skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's kinda funny how it differs between different market segments. Diffle (casual games, launched on Digg) had 90% of its visitors use IE and only about 7% on Firefox, while WhatShallIDoNow (to-do list, launched on news.YC) has 70% of its visitors on FireFox with less than 10% on IE. In the first hour after launch - when it was just news.YC traffic - there were a couple hundred Firefox hits and one visitor with IE.
Can't they just charge me an extra monthly fee? I pay an additional $15 a month to Verizon for my existing smartphone tethering, and I consider it money well spent every time I spend a day working on my laptop in parks and coffee shops without having to hunt down WiFi.
I live smack dab in the middle of Manhattan, and $250,000 would let me keep up a modest lifestyle for about four years without any job at all. The other $250,000 could save the lives of thousands. Downmod me for being self-righteous, but don't downmod me for being wrong.
From his webpage:

I came back to the US for college, where I attended the
University of Pennsylvania for one year, then transferred
to Yale, where I got a BS in Computer Science.

So yes, but mostly Yale.
Y Combinator Challenge #10 - Auctions
I assume so. People post stuff all the time looking for founders or new employees.
Nice to see HN get some love :-)
no.

but it looks useful and could fill a niche.
No, in context it's clear that this post isn't a real death threat. It's a Guns-and-Ammo-flavored riff designed to subtly point out that attempting to cause seizures in epileptics is, in fact, reckless endangerment with a hint of manslaughter.

The fact that it takes careful literary judgement to tell the difference between this wry comment and a death threat illustrates the central fact of Internet life: software can't prevent trolls. Human beings - editors and mods - are needed to prevent trolls.
You are correct about your first point - the connection with photosynthesis is shaky at best. This research describes a new electrocatalyst for the production of oxygen. The source of electrical energy for driving this production could be solar cells, but that would be just one potential use.

The paper does focus on photosynthesis, however, because the Nocera's lab works on "artificial photosynthesis," a field largely devoted to understanding the electrochemical processes of photosynthesis and mimicking them in man-made systems. For the most part, "artificial photosynthesis" focuses not on carbon fixation but on the transformation of light to electrochemical energy (via electron/proton transfer). This is the process that Nocera's research is replicating, and likely why he focuses on using solar cells as the source of energy, to parallel a plant's use of solar energy as a route to energy storage/O2 production.

Finally, I think some of your scientific analysis needs correction:

Electrolysis (in its simplest form) doesn't require any solute - it can be performed, very slowly, in pure water. Adding salt (say, NaCl), as you mention, speeds up the rate greatly. However, in doing so, the reaction changes - you'll evolve hydrogen as before, but at the anode you'll evolve chlorine gas, not oxygen. You can't use electrolysis alone to produce oxygen gas or as a route to storing energy. One alternative to this is to use an electrocatalyst, but currently, (as the article mentions), the only available catalysts require expensive metals or very basic environments (or both). This article is on the discovery of a new catalyst that will allow for the production of oxygen via catalyzed electrolysis at neutral pH and with a cheap, abundant catalyst (cobalt).

Also, if we're looking at the same quote:
"storing energy for use when the sun doesn't shine,"
the article is talking about humans storing energy, not plants. Even so, plants do store energy for when the sun doesn't shine. They metabolize hydrocarbons into ATP via mitochondria, just like we do - so glucose and other products of photosynthesis are indeed forms of stored energy.

I think a lot of the confusion stems from the fact that we're reading a popular article and not the actual research - these articles tend to pick up on terms like artificial photosynthesis, energy production, and solar energy and run with them.
Using twitter (or similar) seems to a popular theme in the solutions.
A couple of questions:

1) Links are categorised, but there seems to be no way to dive or browse the different categories?

2) What is the significance of the shink at the top?

3) How do I submit a link?

4) How do I mod links up or down?

Currently, far from being a reddit killer I think :/
A day spent reading the emacs lisp manual was enough to productive. CL is a whole 'nother animal, but once you get a feel for the language, it's just a matter of searching the hyperspec. Eventually you learn that the function you are trying to implement is probably already built in in about 12 different variants.
In that case would you say Weev has lots of talent and seriously bad character, in which case his "destroy others around him to build himself up" philosophy is the result?
A combination works fine. Sales people that get you the first interview, backed but a strong technical person.

I think his mistake was not being able to use the strengths of his resource effectively, he could have used it to generate leads and then he could be able to close them.
But the problem with that can be actually dealing with people! I used to work a sales job and the general public can vary from the most nicest honest people U can meet to the most horrible nasty fools that can just ruin your day. At least with programming, there's the satisfaction of writing code and trying to solve complex problems. However, some of the techies can be problematic too.
> Now if someone could just invent an exercise pill...

http://esciencenews.com/articles/2008/07/31/researchers.iden...
Perhaps, you have to be a great hacker to recognize a great hacker. Probably the same is true for marketing people.
YSlow Performance Grades for 200 Top Web Sites
Great feedback everyone, thank you.
What, no unicode?
Amazon To Acquire Abebooks
The self-righteousness of trollers is every bit as intense as those of the so-called "blowhards" that they target. It's something that I recognize. It's just like the kids who used to haze me when I was a kid, solely because of my Asian ethnicity. There is the same insistence that it's some kind of joke. There is the same delight in cruelty. There is the same self-righteous self assurance that somehow they've struck a blow to make the world a better place.

It is also something that I recognize in myself. The superiority of the Tit-for-Two-Tats strategy seems to be on the level of mathematical truth.
I had no idea that The One referred to being number one in the MarHedge rankings.
The desire to shock or somehow get a rise out of somebody, supposedly in the interest of education, often reveals that the perpetrator really just wants to shock someone.
What's the problem with Experts Exchange, exactly? I'm speaking from mainly a .Net point of view, but I've found solutions to many, many problems there.
I assumed this was going to discuss all aspects of Outlook. If all you're using Outlook for is e-mail you're not "wedded" to it; hundreds of programs can give you an identical interface. I liked outlook because of the excellent integration of all its PIM aspects: calendar, tasks, that sort of thing. I currently use Thunderbird with Lightning for the calendar and tasks, but I still think Outlook was best at the overall PIM experience
Ask YC: Sign of the Times - An Advertisement Preloading a Lightbox
Is it just me, or is it a horrible sign of the times that when reading an article, I clicked a thumbnail to a software screenshot, only to be greeted by an advevrtisement and the text "please wait while we load your picture"

I had to wait, to see a fullsize screenshot just so the site owner could show me a completely irrelevant advertisement.

Don't get me wrong, I know the power of ads and their place when it comes to supporting your blogs or whatever, but I think this is pushing it. Advertisers still don't seem to have gotten the point of how to market their services without completely ruining user experience.

Thoughts?
In the overwhelming majority of cases, the troller thinks of his/her victims as the "douche bag." They think of their "joke" as some kind of blow for truth.
Hippies, Nerds, and Lumpenprogrammers
Two interesting things:

1. How valuation varies more than the amount asked for.

2. How small 1.32% is.
As Firefox gains in popularity and the ever popular AdBlock Plus being a regular fixture for installations I wonder if anyone has done any research or speculation into what effect this will have on the internet free with ads based revenue that so many people have built their success around.

So to get off my own butt and google it I found a few articles that talk about the same issue (http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/09/adblock_plus_th.ph..., http://www.hhcc.com/?p=450) but nothing seems to really go very deep. It is always "users are too small a population to worry" but it is always a good idea to start thinking now on this before it becomes a problem.
Actually, it makes perfect sense. Agression is the natural reaction to hurt.
Politics and the economics of startups.
He doesn't say those are on separate screens, he just says there are too many screens and here are some options that could be assumed unless the user specifically hits a button saying they want to change them
Ask YC: A twitter idea - any thoughts?
I had a twitter idea this morning while on the subway and decided run with it. Let me know if this makes sense to anyone.

While I was waiting for the subway, I wished there was an easy way to determine where the train was, this way I could time when I left for work or take a different route. I thought that maybe twitter can help in solving this problem.

If people were waiting on the subway and twitted every time a train went by or they got on the train, it would be pretty easy to set up a system to combine these tweets and create a "train network."

Now if there was some general way to aggregate this data one would be able to create real time systems for almost anything that has a time/location variable. You can potentially use this to track traffic on roads as well as some other more general things I haven't really thought of yet so if anyone has any ideas, respond.

The difficulty lies in getting people to send the twitter messages but if it's an overall social good maybe they will. Another one is standardizing the responses so they are easy to translate into data. There must also be a mechanism to avoid fake tweets that are just there to screw the data but given enough correct responses and a way to ban, it should be easy to handle.

Disclaimer (probably a big one): I don't use twitter but in the case of a societal good I may start - once I get a smart phone.
Overview: Integrating Facebook Connect With Your Website
There's a part of me that just simply doesn't care about these metrics anymore. It's not like the early days where the non-techies were suspicious or when websites were being created IE-only. The web is just very different - partially thanks to FF - but do you see the web looking different when FF is at 30% vs 20%?

Sites now do accommodate multiple browsers. We aren't going to get to a situation where we stop supporting IE as long as it's the default install on Windows. Is there progress to be made (in a way that changes my experience as an FF user)? By that I mean, when FF was at >1%, lots of sites didn't work right for me. That changed as FF grew larger. Do you think a jump from 20% to 30% would help me?
My problem with the site is twofold.

One, they're deceptive. Top of every page says you to pay to join to see the answer, shows scrambled answers, etc. Bottom of the same page shows the actual answer.

Two, the ratio of crap to goodness on their page is astoundingly high. If I counted pixels, it's like 20:1. Painful to use.

Stackoverflow is also trying to tackle issues like out of date answers, the anonymous user experience, etc.
From what I've heard from the podcasts, two points. First, it's not a link submission site, it's question/answer with digg-like voting for questions and answers. Second, the mockup has all .NET content, but it is not specifically .NET-focused.
To clarify, I was referring to the parent comment, not the article. I thought the article was pretty well done.

Unless you're also referring to the comment, in which case I'm baffled.
I didn't downmod you (can't, anyway). However, by your logic, you should really move out of Manhattan to somewhere where you can live for 50000$ and donate the remaining 200000$ to save the lives of thousands. Ultimately, by your logic, none of us in the western world has the right to live, because any money we spend could be used to save lots of people (supposedly).

Also who is to say that a safety net of 4 years is enough? If you are too old to work, you might still live another 30 years (say you quit work life at 65 and live to 95). So with your numbers, you need to save about 2000000$ (8*250000, where 8 =~ 30/4) to feel safe enough. Not counting inflation, either, so in reality you need even more.
Reddit question: postgresql to mysql?
I'm trying to use the newly open-source reddit for a forum on my site. Reddit uses PostgreSQL, but I use site5 for hosting and they don't have support for PostgreSQL. Will MySQL databases work in place of PostgreSQL? If not, are there any options I have besides switching to a different host? I tried asking this question on the google group for reddit developers, but there is hardly any activity there.
Well I apologize for my crassness and low brow jab - actually, no I don't. I guess I could have taken the time to articulate some well formed argument about the role of trolls and the underlining motivations for their actions on the net, but why waste the time?

These people are "douche bags" and I think my choice of terminology is concise and to the point. I am sorry if you have lost your sense of humor along the way and that you feel that there is no room for this language in the such a place as hacker news. Ultimately, I feel that the majority of the hacker world (not just on HN) finds a level of comfort and 'release' in the usage of such terminology - ex. Linus and his 'masturbating monkey' comment or the massive amounts of profanity widely known to be in source...

Not to attack you or your opinion, as we are all entitled, but just as you have (apparently) grown tired of low-brow language, I too have grown tired of the condescending tone of many people on here as well. Instead of taking the "holier than thou" route against my comment, how about taking your time to compose an original thought of your own in regards to THIS STORY - not my comment, an action I feel detracts from the value of HN far more than my selection of the descriptor "douche bags" to describe trolls.
It seems to fit well in to Amazon's long tail approach. But I'm really curious about the price.
Who is the bastard reading this site in IE?

I'm the closest thing to a MS fanboy in these parts, and I've been using Mozilla since it was called Phoenix.
6 Y Combinator Startups I Would Have Invested In Back Then
Oh, it's certainly understandable. Showing hurt is how the trolls win, because that's what they feed off of. And especially responding with aggression, you're going down to the level of the troll.
That is a freakin' awesome setup! I love the bears and the monitoring displays in the operations room.
I've been on the receiving end of prank calls. When I first reported it to the police, the officer assigned to my case seemed to have the attitude that I was just thin skinned. That changed the moment I played him a recording I made of the callers. After that, he was just as motivated to track them down as I was.

They turned out to be a bunch of teenage boys of low socioeconomic status. Their only reason for singling me out was my name which they had run across in the phone book. (The listing was in error -- it was supposed to be unlisted.) I suspect that their delight in the cruelty was enhanced by their conclusion that I was a poor immigrant who couldn't afford advanced features on his phone line. I suspect that they were happy to finally find someone "lower" than themselves to pick on.

If you've never been the subject of arbitrary cruelty by some kind of mob, then you don't really know what it's like. And if you don't know what it's like to grow up in a society that brands you as somehow inferior, such that cruelty to you constitutes some kind of "joke" then there's something else you don't really know.
Its all good and all and hazardously I say the word 'top'.
Well to be honest that guy was in no way good. He broke into computer networks and deleted files.
I wish Lightning would support the 64bit architecture. No calendar for me in Thunderbird :(
Funny anecdote (though I've never been to burning man): There is a very common practice of shirt-cocking, where men only where shirts and nothing on the bottom. A brigade of annoyed burners decided to solve this with a pants cannon. The range was good and the platform was mobile, and shirt-cockers would get bombed with pants and everyone would laugh at them.

So, yeah, there is _some_ policing.
How big an opportunity is the external memory?
this is good, I've ordered countless books through abebooks and just recently my citi card has begun charging an international transaction fee based upon abebooks being a Canadian company. perhaps now being owned by Amazon this won't happen anymore?
I hate ads. Even if i didn't have AdBlock Plus or flashblock, i still would just ignore them. Internet users seem to be good at that. They are annoying and sometimes if there is too many of them they make Firefox slow(i usually have 20+ tabs open) Ads are broken, and users don't care about them. And those little Google ads, i don't read them, i know they're ads and don't even look at them.
In memoriam: venture capitalist Keith Benjamin
You might want to wait until there is internet access underground in subway stations before spending some time on this. Not to be Debbie Downer like or anything.
Agreed. I is funny that the majority of these 'trolls' would not dare provoke an individual in the real world as they will online. I knew a guy in high school who was extremely passive and timid in the real world, but got the biggest kick out of being an aggressive ass to strangers online - I never understood him, but feel that he knew in the real world, there were consequences for his actions, where online he could get away with it with no recourse. Really cowardice in my opinion.
Thank you for the clarification - I'd not listened to the podcasts, and was judging just based on that screenshot.
I have absolutely no issue with your language. I have no issue with you commenting however you feel like commenting.

I do have an issue with that kind of comment being modded up as high it is, not because the comment has any value, but because it's crass and/or people want to say "me too".

As for me, I have posted several comments in regard to this story. If you can spend so much time composing a reply to perceived criticism, perhaps you could have spent that time composing a thoughtful comment on the story instead?
odds are, if you don't have the flexibility to use/install postgres, you won't be able to deploy the reddit code anyway. you've got to install and make use of a lot of different things you don't get to touch on standard shared hosting

admittedly, i've not looked enough into the db structure, but based on the playing i've done with the code, no. you're stuck on postgres.

http://slicehost.com
Is it even possible to use a modifier like "more" when discussing two necessary conditions?
Not without large amounts of waste energy. This energy cost makes electrolysis impractical for efficient energy storage.

If you could reduce the amount of energy required to electrolyze water, then it would make an extremely good energy storage vehicle. That's exactly what this research is about.
Dupe. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=264147

Well... that's one more bug in the duplication detection routine. Apparently adding a "/" to a url causes it to count as a different one.
Dupe. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=264139

Well... that's one more bug in the duplication detection routine. Apparently adding a "/" to a url causes it to count as a different one.
Another 'digital gold currency' company under investigation
What should I use MYISAM or INNODB?
CrimeTube: NYPD wants you to upload video of cops behaving badly
Not sure why they didn't link the article instead:

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/07/slammed-cons...
your about us section links to your personal blog. What is the site about, how does it work?
Facebook adds comments. What is it afraid of?
"I’m sure it’ll still suck at the end. But with your help, less. Much, much less! With any luck, we might even flirt with.. wait for it.. not sucking! A man’s gotta dream."

Cuil probably should have had text resembling this in all their press releases. Nothing like setting expectations where you have a chance to exceed them.
The service is much like TinyURL in that we shrink URLS. We then measure the click through rate on the new short URL and rank the link appropriately.

We might expand to more categories in the future.

This link might help.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/06/poprl-mixes-reddit-with...
Next up: tasers.
I was under the impression damage from drugs like mdma came from overstimulating neurons and thus they burn out like a fuse.
Haha yep. This is more an exercise of thinking what's possible although I think some networks do have access in the NYC subway system.

In any case, you can scale it to non-subway and see what you get.

I wish I had the time to pursue this but I'm busy with a couple of other things so this just gets added on to my ever increasing to do list.
เสรีพลาสติก ซัพพลาย บริษัท เสรีพลาสติก ซัพพลาย จำกัด
I LOVE the analogue meter. Very retro...
FCC Punts on Network Neutrality
I use Outlook mainly due to the mobile integration. It's worth a lot to me to know that if I put a task or calendar appointment into Outlook or my phone, it will pop up immediately on the other. Mobile Outlook on WinMo 6 is pretty nice too, much better than Gmail's mobile client.

Most of what he says about Gmail never requiring backup, being the same from any PC, having spam filtering, etc, is true with any decent hosted Exchange Server. Mine comes with web access and a Barracuda spam filter, both of which are great.

Gmail does have better search. That's still Outlook's pain point.
What, just because we have a new way to communicate, you think there will no longer be idiots, greedy sons, and people with bad taste? :)

To scale, one usually must decouple components. To scale traditional advertising they decouple the interests of the advertiser, publisher, creator and audience. The most efficient (ie most profitable and easiest to create) advertising regime is one that crams a volume of ads just below the endurance of a large percentage of the audience.

Just below.

The particular coefficients in the formula may be different now that there are more alternatives, but the formula itself has not changed. There may be better regimes but creating them takes above-average smarts and effort.
From the title I was kinda hoping for true external memory. Man, not space, is the final frontier. I hope the Singularity will come due to enhanced human intelligence, not AI. Are there any researchers working on making themselves superintelligent? I wonder.
Well, technically, adding a "/" at the end of something is a different URL.
Probably a web developer that happened to have IE up at the time.

I've worked at a fortune 500 company whose IT departments won't allow Firefox. Security concerns was the official reason. Needless to say, I'm not there any more.
Also, the economics work because the demand for power (to pump) is much lower at night than during the day. So that they aren't eating into their customer's electricity consumption.