that I will spend money on old bands instead. It's that I've never heard of them so don't know if they're any good and will spend my money on something other than music. iTunes (+Amazon, Rhapsody etc) does more to solve that than anything else Bon Jovi or the rest of the music industry have done.
Many, many companies have performed admirably: offering shelter, giving away their products/services for the duration, trying to help affected customers/employees, etc.

I'm quite a ways away from the earthquake, and have used a regional bank for the last seven years. The branch manager called me to say that he noticed my account was nearly empty and, if I or my business was affected by the earthquake, the bank had my back and we could sort out the numbers later. (Situation nominal, by the way -- I just happened to have paid taxes on Friday, which appears to be quite a hit if you only know about savings in yen.)
Can I just say I love the fact that there is an anti-copyright movement taking hold of youth today across the globe. Ten years ago when I used to try to tell people the way I felt, people either called me a cuckoo libertarian (proto-tea party) or a socialist. Now it's totally normal, assuming you are talking to someone under 30.
I lived in Canada for the first 30 years of my life and recently moved. Culturally and socially, it's a great place to live...this, no one can deny.

Startup/tech? In my experience, people who say the scene is really hot haven't been exposed to anything else. As far ahead as Toronto and Vancouver are than say Ottawa or Edmonton, Seattle and Austin are as far ahead of Toronto and Vancouver. It isn't even in the same ballpark.

If you do move to Canada, I'd say Vancouver is the only sane bet (which is not where I'm from). First, it puts you relatively close to Seattle, Portland, California and Austin. Second, by Canadian standards, it has a good tech scene. Finally, by world standards, it has a great quality of life (though not a cheap one).
"How much is regulatory approval worth, anyway?" To the FDA it apparently matters a great deal.
"Turns out the optimistic reports upvoted by hacker news were polyannish."

There are way too many people on here who've been drinking too much of the radioactive koolaid doled out by the nuclear industry.

The general consensus here tends to be that nuclear power is wonderful and amazingly safe.

Well, we're seeing them being proven wrong yet again. How much more proof are they going to need? How many more nuclear disasters is it going to take?
Great advice! I find the hardest part is just getting in the zone where I'm not distracted and constantly alt-tabbing to other things.

Ommwriter (http://www.ommwriter.com/) is a great writing tool to keep distractions at bay and focus you on your writing. There's a free version, but the better version is also quite inexpensive ($4 I think).
Let them die because historically it's just a recent trend that allowed only a few to get rich.

How does that not exactly describe us and the internet, especially when we leverage the same laws and protections? The only difference between us and them is someone has to hack our servers to get our IP.
Well put. This is a highly chaotic situation unfolding as we speak. If any of that fuel catches fire, those of us sitting on our couches in silicon valley may very get a nice early spring gift from jet stream.

Even if AT THIS POINT the chances of such a fire are <1% (which quite frankly seems optimistic) we should be very very concerned...

Software engineers especially, but engineers in general, have a tendency to love complex machines. But engineers of all kinds SHOULD know best: that there are ALWAYS bugs, and where you least expect them.

We ought to put aside the politics here: whether you like nuclear power or you don't: we've all been very much dependent on it, and benefited from it greatly. It's impact on life is different, but not clearly better or worse than other sources.

Let's hope the engineers on the ground in Japan are getting very very creative.
Anyone wanting to build the next Flickr, let us know. We're looking to provide the tools to tie such a product to existing social graphs, and to handle migrating photos, lists and feedback to the next big social photo service.

E-mail me (listed in my profile) if you're wanting to talk about building a social photo app on the Windsoc API.
To have a thriving popular music scene, you need lots of people to try their hand. Even the very best songwriters are lucky to manage about 20 classic/hit tunes (exceptions: Beatles, Stevie Wonder). For the charts to be listenable depends on the thousands of bands that only produce a few potential hits their whole career. It's only the money that can attract artists in sufficient numbers to achieve this. If there's no money in the industry, people wont bother. Music will suck.
I'm going to guess that means $100k in annual sales. Its not entirely clear on that point, but the mention of the same number required annually after being approved seems to suggest that. Your use of the work "accumulated" suggests you're talking about a period > 1 year.
Let me illustrate how ridiculous your level of generalization is:
Can you believe people pay $14 to see light projected onto a screen?
I'd like to see them compare against Firefox 4 RC instead of Firefox 3.6.15. Firefox 4 is going to be final in the next couple of weeks or sooner, and IE9 is not final yet either. A comparison against Fx4 and Chrome 10 would be much more representative of the current state.
Ask HN: Kickstarter clone in Drupal?
Is it possible to create a crude Kickstarter clone in terms of functionality using Drupal?

Or stick with ruby/rails Python/Django

Keep in mind it's for prototyping, 2 cofounders - one business, one web design marketing type w/drupal familiarity... looking for a real tech co-founder in the meantime.
Alternative explanation: Being a pessimist is not productive. Woo-hoo, you were something in the ballpark of right. Is the world better because of it? If you look at every situation and assume the worst, you'll be right sometimes, but you'll never accomplish anything.
The information coming out of Japan right now is very piecemeal and very incomplete. We are also depending on an organization without a stellar reputation when it comes to telling the truth[1], and a culture programmed to downplay very bad things. It has really pained me to see people rush to believe that everything is fine.

Conclusions at any stage of this crisis have been premature, but HN seems to want a heavy dose of finality to a crisis that isn't even over yet. Apparently people don't want it to be a big deal, but it's slowly turning into a big deal. It just is. Instead of big essays and conclusions about how the powers-that-be have it under control complete with inaccurate depictions of how a reactor works, why don't we focus on facts?

With that in mind, we do not know how bad it is. Anyone who says they do is lying to you. It isn't over, and it is a basic fact of logic that we will not be able to reflect on how bad this is or was until it is over.

At the risk of a neener-neener I told you so, I presented some of this viewpoint[2] on the self-aggrandizing risk management Ph.D.'s everything's fine piece, but my viewpoint was drowned out by people wanting to rush to a conclusion so they can put the crisis out of sight and out of mind.

[1]: http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/east/06/17/tokyo.s...

[2]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2319305
Custom Nike Dunks in Best Discount
Depending on the musician's contract, a lot of them make essentially nothing from online sales. That isn't the fault of the internet or the consumer, just bad contract decisions on their part.

Sara Hickman talks about that here: http://es-es.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=145402217798 – skip down to "SECOND SOURCE" and read three paragraphs.
From the more extensive coverage here in Asia, no. Most electronic stores had their resources open for everyone and wifi has been made free in all affected areas. Japanese culture considers these gestures a necessity and provides these info to the affected areas mostly, rather than letting them out to PR outlets, so I guess most western media aren't aware of the actual situation.
> > There is only one worst-case scenario, so although I very much agree that the information coming out of Tokyo Electric Power Co. and the Japanese national government is inconsistent, that doesn't mean new "worst-case" scenarios become possible.

Well my opinion as to the worst-case scenario was wrong: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/world/asia/15fuel.html?_r=...

To be clear, the spent fuel facility at the shutdown and de-fueled Unit 4 reactor has ended up catching fire, and now they are measuring radiation levels on the site on the scale of 400 mSv/hr and 100 mSv/hr (yes, millisievert).
They did that, but they also didn't even try to upstream a whole bunch of stuff. Then in 2010, after not laying any groundwork, they were annoyed that the very first thing they proposed which was (even only partly) related to their UX work was rejected. Then Mark accuses GNOME or people within GNOME of playing politics.
Japan's warning that all people within 30 kilometers from Fukushima should stay indoors and that the radioactive winds may reach Tokyo in as little as 8 hours

Nikkei Flash Crash - Futures Plummet 16%

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/nikkei-flash-crash-futures-...
I pointed this out 20 days ago:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2249452

:)
As near as I can make out the details:

From the Japanese Prime Minister and Chief Cabinet Secretary. My source is NHK World (Japan News):

People up to 30km from Dai-ichi (number-1) plant are being asked to remain indoors. ALL people within 20km of PLANT 1 are being asked to evacuate.

The Japanese Govt. have asked the Japanese people to act calmly. (My comment: Watch the stock market now.)

Here we go (information for PLANT 1 - Dai-ichi):

Number 4 reactor: is on fire. There has been a hydrogen explosion there. There was an implosion of the building structure. Radiation is being released into the environment. Note reactor 4 was not in operation, but the fire has caused spent fuel to heat up generating hydrogen.

Number 2 reactor: there was a blast 30 minutes after number 4's explosion. A hole/crack (trans?) has been observed in the reactor. Radioactive material has been released to the environment.

At 10:22am between reactor 2 and 3, 30milliSievert and at reactor 4, 100 milliSievert. At reactor 3 the reading was 400 MILLI Sieverts. Note MILLI, not micro.

They believe the fire at reactor number 4 is likely the main cause of the dramatic increase in radiation.

The roof of a containment facility for spent fuel has also been damaged. It is possible that a leak exists there too.
Except they do have an alternative. Move the company outside the US.
I think a big part of it is we've had it drilled into us that fears of nuclear meltdowns are irrational. That people are just misinformed & scared of something they can't see or possibly understand. And we like to think we're smarter than the general population.

But clearly no one knows how bad this situation is going to get.
I generally see people talking about how safe the new reactor designs are, and how it's a tragedy that people are so afraid of nuclear that they won't let them be built. The reactors in Japan are 40-year-old designs. You can't compare them on the same level. It's like saying that people in favor of nuclear power claim that Chernobyl never happened because 'safe nuclear' == 'never was a reactor that was unsafe ever built.'
Given I am based in Asia, I can assure you that EVERY other companies in Japan did - all wifi are open and free, vending machine goes free, stores open for sleep and food. It's just that Japanese culture do not consider it necessary to tell western media about it, or actually consider it improper to PR on it.
I know little of Apple or of Japanese business morals/etc.

I wonder, is this an Apple thing, or a Japanese thing, or an Apple Japan thing? Does it lean any particular way? Not that it matters. Good people doing good things. I would be interested in commentary, though.
1. The building on 4 is on fire, not the spent fuel rods.

2. The hydrogen explosion on 2 may have damaged containment.
Stop Worrying About Nuclear Power, You Idiots
Watch Japan Massive Slaughter of Dolphins|Facebook Browser
Regarding point one, I think some people use this excuse too readily. As a single example consider:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood
IMO if companies want to assert rights as individuals I think it is permissible to expect to some level of common morality. This doesn't mean a company has to act in a compassionate or moral manner, just as an individual, but I see no reason to give a corporation a free pass because they might have shareholders and a profit motive.
The Principles of the People’s Party
Didn't we just have a top story on HN yesterday which talked about how everything was safe?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2318980
Feels to me like a browser that isn't cross-platform doesn't have much legs in 2011 (at least Safari can pull the WebKit card)... I use multiple platforms every day and it just doesn't make much sense to use a different browser on each one.

I guess they'll get the current IE8 users, hopefully even convince some people to get new machines or upgrade to W7 -- all good for a web developer. But as an actual competing browser? I don't think so.
Interesting. I like the idea about condensing the accomplishments to bite size chunks. How does the "Recommend this" function work?
Only the paranoid survive.
They're not in full melt down . . .
Whether you like it or not, the beliefs of most intellectual engineer types is that the nuclear power plant dangers have been solved.

It's inconceivable (cue sound clip from Princess Bride) to most of us that extremely extensive and effective contingency plans are not in place.

The nuclear risk is obvious, and so any nuclear construction's main emphasis must be on handling all possible contingencies... right?

If Fukushima does end up being a "Big Deal" that is going to forcibly shift the world view of many many engineers and hackers. It will represent a piece of data that is fundamentally at odds with our view of the world.

The facts will eventually win out, but for the short term, it is necessary that we go through these cycles of disbelief and then shock. Because that's just reality.

I will be shocked if Fukushima causes serious harm to humans because until now it has been inconceivable to me that people making nuke plants could possibly underestimate the risks. If my inaccurate beliefs are shattered by the harsh reality of nuclear related deaths then... that's just how it will have to be. I'll have to eat my hat. I'm not looking forward to it.

In the meantime I have to go with what I know. Which is that this should not be an issue that threatens human life.
While it is true that there are many people attempting to call the crisis "over" without adequate evidence that this is the case, I think it is equally obvious that there are many people who are doing the opposite: namely, attempting to make the case that the crisis is far worse than the incomplete facts indicate.

I applaud your more measured approach, but I must say that, as someone who has read most of the stories and comments regarding this topic that have hit the front page, I do feel that you are decidedly in the minority. There are plenty of people rushing to call this a horrendous disaster, who are privy to the same limited information, and who are likewise doing very little to contribute to the discussion.
The wise man knows when pessimism is warranted.
Even if they type on the keyboard and the hard, sharp edge on the Pro digs into the wrists?
How many major nuclear disasters have there been in the last, say, 50 years? Three mile island and Chernobyl are the two big ones that everyone knows about, and considering that people are saying that this is the third largest [EDIT: actually the second largest, at this point], I take that as an endorsement of nuclear power. As compared with coal, oil, natural gas, and so forth, which function by spewing pollutants into the environment continuously, during normal operation.

Yes, I would be thrilled if we switched entirely to solar, wind, geothermal, and hydroelectric power sources, but nuclear power isn't anywhere near as disastrous as the people strongly against it would like us to believe. It's also not as safe as a lot of people would like to think, but, by and large, it is fairly safe.
> A hole has been observed in the reactor. Radioactive
> material has been released to the environment.

I was just watching the press conference, and I could have sworn they said that the hole was in the reactor housing, and that little to no radiation was being released from this reactor. I was only paying half-attention though.
This is totally an Apple thing. I worked Apple retail, and they tell you all the time that Apple is not in the computer business. They are in the people business. I can see this happening at any major Apple store given the extreme circumstances.
Why is etsy trying to do social? Are they going to roll out a daily deals service next? What's their search strategy? Come on, etsy has a nice little niche going, why ruin it by chasing the latest trend?
"Something that has not gotten much mention yet are the pools of high-level radioactive waste at these very same reactors, which also need cooling...

...if the fuel pools are not cooled, they will melt down, in which case we’re going to have Chernobyl on steroids."

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/3/14/japan_facing_biggest_c...
And it's another broken hashbang site. It took three page reloads to finally see the content.
I moved to Canada some 12 years ago,lived in the big cities and visited every province (except Nunawut, the new north east territory). Can't say that I have any regrets.

The tech scene is decent in the big cities with some strong universities and tech centers. The investment community is definitely weaker than the US (not in volume/assets but in talent: the archetypical US VC partner is a former entrepreneur while her Canadian counterpart is more likely to be a former pension fund manager). It has improved over the years though.

A surprising discovery (for me), was that the most leftist province (Quebec) has by far the most support for tech companies: All the usual Canadian programs such as getting 60-80% of your tech expenses back in tax credits but also some really neat stuff such as a "tax holiday" for foreign developers (that would be you: no income tax for almost 5 years). Oh, and one of the lowest corporate tax rates in North America (coming in around 27% right now).

Tech business aside, Canada is a nice place. A lot less of the steep socio-politico-economic gradient that has become so common in the US. Definitely a good place to raise kids.

The winters are unpleasant though if you are used to the Valley (I cry a little bit inside whenever I go back to SF).
Well, this is good, but Apple's bigger contribution is allowing donations via iTunes. They have over 200 million credit card numbers on file - that's powerful.
What notable startups have come out of this community in Vancouver?
I mostly agree, but we have to assume the absolute worst and be rewarded with good news, rather than assume everything's fine and be surprised when a large number of Japanese citizens get thyroid cancer. Even though I think "oh my God, Chernobyl!" is uncalled for at this point, the fact is that the limited information doesn't change that we might be in a horrendous disaster (and arguably are).

The information we do have tells us it's bad; the information we don't have doesn't tell us how bad.
" It will represent a piece of data is fundamentally at odds with our view of the world."

Sadly that rarely changes anyones mind.
Why I'm Close to Giving Up on Windows Phone 7, as a User and a Developer
I agree that the information was highly confusing. I also thought I heard this, but what I wrote is I believe correct nonetheless. :-(

The english translation is very poor. Yesterday they used the phrase: "there is a small chance of a massive release of radioactive material". The correct translation was in fact, "there is little chance that there has been any substantial release of radioactive material"