skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Best ways to drown out invasive thoughts and focus on a task?
There are many times for me when silence is more deafening than a loudspeaker. Okay fine that's hyperbole (mostly), but I often do like to have white noise of some kind (music, etc) in the background when I'm programming, planning, thinking, etc. It helps to restrain the random thoughts that fly through my head that take my focus away from what I'm doing. So my question is in what way(s) do you accomplish the "simple" task of focusing on one path when your mind seems to want to go in a thousand different directions?
You sound like you misinterpreted va_coder. He remarked that a number of large governments do not do this. He did not say that no large government at all do this.
You forgot clippy.
it's a whole other argument to say that certain majors guarantee success...

http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/may2010/bs20100...
Bitcoin pools under attack?
Open letter to Google+ from user
European Patent Office rejects Amazon's 1-click patent application
Microsoft’s Android Shakedown
If the LED driver handles dimming through PWM, no thanks. The flicker is very noticeable. Also, the 20k hour figure for LED's doesn't factor in "lumen maintenance": LED's can dim with use, especially high output use or possibly poor ventilation. Lumens after 10k hours may not be the same as new. Last, it's hard to find a good warm (2700k?) LED that is remotely efficient, though the Cree XP-G's seem to be getting there.
Yeah, they're still pricy. So far the only one I've replaced was one of the bulbs in the kitchen fixture. It doesn't really produce great quality light (although I guess some of them are pretty good). What it has done is save me having to get out the step stool and move the table to change a bulb on a couple of dark, before-coffee mornings. In that respect it's been worth every penny.

If I wind up in a house where I'm sure I'll be living the rest of my life, the economic calculus will change a bit.
Think about a brilliant poet and essayist who has written absolutely brilliant poems and essays, but is scared by the thought of writing a book. How could he ever write something so long!

This is what we're talking about, a problem of practice.
So, having written some Java games back in 2002 or so, I can say that Java can be an pretty decent place for writing simple 2d games. That being said, there are lots of more interesting alternatives now that I'm not sure if Java is the way to go.

It isn't a BAD choice, but if I were an indie dev, I would look at something like Torque2D or Torque3D, especially since those give you a nice set of tools as well as a way to move to iPhone and consoles.

Also, if you want to get something off the ground fast, check out Corona from Ansca Mobile or even something like the LOVE 2D engine, between the two you can write your game in Lua, which is an awesome little language to write games in.

There is also the option of HTML5 and JS if one were so inclined. Given that everything seems to support HTML5 and JS now, once hardware catches up in the next 2-3 years, that might be an interesting option for game dev across all platforms.

Oh, and if you are going to do a 3D game, start with a good 3D engine and toolset, otherwise you'll spend all your time building an engine instead of building a game.
I don't agree. The reason Google wouldn't make it is not because they don't have the firepower, but because they don't have anything to add to the space that isn't being done already. They just aren't sexy.

Will people use it? Sure, but I doubt that millions of users will actually leave FB for Google+.
Brazil has had a big-success with their free-software initiatives.

Government departments are required to try to buy free-software solutions and try to find local companies that can provide support for those solutions.

Besides any contract-development goverment signs must be realeased as free-software.

They call it "software publico" (public software) since they consider a duty of the government to provide their solutions in a free-software form.

I think they are an example for any developing country economy.
It's always very easy to add something rather than removing.
Your link specifically calls out LED bulbs as being too dim, and not listing their incandescent equivalent wattage (ie, a 10 watt LED == a 60 watt incandescent).

The article specifically lists a 60 watt replacement, and a 100 watt one soon.
Consultants alone won't explain that. You need clueless people making technology decisions on subjects they can barely understand, under advice by snake oil salesmen.
Unannounced Facebook feature uncovered
after a few years coding I used to learn things by playing with them from the start, and this form of learning is not very well regarded in Spain a country where for all you have to have an official title, for example I would love learn to sail a boat but when I comment that I doont want courses, that i want some good books and a sailboat I find it much more fun, they consider me arrogant :( , and is not arrogance is only another way to learn i think.
One time readable messages
> hover

Hover apparently stores your password in plaintext, as discussed: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2727123.
it's not that you "should" use one over the other, but evaluate both to see which works better for you. people are excited about G+ because it's new, it's different (yes, lists and circles are basically the same, but their importance to the platform is different), and it's got google behind it, which seems to make everyone get excited.

i personally like it, and enjoy the list/circle-centric nature of it, but if none of my friends are active on it, there's no reason why I "should" use it over FB.
App is now a generic name, and thus it cannot be trademarked and existing trademarks are invalid. That's just how trademarks work. It doesn't matter that it didn't use to be a generic name (and I recall hearing app used generically for a long time, so I don't think it was ever Apple specific).
My two year old managed to figure out the iPad, far better than I would have guessed. He can find games and load them himself, and uses the safety of the Home button to get out of confusing situations. He has also attempted to translate the interaction method to the PC, without much success (he recently pushed the round "off" button on a monitor, because it looks like the iPad home button).

My grandmother also figured out the iPad's UI quickly, although she has almost zero experience using computers, and struggles to work her phone. I didn't explore how much more she could do with it though.

Surprisingly though, my father in law, a doctor with some computer experience, struggled a little with his iPad, and only uses it for online banking. I think it had to do with un-learning his old habits.

What I guess from this very small sample is that a touch interface is more intuitive for novices, but could be troublesome for those with some, limited computer experience.

I'm sure there's tons of research being done into this stuff...hopefully it will be distilled into an accessible form soon [an updated Design of Everyday things say].
I've never heard of any software being called "apps" on any other platform I used

I heard the term "killer app" at least 10 years ago. "App" is not only generic but it's been out there for a long time.

Edit: Here's the earliest I can find the word in print. It's from 2002. http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/55/love.html
Well, that's all you're going to get, really, is shapes "inspired by" non-Euclidean geometry. In practice, we live in a world of Euclidean geometry.

(Theoretically, this isn't true, but undetectably so on this scale. If you were somewhere where the non-Euclidean nature of our universe could be easily seen on the scale of a couple of feet, you'd be too busy being squashed incomprehensibly flat to be building lego structures.)
Some save buttons look like a 3.5" hard drive, which you could argue that an even smaller percentage of current users has ever seen :)

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against change in UIs. I am against designing specifically to cater for the lowest common denominator in general use applications if it means more chaff for the user with average skills.
Solving Rubik's Cube for speed.
well, people shouldn't be using crap like VLC in the first place.
But then you have a bunch of LEDs to play with in your hardware hacking! Clear win over CFL and incandescent bulbs.
They've got three main shortcomings

Four. They can cause fires. Consumer Reports this month had a recall of two brands that would catch fire. I have had several (not of the bad brands) do weird things when they burn out. In each case, they "smoked". It was unsettling, because I didn't know if the type of event could have led to a fire. Now I know.
Show HN: Import your Facebook photos to + (python scripts)
Who did anything first doesn't really matter. Ask Hoover. Or the original maker of the Yo-yo.

The point is that 'apps' have entered into common usage to refer to applications on all mobile platforms. 'App' is a generic term, that isn't attached to a brand. So, if you agree that 'Store' is also generic, then 'App Store' can't really be anything but.
Similarly, Goodreads is a targeted social network for readers. As well as letting me keep up with what friends are reading, it provides features like keeping track of books, reviews, etc. I have not seen the kind of development of community on the site that is described happening on Revelry though.
Associating a lock/mutex with the data it protects
EBay Buys Zong
why is TL;DR at the bottom? /facepalm
This is interesting but entirely useless. Though he's never used a computer, someone already has used this one and changed some things about it.

#1 IE defaults to a blank page in what appears to be private browsing mode, rather than Bing as it does on any new windows install. He's somehow running IE on a Mac which may be why.

#2. Someone checked out San Francisco Yelp on Chrome and as a result there's a link for it.

#3. "We shouldn’t assume that new users will inquisitively try and discover how new software works by clicking buttons and trying things out." That's probably misleading for 99.99999% of your audience. Yeah, the one adult on the planet who never used a computer before might be scared to death to play around with it, but you shouldn't design with that in mind (unless you're somehow aiming a product at them, in which case good luck with that sir). Put a 7 year old on a computer and he'll figure out how to find a restaurant in 10 minutes.
I'm glad particular attention was given to the gym example in this article, or more in general "health".

These days I'm generally quite disciplined with sleep and exercise, but I've been down that path of "if I skip the gym this time I'll have more time/energy to work". After a few days I find I'm much less productive than I am when I'm consistently going to the gym 5-6 times a week. It's a nice reminder.

I wonder how many successful entrepreneurs are highly disciplined about their exercise/health?
I don't see it that way. Turntable has its focus on turning people into DJs and finding rooms (genres) of music suitable to your tastes. The DJ queue system works well, and the feedback system too, as does finding a track to play. I wouldn't last long if I had to sort through a YT results page.
>Before I switched to OS X, I've never heard of any software being called "apps" on any other platform I used

Maybe you didn't use the TI-83+, which has an "Apps" button on it, and was designed in 1999.

And though I agree that Apple has put a lot of effort into its app store, I feel like saying that they should have sole access to the term is comparable to AOL suing anyone who uses "instant messenger" to refer to something other than AIM.
Quick Guide: How to guide on Google +.
GOOGLE TO BUSINESSES: DON'T CREATE GOOGLE+ PROFILES YET
You are right about the PWM dimming - but it's a better alternative to the lack of dimming of CFL bulbs.

The 20k hour figure likely does figure in "lumen maintenance" - although Switch maybe stating a "consumer lifetime", the mean lifetime of the product, they are required to provide a lumen maintenance figure called L70 - the time it takes for a 30% reduction in light output. Chances are these light bulbs just broke before reaching that target, and the consumer lifetime is more useful to the market at large.

And, yes, the warm color with high CRI is the hardest LED to make - that's why they're waiting until next year to try and offer a warm white 100W equivalent bulb.
Awesome project, but I would love higher resolution images.
This is not true.

They trademarked a very specific icon which happens to contain the digits 2, 8, and 0 in that order. (If you have an iOS device, it is your "Maps" icon.)

They did not trademark "280".
Cisco AnyConnect VPN Client ActiveX URL Property Download and Execute exploit
Fake anti-virus software, counterfeit pharmacies, counterfeit products in general, malware of all sorts. Google have been taking their money for years. They have the resources not to. That's pretty shitty behaviour that endangers their users in my book.
>we really need to get over whining about what we could have if only we could spend money we don't have.

I don't think it could be said any better. What we do have now is a privatized space race which is priceless.
I'm seeing more LED's in automotive use like tail lights, so that's a good sign. Seems like they've nailed down a stable driver that can handle voltage fluctuations, like on starting.
I like how #25 is forgetting to use a salt when storing passwords. It seems to me that the majority of security discussion on HN these days is about hashing passwords and why one should use bcrypt or whatever, while everything from SQL injection, to buffer overflow is listed as a bigger problem.

It seems to me that if someone can download your password database, you've got more important issues than you're choice of password hash to worry about. I won't say that making the one time decision to use a secure digest is a bad investment, but shouldn't we focus more on preventing SQL-injection XSS than password hashing?
Abstract video backgrounds
For another street view of NYC circa 1982, check out Style Wars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Style_Wars
I know there are some googlers that read HN:

Please give us a way to import photos to picasa via CSV. That would make things tremendously easier for people to move from facebook to plus (most of my friends' biggest worry is losing their facebook photos)
A Walk in the Woods with Mark Zuckerberg
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see the article i just posted from 1980 by Gregg Easterbrook on this theme - If you are a critical thinker and haven't read his posts on the shuttle, you should...

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2738448
Why are computers so expensive in Brazil? A Big Mac is also relatively expensive. Is it just an expensive country in general?
> I think they are an example for any developing country economy.

I think developed countries also have a lot to gain from following these ideas
"Despite often-heard claims to the contrary, ethanol has nothing to do with reducing CO2; it’s just a form of farm subsidy. If you’re using first-class land for biofuels, then you’re competing with the growing of food. And so you’re actually spiking food prices by moving energy production into agriculture."
Now imagine if these sites could interconnect with a common, open protocol, and a user on goodreads could be friends with a user on Revelry.
Baby robots feel the love
OK, this line of reasoning is all over the place. All it does is expose that you know close to nothing about how Google works. There are in fact, many hundreds of engineers whose sole incentive (e.g. promotions and salary adjustments) and purpose in their job is to make sure that your search results are good.

These engineers are /not/ the engineers that are in charge of designing or running the systems that sell ads. In fact, those are two completely different divisions of the company. (If you would like to learn more about how Google works from the inside, I suggest reading Steven Levy's book "In the Plex")

Just because you do not pay for something does not mean it is not a product. If search was not good, people would go to a competitor. This is how Google got to where it is today, and bing.com is just a click away. This thread is about the quality of Google search results, and your argument is that Google does not care about the quality of your search results because they allow you to use it free of charge by inserting labeled advertisements.

To me, this is not a logical argument -- your emotions and sense of being wronged have taken over.
How to A/B Test Using Javascript in Your Posterous Blog
another comparison to CFLs. the mercury arc in a CFL is struck between two electrodes, and every time the light is switched on the electrodes degrade. So if you are energy conscious and only have the light on a few hours at a time - you will burn through the CFL much faster. This isn't the case with LEDs - so if you have a light that you use 1 hour a day, you could definitely stretch it out to 30 years.
Guys, this article is not about the existing LED light bulbs on the market today. It's a fluff piece about a very promising new bulb technology. The new bulb uses an unusual LED immersed in a "non-toxic" liquid. In theory it should have vastly better color temperature / light quality than existing LED bulbs.

I'd be happy to buy these things at $20 -- have my cake (carbon footprint) and eat it (light quality, no mercury release on disposal) -- but they don't exist yet. All the LED bulbs I can buy today are basically purple, like the early CFLs. Maybe it's fine for lighting a closet, but they're not adequate to night-time illumination of my home.

Call me when Switch bulbs are actually on the shelf!
One simple question to get to the root of any design problem
My concern is whether the bulbs flicker in the the same way that LED backlit displays do when they are set at less than full brightness. I have found this effect to be migraine inducing when the frequency is too low. Does anyone know if this type of circuitry is employed in these bulbs?
I once tutored a blind fellow who thought much the same.
"app store" should be a generic phrase. We all know that Apple's App Store is THE app store, so it should be referred to as "the app store" not just an 'app store' (which there could be many of).
It's perhaps a bit old now (2005), but O'Reilly published a good book on Java game programming if anyone is interested in the subject:

http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596007300/
I would disagree that PG has been negligent in maintaining the community here.
You and your company almost certainly have some incredible insights into "The Other Half". I would love reading any sort of blog you have.
I nearly vomitted when I read this story on NPR saying that we've spent more on air conditioning in the Afghan war -- around 20 billion -- than NASA's yearly budget.

Fucking politicians.

http://www.npr.org/2011/06/25/137414737/among-the-costs-of-w...

Edit: I understand that the 20 billion figure includes the cost of infrastructure needed to put that air conditioning in place -- fuel for transport, roads that will be unmaintained or actively destroyed soon after the U.S. leaves, etc. Each piece is more frustrating than the last.
I've found that copyright law often ends up working reasonably well.
As long as it's a bulb that will put out enough light to light a room I'm all for it.
I was less complaining about there being only two testimonials (yesod is very young) than about the fact that two testimonials had shown up on the front page of HN. The testimonials are don't provide much information and are unlikely to convince someone to use the framework. At best, they might get someone to look for some better information (like I did), so why not link to docs/a blog post/etc. ?
This is fantastic!

Imagine you want to do something with DNA, perhaps you'd like to sequence something, or stick some in on orange, or beer yeast.

So you have this bit of DNA, but it's so incredibly tiny and fragile, it's almost not real, it's more like the idea of a thing then a thing.

So you use one of these PCR machines to make your idea real.
You put your tiny, fragile sequence in and out comes a robust bucket full of DNA!
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Trademarks and branding are strange things. One would assume that giving a term wide-spread use would be beneficial to everyone, but it seems that it's bad for companies. I still don't quite get it myself...

For example, "Google" as a verb:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/do-you-google.html

I assumed that "Google" as a verb is a good thing for Google. It would imply that they've managed to get a huge mindshare. Google's lawyers disagree.
Invites are Google's way of creating exclusivity, like only allowing harvard.edu addresses ... Facebook.
Not to sound insensitive but 134 flights and 2 accidents is a good enough record. I for one would have volunteered to go, if I was presented with these odds. Robots can't do everything.
Nice try, Amazon: 'One-click' payment too obvious to patent
If you are writing video games, then you're not likely to be using the built in GUI tools. I agree to an extent about the resources, but games almost always use a lot of resources in my experience.
The fact that humans can do so many things that robots cannot yet do. Look at it the other way: what is the most robust and fault tolerant adaptive machine with the best motor skills, the best perception system, and quick decision making system that we have available? There are some tasks that robots are better at, but as a general purpose machine humans are still the best. A robot tumbles over or gets stuck behind a stone, and you've just lost your multi billion dollar project.
I think this ambiguity of terms is bad for consumers. My mom might buy Apps through the Amazon "App Store" and expect it to run on her iPhone. I think Amazon is coat-tailing on Apple's branding in a deliberate attempt to create a false sense of equivalency.
I was just starting to consider Clojure on Android, too. I really dislike Java. I've tried Mirah, and it's better, but not enough better. Clojure was going to be my next attempt.

What did you dislike about it? App scaffolding? Compiling? Deployment? Use of Java libraries inside Clojure?
It's certainly not Godaddy.
This is a real win-win deal!
Decision in full (PDF): http://www.epo.org/law-practice/case-law-appeals/pdf/t071244...
How SpotOn is creating the Netflix of mobile recommendation engines
How is one supposed to know the hash without also having had access to the file in some way and at some point in time?

If someone else knows the hash of your super secret document they must have had access to your super secret document or you must have given them the hash.
Oh, I feel no sense of being wronged at all, this is not emotion speaking, it's cool-headed business analysis. There's no such thing as free, someone always pays, and if you think you are getting something for free, that only means that someone else is paying for it for you, and perhaps they want something in return. You can understand this and adjust your expectations accordingly, or you can get upset without really knowing why.
It's like google wants to remind you what search was like prior to their participation. Webmaster forums are particularly funny example of this style of design which is almost aggressively search-unfriendly.
The Tank That is Google