skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
For the "coldplay" problem you may want to use an inverse band frequency weighting (much like in IDF for text). Bands that are extremely popular won't give you any useful signals. As far as the cold-start... yep, that's a beast and using social data may help. For example, are you using stuff from Facebook/Twitter once you have users sign in? You could crawl out band/artists name from their data.

This gives me an excuse to try grooveshark. I've been curious for a while. :)

update: I didn't see any recommendations based on what I've like on Facebook or Twitter. This would be a good "warm" start. Note: I'm working on stuff like this, but don't mind sharing this simple idea. :) Quora does a great job of this pulling in data from your Twitter network.
Thanks for the link, looking forward to watching it :)
Ask HN: Would you use and/or pay for a web API to create PowerPoint slides?
If you had access to a REST API to create PowerPoint slides would you use it? If yes, would you pay for it? If yes, how much? Would you prefer a per month fee that allows X presentation or would you prefer a charge per presentation?

Any feedback is much appreciated.
Nuclear power is necessary to provide "bridge" energy until we can go fully green.

Not exactly so.

Wind or solar are dependent on it being windy or daytime, therefore will never provide base load power and can only provide incremental power on top of base load power sources such as coal, oil, gas, nuclear, or... geothermal. Geothermal is one of the best green energy sources that can provide baseload power.

After 100 years a geothermal power plant will still produce 35% of it's original first year production, so it's a pretty long lived asset.

I don't understand why geothermal is always overlooked.
Tip: How to get an iPad 2 at Target
RSS Feed for Classic:

http://news.ycombinator.com/classic
I totally agree and thanks for the link
Sprint CEO Dan Hesse Warns Of The Danger Of Duopoly In Cell Phone Land
Apple has taken measures to ensure that the app store is a walled garden. It has set the bar pretty high compared to other less regulated 'app stores'. It could be considered a strength/weakness. It is what it is....

If it was an anti-apple app then, @#%& you: Denied!
Can't have anything ruining apples image, everyone else DIAF.

freedom of expression, more like a bigoted attack. This entire story has so many directions it could go.....
IMHO the résumé is pretty good and the site is awesome.
#nitpicking: capitalize the 'B' in MacBook
10:41 EDT and it's not working on my PS3. I'd love to know what the real problem is, because I've been building everything on AWS as of late.
The article starts out in that tone, but it changes to be pretty remorseful after that. For example the "why it won't happen again" part.
The way I interpret this service is its an api for app developers to allow users to use datkey to control what photos/content they want to share with that application ?
This is a pretty cool service! The link to your own service sign-up page is broken though (the link right before the offer code).
I also had issues with blurry text while hardware acceleration is enabled.

I assume it is due to the Direct Draw, but I don't see the same issue in IE9 w/ hardware acceleration enabled.
Is it just me or does the site not work in Safari?
We have a Green Party in the UK too, but "some greens" would generally be said in a negative way, and referring to people with environmental concerns rather that just Green Party supported.

Even about a political party - if someone who until just now was a tory MP said "some tories think..." and then went on to dismiss their views I'd make the same point.

Maybe I took it the wrong way, but that's how it read to me. Either way seems like a fairly nonsense article.
Governments have often censored literature, suppressed ideas and even burned books. I'd rather private businesses be involved.
The law against false advertising probably does apply here, and as such the correct course of action would be to file a suit against the seller. I'd love to see them try to prove that their method actually "cures" something.

Without this option though, there's not really anything we can do.
If someone believes this is worth selling, and someone else believes this is worth buying, then we're not in any position to tell them what to do with their money.

There are all kinds of scams and other ways buyers can get into trouble, and I certainly won't defend scams (I hate all of them). But in the end it is the buyer's responsibility to call "B.S." and decide not to buy something. Apple can't be a parent to everyone. Even if they could be, what would happen as soon as you step outside the App Store and find something on Amazon or in a brick and mortar shop?
Let's be more precise here: some of the pebble bed designs offer passive decay heat removal. The PB-AHTR, for example, gets this handy property from its choice of coolant and geometry.
They seemed to be blaming it on "bad timing" as if these things were ever excusable. These are also things that you either do or don't do. Your systems are either secure or they're not. "They were going to be secure tomorrow" does no one any good. It doesn't look like any of the parties involved learned much of anything from this episode.
Therefore you want to sue a child?
Netscape 2.02 was 3.13 megs, for comparison.
Yes it's a service that opens a secure and selectable social content browser for applications to use as an API.
I don't necessarily disagree with his points. School administrators are corrupt a lot of the time. And schools are run in a way that's counterproductive a lot of the time.

But the flaw in his logic is that he's saying we need another corrupt system to balance out the corrupt administrative system. When the real point seems to be that the system in its entirety is corrupt. From the school administration to the school unions.

The real answer is that any system that's not held accountable will become corrupt. Given that we have to ask the question of whether the unions help make the system as a whole more accountable.

Or in other words I agree that unions are only half the problem but they're still part of the problem and not the solution.
Nuclear power is clearly unsafe, it's just a question of whether or not it is more unsafe than the other alternatives. This accident doesn't need to prove that, the fact was apparent the first time someone lit a match.

However, Nuclear Power does have a special need to prove its case in the aftermath of this incident. Just look at the economic damage from the Fukushima issue. Other than the flight of foreigners out of Tokyo (fear + uncertainty is inevitable with the notoriously closed Japanese nuclear industry), there are issues with farming in Japan's third or fourth largest farming area, medium-term damage to energy output ("All eggs in one basket"), damage to businesses in Tokyo & environs (Rotating power outages, etc..). Summer in Tokyo will be HELL without air conditioners.

I think It's pretty obvious Japan needs nuclear power. A future without 20% of Japan's energy sources is a non-starter. I'm sure the power-downs & practical alternatives (fossil fuels) will show that decisively.

However, putting so much generating capacity in one location in an earthquake & tsunami prone country is a mistake. Maybe mini-nuclear plants are what we need going forward. Maybe we need less nuclear and more renewable power. Maybe something else.

However, what we don't need is people outside of Japan using this life-and-death situation to promote energy politics, be it green, nuclear or otherwise. The geographical & historical context is completely different. (Ontario will never be hit with giant 8 meter Tsunamis after a 9.0 earthquake.)
The current trend is to clone websites using startup as the keyword.
Very nice design but how does this differentiate itself from Google to do widget?
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
You'd get bigger safety improvements by keeping old, less safe nuclear plants operating longer and building new ones alongside them. Even aging nuclear plants are a hell of a lot safer than the coal and natural gas plants that would otherwise be supplying the power they produce.

(Note that natural gas is a lot less dangerous than coal, but they're both several orders of magnitude more dangerous than nuclear.)
Active users with Redis
The sign up link points at http://http://www.mightycv.com/users/sign_up
Your skill list is dumb. I learned JSON in twenty minutes. That's not a skill.

Also: skill: news.ycombinator.com ??
That's inaccurate. WebOS (even 1.x) supports it just fine. The demo linked from there ( http://html5demos.com/contenteditable ) works just fine on my old Pre­̄, including the local storage.
This is really good insight. "Movie Studio as a Service" has been used nowhere other than in this job posting because of the likelihood of attracting HN interest. I'm actually really happy with that particular result! As for Cine - that's a tough one...I often use "video" instead of "movie" because of different connotations. Naming took forever though - finally I got to the point where I just had to make a call. I don't think there's a good answer to the sweet-spot customer question until we get out there - my personal hunch is it will be more about sharing opinions and being seen than cinematography. And...the cinematography stuff offers great premium opps!
You might want to look into https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pentadactyl/ . The description says it's "the next generation of Vimperator by its primary developers". Sounds like Vimperator will stop working sometime soon.
Casual SexGroups
Swinger, Swappers are all welcome here!
This site is dedicated to those who enjoy
the Group Sex Scene!
You can't argue that because 'some greens' is offensive in the UK, an article written in Australia saying 'some greens' is offensive.

You are free to feel offended, but that doesn't mean the author is at fault.
Hi, I'm <full name>! My site says what city I'm from. I've written publicly to admit that I committed multiple crimes, definitely without consulting legal counsel first! I even put them in a nice bulleted list that can be copied and pasted right into a complaint. They're pressing charges, but that's bullshit. I'm 16!

Not too bright, are we? Instant message the company you just hacked and bust out from behind your handle, then provide evidence for the prosecution in the form of a Web page? What is with kids these days?

It only takes one episode of Law & Order to figure out how to proceed here. Clue: Attorney.
I would encourage them to pursue legal action. I think it's right, justified and also strategically important—you can't have other kids thinking they will get away with it in the future.
Haplogroup NO (Y-DNA)
Awesome ! Leaves you thinking: Now why didn't the folks at Tumblr come up with something like this
I also wondered this. Perhaps my memory is poor but I seem to recall that in previous years most YC entrants were small teams of people who really needed ramen money to get a prototype out of the door.. whereas a lot of these seem to be a lot more mature development wise and are, perhaps, needing the money to specifically work toward a VC round.
"Not everyone uses twitter."

Anybody interested in tracking an outage in 2011 needs to know that twitter is accepted standard for communicating with your userbase.

It has the advantages of:

A) Not being your own infrastructure - You do not want to
use your own infrastructure to communicate a problem
with your own infrastructure.

B) Is inherently many-many.

C) Maintains an archive of all messages.

D) Has both a Web and Thick Client access - making it accessible to everyone.

With that said - Netflix could be doing a better job of giving people ETAs, and updates as to when service is, or is not, expected to be back up.

Transparency, in the face of adversity, is respected.

Even something as simple as "We're triaging, and will have an update in 60 minutes" would be sufficient.
Your welcome. In what way do you feel it is unrelated? I'm doing something in the group collaboration space. There were a bunch of other links posted. Some of which I hadn't ever heard of. I though it was a good contribution.

Log in. Create an item. Share the item. Let me know if you still think it is completely unrelated. Unrefined. yes. incomplete. yes. Full of bugs. Yes. But it is an mvp and I need all the feedback I can get. Even if it is a little persnickety.
Some numbers of design lives: in general, the older nuclear plants were designed to be in operation for 40 years, and the newer ones are designed for 60 years. In the time since the older plants were built, we've learned a thing or two about how to keep them in good working order, and many of them are being extended to operate for more like 60 years. There are efforts underway to figure out how to extend that to 80 years.
I use Sublime Reader [0] for Google Reader. Without a dark background I get instant eye strain these days.

[0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jbhkdhkngalchoobjf...
Pretty sure that's a best practice for Windows software.

IE's proxy settings are synonymous with Windows system-wide proxy settings.
AppHarbor: Azure done right
Personally I'm not a big fan of the bait linky nature of the title. The service looks useful, but I'm not a huge fan of said skill list...
I agree, and since meetup.com is a lot more locally relevant it has more "opportunities" to connect with their users in a way that would not be regarded as spammy.

Though it is harder to scale, I think there is a lot of potential in this go local strategy.
You have a broken link in the first section under "experience". Just a little typo (forgot the : in http://www.mightycv.com/users/sign_up)
(Ontario will never be hit with giant 8 meter Tsunamis after a 9.0 earthquake.)

I am knocking on a lot of wood for you, friend.
Goodbye Internet. Sincerely, Urlesque.
Chrome was designed to be as simple and easy-to-use as possible; part of this initiative involved being immediately compatible with most corporate set-ups (eg, IE users on a company intranet) so a decision was made to use Windows' proxy configuration settings out of the box.

You can actually override the proxy settings yourself via command line switches, however-- look through this page and search for "proxy": http://peter.sh/experiments/chromium-command-line-switches/
I’m curious whether regular expression matching could be used instead of these tricky plain string structures or string+object structures; storing a trie in a regular expression (using grouping and or) should be both small in terms of data over the wire and fast for lookups. The only question is how fast compiling the javascript would be at the start; if that took too long, it could be broken into parts and each part only compiled when needed and then memoized.

John, do you have a link to the corpus you’re using, so that we can use it for tests? Or should people just send in code for you to test?

Edit: nevermind, it's here: https://github.com/jeresig/trie-js/raw/master/dict/string.tx...
This article is bad.

There will always be unknown unknowns.
One such happened in Fukushima - an earthquake and tsunami exceeding design specifications; the earthquake logarithmically so.

This resulted in near total defeat of the safety protocols.
Layers of containment designed never to be breached, were breached.
Rods in the nearby cooling pools even got hot.
Fundamentally, the plant operators lost control of the situation.

Yes, its probable the final number of lives lost will be low. But, almost all the safety mechanisms were breached.
With slightly more misfortune (perhaps another hydrogen explosion), much radiation could have been released, and many could have died.

Anyone (like Monbiot, the author) who argues that this incident increases faith in the safety of the nuclear power plant needs to read Feynman's minority report on the shuttle disaster.

When the safety systems, designed never to be breached at all, are 50% breached, you do not have a 50% margin of error.
You have an extremely serious problem.

Is nuclear fisson probably going to be our medium term energy source? Yes; there are few better alternatives.
But we are going to have to be very careful about how we build them.

Finally, while I am not attacking nuclear power here, it is erroneous to reason about the relative safeties of technologies based purely on the historical track record.

What we should be thinking about is what the risk is in future; not what it has been in the past. If I told you I had an energy source that had a known 0.01% of ending the world, each year, but a clean 50 year track record, would you allow me to continue with it?
Of course not!

We must not make inferences about possible risks based purely on the track record, with no regard for improbable, but perhaps catastrophic, scenarios.

Thankfully, nuclear power is not the doomsday energy source some people make out; and I'm not arguing against it - just against the specious reasoning.
There's not really much more information in there beyond what's in the google groups thread. Pretty good summary though.
I hate to have to point this out, but what he is saying is 'Check out my cool resume site that can host resumes, here is a code to sign up for beta' not literally 'Critique my resume I used for testing on my site'
Clearly you missed the point which is that he is trying to promote his new site mightycv
Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 & 8.9, Smaller than iPad 2, Competitively Priced
The argument that determinism negates moral responsibility only holds under the assumption that one is only morally responsible for actions of free will. The recent tsunami in Japan did not have free will but most people would agree that it (rather than the negligence of a free-willed party) is responsible for thousands of deaths.
Here in Quebec we always get that same argument that teachers unions are in the end the safeguard of our education system, status quo.

A new political party (http://www.coalitionavenir.org/) proposed an option to increase teacher's accountability. They proposed an automatic salary raise of 35% to all of Quebec public school teachers but in exchange unions had to drop seniority, let schools evaluate teachers each year and give them the possibility to lay-off the rotten tomatoes. Guess what was the unions response to this fair deal ... NEVER. You can make your own conclusion...

Unions are not even fighting for their members they are fighting for their own survival.
Best country to build a start-up in Asia? Singapore. (Someone tell Seth Rogen)
Cool but did they really need SQLstream for this example? Seems like overkill for just this one use. You could do this from scratch pretty quickly.
This is a useful link, this should come up on the top of search results, this never came up for some reason.
School choice (http://www.edchoice.org/School-Choice/What-is-School-Choice....) via vouchers addresses the needs of students. Presumably he should support that since it will keep "malicious administrators" in check the same way supermarket choice keeps malicious supermarket managers in check.
Exactly my experience so far, except there's _still_ no decent Firefox replacement for Chrome's Google Quick Scroll. I forget I even use that extension in Chrome until I end up constantly Ctrl + F'ing the hell out of search results pages in Firefox.
To nitpick, the article was written for a British audience, by George Monbiot who is a columnist for the Guardian.

The SMH (and the whole Fairfax group) don't really write articles any more.
"... Babbage is curmudgeonly and perpetually disappointed; Jones is increasingly rotund, depressive and sweet-hearted; Whewell, a man of formidable physicality, is haunted by feelings of social inferiority; uxorious Herschel is prematurely aged by the rigours of star-gazing. ..."

Interesting character observations. The story the book is referring to is important as it's these four who nut out th e fundamentals of science as we now know it. You can read the (legal) excerpt (21) here ~ http://www.scribd.com/doc/46764160/The-Philosophical-Breakfa...
You can take the Chrome Flash and PDF plugins and use them with Chromium.
HP will work with you on this and you can use their systems remotely. We used them at a past startup of mine and we ran on 128 cores of Itanium 2 fun, for free. If you have a customer for your code that may want to also buy HP hardware, they move quickly. You just have to sign up for their DSPP: http://h21007.www2.hp.com/portal/site/dspp/menuitem.863c3e4c...
smart idea - how's early traction with app producers?
True, they could have provided a setting that you can enable/disable/override within their options page instead of using a switch. May be there is design decision behind this.
Good stuff, representatives were at Pycon, friendly guys.
however this doesn't allow for social integration and ideally one email/pass to rule them all is the facebook motto.
Sorry to be a little offtopic, but do you have any pointers for where to learn this kind of knowledge (more "best practices" than "getting started") for autoconf et al? I just started using them and I am sure many of your criticisms would apply to my code; I'd like to do better... Thanks.
Wonderful. The concept of falsifiability is a gift Karl Popper gave to humanity, and we mustn't forget it.

So from a statistical standpoint, you're estimating theta, some parameter that indicates your level of extroversion. What does this parameter get you? Will you then predict this person's success in life? Why would you want to do that?

Much worse, could you possibly point to this untestable parameter as being the _cause_ of one's success? Hardly.

But from an epistemological standpoint, there is some benefit to identifying what we take to mean intro/extroversion. So that's why we give Jung credit, but more as a philosopher and less as a scientist.
What about grammar?
See also the discussion from yesterday: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2349531
Geothermal increases earthquake risk/frequency, so it's not all roses either.

There are plenty of problems for large scale power plants, like limited locations, custom fit for each spot, etc.. But there are some pretty large ones, I wouldn't say it's overlooked by the industry, maybe by the media.
How would this work? So it generates content from my data?
Ask HN: How much equity to grant an "Advisor?
My company is bringing on a very key advisor and I wanted to know if anyone has a formula or a personal anecdote on how to decide the level of equity to grant this person.
On a side note I'm really happy that they included screenshots and a description in the repo. There are so many github links that go straight to source code and have nothing in the wiki, as if I have the time to read, download, compile, and execute code just to see what it looks like/does. Whenever I reach a repo like that I usually end up just closing the tab.
I would pay for this. While Rails development stuff is useful, I feel like there are a _lot_ of resources out there for it on the web. This isn't so true for Mac development in particular, at least to my knowledge.
As someone who is waiting for the next 4 or 5 weeks before their iPad 2 ships I'm tempted to give this a try.

Also, I'm surprised that Apple is able to open up worldwide when demand is this high and supply seemingly so low.
Typically you'll want to build in your own auto-update check, which could be as simple as a current version txt file hosted on your web server. That way people don't have to go to the centralized update location to update to your latest version. You let them know when there is an update at some point after your app launches.
It appears pretty complex from the screenshots but after giving it a spin its really quite a compelling offering. It may just open my wallet too.
To venture hacks: http://venturehacks.com/articles/advisors
Right, you're talking about the pitfalls of handling SEO spam, e.g. unwittingly creating more spam vectors through your attempts to stop previous ones.

My point about infographics is although they may indeed deliver a message effectively, they are infamous for being used as link bait to game SEO.