skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>deregulation has spawned record growth in emerging economies, as well as massive growth with the newly liberalized sectors in developed economies (e.g., transportation, energy, communications).

In Energy and Finance deregulation has enabled massive crisies, in the former a crisis that led to shut downs of electricity to the 4th largest and most innovative economy in the world, and in the latter a crisis the size of which hasn't been seen since the Great Depression.

Is it so surprising that less than 10 years after Graham-Leach-Bliley ('99) undid the last regulations put in place after the Great Depression (Glass-Steagal) that we have another GD-level event? We had a historically unprecedented 80-year run without one of those, then some bankers get greedy, captured both political parties, pay them off, and boom, another Great Depression crisis.

In telecom, it's enabling consolidation of the industry into a small cartel that controls the Internet's infrastructure and who are using their massive revenue to lobby against Net Neutrality so they can shape and toll net traffic at will, unleveling the Internet playing field that has laid so many golden eggs.

On a more subjective level, it's also made tons of cheap stuff we don't really need much cheaper, but at the expense of eviscerating the middle class, grossly increasing the wealth (and hence political power) gaps between rich and poor, and making developed economies more dependent and fragile rather than robust and self-sufficient.

Sometimes I think the deregulation/outsourcing mantra is the Emporer's New Clothes, and I wonder when the consensus will change to recognize that economic optimization may not be so good after all, that economic robustness is a better policy for any self-interested nation.
Part of the fun with reading written notes is that you can evaluate the care put into writing the note from the handwriting. Its much harder to appreciate when its electronic.
I've replaced 3 in the past 2 years. All have melted right around the part that goes into the laptop. It has gotten to the point where I won't even leave it plugged in unless I am in the room.
Their current international pricing matches domestic, so you'd be paying about .6p GBP. Cheap cheap.
So who was that on TV constantly boosting the idea and bringing it into the State of the Union address, etc?

Are you making the case that the Bush admin doesn't 1,000,000% own the Iraq war? Really?

(FWIW, they were pushing tax cuts simultaneously). Just cause Congress got bullied into approving these things doesn't mean they weren't Bush initiatives.
This is true for many values of "Dropbox" -- "Sharepoint", "NFS mount", etc.

The real trick, IMO, is getting everyone to buy in to an organizational system that doesn't require a ton of bookkeeping. Any shared file system that requires users to act in a cooperative manner is bound to fail -- tragedy of the commons, and all.

The trick I've used before to some degree of success is to set up a system that doesn't require cooperation. Hand each user their own folder, and tell them that they can structure it however they'd like, and that they can share it out with no one or anyone.

There's pain up front, but IMO it's better to spread the pain around early than realize your shared file system has 2.4 terabytes of files dating back to 2003, some of which are business critical and others are personal photos from the bosses secretary four secretaries ago.
It's funny how any link to reddit.com is always upvoted like a rocket.
Checklist: How to Spot a Bubble in Real Time | The Big Picture
His (standard) textbook on quantum computation is also very well written http://books.google.com/books?id=66TgFp2YqrAC&dq=Nielsen...
If not "bad management", what would you call that kind of mismatch of incentives?
Wow, downvoted. Not that I care too much about my Precious Karma, but whoever downvoted that must know nothing of bicycles. I have never, ever ridden a bicycle where you could not stand up and pedal it for a stretch. And that includes crusty old around-town bikes that have seen their best days long ago.

Put in other terms, I find it hard to believe that the power output is that different standing compared to sitting - if you have strong legs, you can sink some serious power into a bicycle while seated.
Father’s Day Gifts in Tools up to 50% off
Father’s Day Gifts in Tools up to 50% off
I wonder if this applies to the problem I've had ever since I've gotten a MBP in the fall. I am now on my 4th charger. No matter how I handle the adapter, it still manages to stop working within 3-4 months. The first one was probably my fault as I didn't keep the brick as ventilated as I could've, so I think it eventually fried itself.

The second one is still a mystery as I tried to use it one day and it didn't work. No LED, no charge. The third one had a slow death where it would take more and more jiggling and manipulating the cord to get it to work.

I don't get it. I wrap the cord around the little hinge things they have, keep them ventilated, and they still crap out on me. By far my biggest gripe with this MBP. If anybody else found a reliable way to stop this from happening, please let me know.
Simple: it carries data. If the power cord on your laptop is yanked off for a minute it's usually not a big deal. If you disconnect the iOS device cable you could interrupt a data transfer. There is a higher risk to disconnection.
Anybody else tempted to operate their own "cloud"?

I'm waiting for OS X Lion Server to be released to install it on my home server (really just a mac Mini running 24/7 next to my router).
Since most of my sharing (calendar, docs...) is between my wife and myself, it seems doable.

I'm just not sure that iCal, Mail and the file sharing features will be adequate enough to replace Gmail, Google Calendar and Docs.
Is this going to be out on Kindle?

It would be awesome if you could get the Rough Cuts and final form on Kindle as I can't imagine buying it on anything else.
Responsive Web Design: I Hope It’s For Real This Time
That reminds me of one my favorite moments in all of the video games I have played: the deeply satisfying noise Ewoks made when you shot them in Star Wars Battlefront II.
Actually, it generally is how the world keeps score. Unconventional companies like 37signals might not brag about growing headcount or offices, but the reason people take them seriously is because they're lucrative.
If the scientists are all in a giant evil conspiracy we're doomed anyway, my point still stands, humans are too stupid to save ourselves if needed.
Detachable magsafe cables would also make it easier for third parties to sell power adapters, which is almost certainly why Apple power bricks are alone among major manufacturers in not splitting things this way.
The strain to break the bond of the magnet is much more than the strain needed to bend the cable to an angle that will (over time) damage the wire.

Ios transfers should prepared for a disconnection anyway, it is usb, plus power failures could take the host offline.
Do you think apple could delete that comment on reddit? How?
Wadler's Blog: A combinator library for the design of railway track layouts
I've had mine replaced for free, but only after being accused by the 'Genius' of 'doing it wrong' by wrapping my cable around the provided tabs.
Vote for the next X-Prize
Those two cables do use the same design. I believe that the magsafe cables are a bit more durable and I think that's mostly because those cables have (necessarily) more isolating rubber.
Russia has never had "rule of law" as Westerners understand the concept.
Except, there are strain relief features built in to Apple power adapters.

Power Adapter:
http://cl.ly/0r2n2S2z1b3K0L1E0R3t

LED Cinema Display Power Adapter:
http://www.cl.ly/3i1B3R142q0S25223q2U

These may not be adequate, but clearly Apple industrial design has taken a pass at the problem. Anybody have photos of older power adapters to see if that sheathing has always been there?
That would be a legitimate issue if SMS were used to transfer files... A penny to [push] contact anyone with a mobile phone is a pretty good deal all things considered. It definitely beats email which while cheaper has the problem of spammers that make actually sending email in bulk a nightmare.
A weakness of the clock idea is that the power could be off multiple short periods; too short to allow the meat to spoil, but enough in sum to make the clock pretty far off.
I couldn't determine which was the best, so I just calculated by hand instead
If you appreciate the conversation brought to you by HN, why are you just dumping apparently inferior comments from other sites here instead of actually making a contribution?
To provide a counterpoint, I've had my MacbookPro for over 3 years now and still have the same power cable and adapter as when I bought it. I never wrap it, toss it around in my bag with all my other junk, carry it in all weather, and I use it every day. My connection works fine and my brick hasn't overheated.
Not to say you're not having those issues, just that there are good experiences and bad experiences with every product.
I very rarely see Reddit submissions; they generally are for very insightful or interesting comments, often from primary sources.
There was a study I read about where a large group of people where divided into 2 equal groups. The non-control group was had their body temperature lowered. The study showed those with a lowered body temperature got sick more frequently. I googled to try and find a reference, but couldn't locate it.

So, on the cold showers thing... no thanks.
It is USB, and the host could lose power at any time (it doesn't have to be a laptop). Communication interruption is a likely case they should plan for.

A more probable explanation is that even with a magnet the devices are light enough that a yank on the cable would send the device flying before the magnet connection came loose.
It's the plastic surrounding the cable as it connects to the magsafe magnetic connector that causes the problem.
Robert Bowling, Creative Strategist on Call of Duty MW3, is doing AMA after E3
Subway tracks are Turing complete
Related to the guitar doodle but not to the article. It's driving me crazy, people are recording their doodles and posting them on youtube! Why aren't they posting to the link that just plays back their recording?
Is this some kind of joke? Sales opportunities are being missed due to the ridiculous form one is being asked to fill out to get a stupid white paper from an irrelevant old geezer of a company (that probably had nothing to do with the white paper's creation). Yuck.
I was making a criticism of content in the link which is what we're discussing in this thread. Are we not?

The comment in question had 60+ upvotes.

I also made a valid contribution to this thread earlier: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2642344
Ok, good point. A better way to incent is to offer bounties for yield improvements. Most manufacturing outfits I've seen have those but they are probably too low.

Here's another problem mentioned in the article, in fact it's maybe the real problem: the engineers "who were already stretched too thin" probably didn't talk to their operators and technicians often enough. When I was a manufacturing engineer I noticed how much I learned about the stuff I was building by simply hanging around the operators for significant amounts of time. Not only did I get a lot of information about the subtle ways my systems were failing, I also learned that the operators generally felt engineering was ignoring their concerns. Just listening and trying to make the operators' life better earned me so much cooperation from the floor I later had no problems getting them to try out new things for me and providing me feedback on "improvements".
They've changed the design from a plug that attaches perpendicularly into the laptop (and has a serious strain point that is not adequately engineered around) to one that plugs in "parallel".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MagSafe

This likely prevents strain by removing the probability that the cable is pulled at the strain point. It also looks cooler.

Only downside is that it doesn't untether easily; it's that the selling point of MagSafe?
Not sure who those "we" are, but reseting every damn element is far from demonstrating knowledge. Especially if it is separate stylesheet. There is nothing better in that approach at all.
Some teams may be more experienced than others? I just noticed the strain relief on my latest-gen power adapter. I never noticed that before. It is so cool.
I've had one catch on fire on my couch, and another melt at the mag-connection (whatever it's called). Cannot be a fluke.
In search of performance we also developed a non-blocking MySQL driver for Python (and gevent). It's used by our real-time web framework, Planet (http://www.planetframework.com).

While we could've gotten better performance with more processes, we wanted to stick with one process per core. Given this and a non-blocking driver we naturally got a good performance gain.

amysql, as it's called, is up on GitHub: https://github.com/esnme/amysql
They've gotten better recently. I think the best example of this is the USB to dock connector cables, where the strain relief for the phone/iPod end is woefully inadequate.
For me the problem is not that they bend and break, but that they melt! See: http://www.google.com/search?q=magsafe+melted

But before I go into this, let me explain the engineering of a power cable. If you look at a power adapter cable for any non-Apple product, you'll notice some metal "spikes" where the plug transitions to the cable. These spikes are called a heat sink. The purpose of a heat sink is to prevent the cable from heating to a severe degree if you use the charger for an extended period. The heat sink allows the cable to have a nice dissipation of heat instead of heating up and melting.
1) It was a meta-criticism. Of the site, not the content.
2) It serves no purpose but to drag HN down to the level of Reddit.
There is no reason they couldn't take a flimsy piece of a plastic tube and cover the ugly-but-functional rings on the old style adapters. That way the rings retain functionality, and they are covered, everyone is happy. When the tube breaks, it just exposes the "ugly" rings, but the cable won't actually break.

Why they couldn't do this - I don't know. But there must be a good technical reason for it - if I -a software person- can think of something like that, I'm sure they already thought of it too
I work on it. I currently update the git repo with the svn sources. This is somewhat slow... May I ask what you want to do with the dissected patches? Try to build a "clean" version as pbiggar has said?
I have a 2007 magsafe power adapter. It looks pretty much the same.
also a great audiobook for a ~5 hr drive
Some people feel they work better and are more motivated when they're not in a state of happy relaxation. Comfortable and focused perhaps.

I don't work in the shower.

The detail that is important is not the knob, but the endurance of a blast of cold water.

I believe that you have missed my point. Turning a knob, over which you have complete control, really isn't subjecting yourself to anything meaningful. You're not pushing your limits. You're doing silly things and calling it personal progress.

Go climb a mountain. Or even a challenging rock. Commit to a period of time living in a developing nation, or any place drastically different from your home. Join the Navy SEALs. Do not, however, turn the shower tap to 'cold' and then blog about how you're growing as a person as a result of it.
Ask HN: What constitutes a startup?
Over in the thread on the Ryan Carson "How to Build a Startup" series (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2642158), staunch offers that events, video series, and blogs aren't startups like Web apps. It got me to thinking: what actually constitutes a startup? Where do we draw the line? Where do we draw the line here on HN?

Would love to hear your thoughts.
Started a new thread for this question http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2642425
The OP is referring to Apple's iPhone power/usb connector cable, as seen in this picture: http://i.imgur.com/yAywo.jpg. The dock connector strain relief is decidedly weaker (I have had two or three break on me personally) than other Apple products.

One thing that is interesting is how Apple's Industrial Design team, mentioned in the post, affected the design of the new Macbook power adaptors (like the one you linked to, http://www.cl.ly/0r2n2S2z1b3K0L1E0R3t). The old ones had the cord coming out perpendicular to the laptop. I liked that design a lot better than the new style, which is a bit awkward to plug in and leaves you either:

1. With a cord facing out the back of the laptop, then (probably) looping around 180 degrees and back to the power outlet, or

2. With the cord running parallel next to the laptop, completely blocking the ethernet port.

Obviously neither of these solutions is streamlined or Apple-like, so I wonder if the ID dept made the trade-off of a parallel connector with minimal strain relief, or a perpendicular connector with built-in strain relief.
I'm sure they do plan for interruption, but with magsafe you invite it, in a sense. Especially on a portable device.

You're probably right that the physics of the magnet don't make it as useful. That makes me wonder how thoroughly Apple has investigated it.
FWIW, Jamie asked me to audit an earlier version of this code. I haven't looked at the version he released, but the version I saw looked secure to me (subject to the assumption that OpenSSL bugs aren't exploitable, at least).
And in a true PHP fashion, the new functions follow at least two naming conventions. Cf. str_random() vs strcut()

PHP has no vision, it draws no people with vision and suffers for it very much. I say it as someone working with it for historical reason.
Yeah, here's the adapter from my 2004 PowerBook: http://imgur.com/RTLKM
Apparently the recording feature only works in the United States.
Measuring the Measurers
Show HN: Cutest Bookmarking Pet for you iPhone/Browser
Huh? My power outlet is nearly always right behind where my laptop is. A cord facing out the back of the laptop is perfect for this - no more 90 degree turn.
ICloud Communications Files Suit Against Apple Over 'iCloud' Name
.. and I owe much thanks to you for your feedback (and almost all of it was incorporated); I just hadn't asked you for permission to bring your name into the picture, so I didn't! ;-)
That is interesting because you could tell how long the power had been off by how deep the coin was in the refrozen ice.
well, that still wouldn't satisfy the designers because now they have a "flimsy" plastic tube on their adapter.

(not saying it's not a good idea, my pile of broken cables is evidence of that!)
This is a perfect example of how individuals actually in a situation often come up with better solutions by experimenting than those who simply analyze it from above.

They threw all the resources at it and it was their job to throw those resources and to think long and hard analyzing the problem. And came up with something complex and budgetable and that others would support.

But the guy directly affected probably spent no time thinking about it. Potential solutions probably just popped into his head and he tried them.

Which is probably why extremely decentralized companies like Semco in Brazil (run by Richard Semler, as he wrote about in the book Maverick) do so well. Workers own the processes and share in 39% of the profits. Workers actually create new products and businesses.
Or replay a generated video feed of a picture of you, saves the arm muscles and printer ink you see.
nice, looking forward to it.
It does carry over to L3/L2/L1 cache, but only if the tree is designed to benefit from that. See http://blogs.msdn.com/b/devdev/archive/2007/06/12/cache-obli... for one strategy to do that. (With that structure lookups become faster, but walking the tree in order becomes difficult.)
IOS 5 Adds Plenty, But Still Lacks Basic Podcast Handling
'Shadow Gun' Actually Running on an iPad
If you don't think apple did a good enough job: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kjell/5818859629/in/photostream
Archbishop’s Potent Cocktail of Politics and Religion
The New York Times R&D Lab and MongoDB
"Ice evaporates"

Actually, ice sublimates
Just wanted to know if I was the only one to have a motorbike as my preferred means of transportation.
This is a project coming out straight out of #startups one late night. I came up with the idea (unfortunately found out that it wasn't original), but a bunch of guys helped me with the name (especially brownie), and hence PushPuppy was born.

http://marri.ly/pushpuppy

Basically you can send any bookmark or snippet to your iOS device.

The iPhone app is written using Titanium and took me about 3 days to finish the core functionalities, and a few more days in total to refine and bug fixing. The web application is running on Rails 3 + MongoDB using Mongoid. The whole site was done in about 3 days.

The submission to Apple was quite straightforward. I submitted it late Friday last week, and it got approved late Thursday (6 days). Apple is getting faster with their approval process. My previous app, Marrily Mobile (http://marri.ly/marrilyapp), took an exact 7 days.

I hope it can save you guys time with the app. I'll attach the promo code next.
Google ChromeBook Review: ChromeBomb?
Google ChromeBook not ready for primetime...
I already do this by hosting my own email with Roundcube as the web client.
I suppose the quest to create a business that works to make money through selling a good or service should suffice. The whole it does not have enough technology associated to it seems to be fairly fuzzy.
Make Mortgage Forms Comprehensible To Normal Human Beings (Examples)
Here are the 10 codes:

H43W44P69LLX

WPWFRTEMHK64

PMME7ALNXXWY

NJYXME94H433

W3K6P4WJP7T4

9PNJM4FR4HAR

TYYTRXJYHFF4

AKF79HF9RRXT

4W6NNH3TWL7J

9397M69YXAM7

Cheers!
Having the center of mass under the blades is fundamental to helicopter stability. There's no mention of how he made this bike stable. I'm guessing, he didn't. Thinks he can work out the bugs by testing. It will work as well as software that's been 'tested to correctness' - after a lot of crashes and hacks, it will limp along.
The Case AGAINST Having a Social Media Department
SimpliFlying examined the social media practices of big players in the airline industry and found that integrated is better than dedicated. What’s the difference? An integrated staff means multiple people working together without a social media department. Dedicated means there is such a department.
Who Forgot Video Games Are Entertainment?
New Kontact PIM Suite Brings Next-Gen Groupware to Desktop and Mobile
Does anything like Exchange (but free and preferably open source) actually exist?
You should check out Instacast for podcasts. It's the reason I started listening to podcasts again. Well, that and http://5by5.tv
I think if it was any harder than "flimsy" (on a scale from flimsy to unbendable), the stress angle would happen at the end of the stress relief part, which would be the same thing as not having the stress relief part. So, I think there needs to be some compromise that leverages the durability of the old model, but the design of the new model (I think it's better to have a more functionally-durable product, than design-durable product)
Not one of the authors but I have a ton of oreilly books and the ones I have all got a mobi version at some point. Though the impression I get is the rough cuts is pdf only.
You're right, I generalized: the position of the power outlet varies with every place you plug in your laptop. However, I often find myself with the outlet behind me (i.e. sitting against the wall at an airport, restaurants; I take my laptop out of the house with me frequently), so I run into this problem. I liked the perpendicular adapter because in the worst case, the cord had to make a 90 degree turn.