skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Thorium reactors should be quite a bit cheaper. Light-water reactors operate at 160 atmospheres of pressure. They need a very strong reactor vessel, which currently can only be forged by a single facility in Japan. They need a large containment dome because if a pipe breaks, that high-pressure water will flash into steam with a thousand times the volume. They use lots of redundant emergency active cooling mechanisms. Some of them have giant slabs of ice inside the containment dome, which reduce the volume of steam if it's released but have to be constantly refrigerated, to keep them frozen in close proximity to a nuclear reactor core.

LWRs are resupplied every year with expensive fabricated fuel rods, which are non-standard and can only be purchased from the company that sold the reactor. The fuel rods are complicated because they have to withstand a thousand-degree temperature gradient, and the fuel pellets are prone to cracking from the production of xenon gas. Xenon and other reaction products prevent the use of more than one percent or so of the energy potential of the nuclear fuel, another reason the rods are frequently replaced, and the reason we have so much nasty nuclear waste.

The nuclear industry makes most of its revenue from selling those fuel rods.

LFTRs operate at atmospheric pressure. No super-strong steel, no containment dome, no ice. It's a liquid fuel, so no proprietary fuel rods. Xenon just bubbles out of it.

The fuel has a strong "negative coefficient," meaning the reaction slows down as it gets hotter. If it nevertheless gets too hot, a salt plug melts and all the fuel drains into a passive cooling tank. No need for all those active cooling systems.

On top of that, LFTRs operate at higher temperature, so the turbine is more efficient, and the waste heat can be used to desalinate seawater. They don't require water cooling. As a bonus, marketable reaction products can be separated from the liquid fuel (http://flibe-energy.com/products/).

Misguided government regulation is the main problem, but Sorenson's company plans to get around that by selling to the military first.
I don't understand why other commenters feel it was
unreasonable of Shaw to interpret it as a criticism.

To speak for myself: because the other interpretation makes much more sense, if you take into account that people are generally trying to be nice and helpful.

I was reading that comment, thought "hmmm, that criticism sounds a bit premature and more based on what others have written than on what Zed is writing... oh wait, that's because he isn't saying anything about Zed's writing at all. Yeah, now it makes perfect sense."

So admittedly, you get confused for a moment, but then there's a perfectly obvious solution: he's not commenting on the linked article, but is offering advice in the form of criticism on what generally goes wrong with these projects. If you don't see that solution and don't go for that interpretation, I think it means you fail to consider the option that someone is just being clumsy at being helpful. So it's another instance of Hanlon's razor: don't attribute to malice what could equally well be explained by stupidity (which is of course much too strong a term for an awkwardly phrased anwer).

BTW, it's not right that your comments are being downvoted.
The Power of Pull
How is this any different from a XSS bug resulting in an attacker stealing the plaintext password from a form?

Also, given that the client and the server trust each other and communicate securely, doesn't this just get reduced to the probability of having these bugs and nothing more?
Here's my attempt at implementing the same functionality in Haskell: https://gist.github.com/1062472

I tried to make it short, but still somewhat readable, so it's not completely "golfed".
Dangerous Prototypes: An Open Source Hardware Project A Month - HotHardware
I met Len at PET in Toronto. Despite the fact that I was unable to add anything but stupid questions to the conversations Len let me tag along with him for a while. He would take the time to explain things to me that were patently obvious to everyone else taking part in the discussions. I was clearly out of my league but for some reason Len let me listen and occasionally take part in conversations that I only dreamed about.

My thoughts go out to his friends and family. It is a testament to Len's character that the loss of a person who I spent no more than eight hours could have such a profound impact on me.
Welcome to the recruiting space, try not to go crazy :) To get your service started, using email as the main messaging medium is smart as you want to build up your candidate-base, so offering something (in this case, information and job leads) will help you win adopters. Charging on a per job posting basis is a difficult sell as there are literally thousands of others offering very similar services. Showing job-seeker numbers can help motivate the employer to go with you as can past success stories. I'd recommend focusing on achieving those before you start charging. Think about offerings above and beyond just job postings, those are a commodity.

I've been running CollegeJobConnect for the past year and be happy to chat with a fellow entrepreneur who is trying to make student recruiting better. This is a really, really difficult space to be a startup in, so as much as we can all help each other the closer we will be to bringing improvement.
>It's a basic right

Right now, it's a right, yes (what exactly does 'basic' mean?). The question is whether it should be.

>Same with software, a GPL license would be worthless without copyright.

The GPL is just an hack, using copyright to achieve a goal. If you were rewriting IP law, you could very well institute copyleft without copyright.
That was a pebble bed reactor which had issues with high pressure containment vessels and solid fuel. The reactors recommended in the video are molten salt reactors which do not have the same issues.
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Why a great individual is better than a good team
Fn-TECHWORLD: JAILBREAKME 3.0 FOR IPAD 2 LEAKED
When was the last time you checked whether your compiler wasn't producing backdoored code? How about those chips on your motherboard? Perhaps an instruction or two are being executed without your consent?

You are just being paranoid at this point.

Like someone mentioned, using this to encrypt state secrets? Stupid idea. Using it to provide some level of trust that the server never sees the plaintext data? Pretty reasonable.
I Can't Kill IoSafe's Rugged Hard Drive
/usr/bin/afplay
Apple Asks to Yank Samsung Products in Patent Fight
So glad that Michael Krigsman of ZDNet has finally spoken on this issue. Enterprise software pundits are truly a gleaming beacon of wisdom and insight in this dark world of technology.
I totally agree. Hell, my small home, which I own outright, isn't insured. Ditto my small, piece-o-shit commuter car.
Enabling Compiz Fusion On An Ubuntu 11.04 Desktop (With The Unity Desktop)
Are you at liberty to disclose what you're using this for? i'm interested in learning about legitimate use cases for SJCL.
It all depends on the type of business you're trying to run.
come on, just 'man at' and use vlc and point to a mp3. been doing it since 2001.
Where did I pretend there is no difference?

If in my example the company chooses not to implement the idea, I still deserve credit for the idea correct, not someone else?

Perhaps I would not receive a promotion because it was never implemented and proven to be beneficial to the company, but that does not make stealing an idea ethically fine does it, just because it was not utilized?

Not bothering to explain is just a cop out.
This seems like one of those ideas that comes up every few years and sounds great to programmers, but never results in anything noteworthy, because it's a solution in search of a problem.
Then a shit job in explaining my concern it is/was!
I didn't confuse checksums and signatures. I understand the difference between a checksum and a cryptographic signature. I'm sorry if "verification" was used outside its normal context, I just felt it was the best descriptor.

Secondly, there's been multiple times where I've downloaded a large file and found it was corrupted. Under conventional protocols you can't easily identify the part that is damaged, so even if it's only a small part (because WiFi dropped or whatever), you have to redownload the whole thing. Instead of doing that, I have just created a torrent, uploaded to openbittorrent, and downloaded the few megabytes I still needed.

I agree it may not be worth it to torrent small files (maybe <50MB), but I am not so pessimistic. As far as ISPs go, they just have to accept that their customers are going to be uploading much more than they have been and provide whatever infrastructure upgrades are required. I have no pity for that situation and I don't think it's a valid excuse to not see wider-spread usage of BitTorrent as a conventional download mechanism (i.e., baked into browsers, looks like a HTTP download). They can even default browsers to upload at a low rate, like 5Kb/s, or even 0Kb/s, and be fine; the benefits we're discussing now are inherent in the protocol, not necessarily the size of the swarm; we can still expect content providers to provide the machines that upload all of their content and allow seeding as opt-in only, and see big improvements from the usage of the BitTorrent protocol.
I honestly don't know about about it. I probably should've just not mentioned it, but, it seemed to serve the same function.
Was hoping someone would feel the same way as I do.

As mentioned in other comments their TOS are not all that different than many larger companies. The difference is that it is much easier to criticize organizations the size of Dropbox with less fear of repercussion than say an organization such as Google or Microsoft.
Our research, which included lab studies and responses from hundreds of corporate decision makers and employees...

That doesn't seem to be the case to me.
Whenever I see the word "personalized" my hear skips a beat and a bit of vomit travels up my esophagus to annoy my sense of taste. But...

The suggestions are quite accurate, especially for Songs & Movies. In fact some of the recommendations contained some of my all time favorites, so kudos.

What's really important for you to nail now is the follow-up action: I want to be linked to resources that allow me to explore the recommendations, perhaps the media in question, perhaps more information on the artist or art.

Being able to reward myself for using your service with the enjoyment of an experience that confirms the accuracy of your recommendations.. would certainly make me come back for more!

I'm aware that everyone (at least your users that read HN) would be able to find the recommended media through a number of means (BT, p2p, Spotify, iTunes, etc), you should take advantage of the experience the user has when they are served such excellent recommendations, preferably by referring them to a service (which has the stamp of approval of your average user) which allows them to purchase/peruse the recommended media (or at least preview them).

Misc. ideas:

- Make #logo text (although I realize you'll probably won't have to rely on SEO for users), and even better, make it an anchor linking to the initial page.

- Put your text input on the same line as your "Go" button, and perhaps think of better copy for "Go".

- Give connect_widget_4e10ba13e07753d42974425 a bigger width to accomodate non-English texts

- Make sure your #how p DOESN'T break at twitter\n username, because right now, it does for me.

- Try not to use <font>, if only to comply with standards.

I hope my feedback is useful for you, good luck!
There's a huge difference between insurance and buying stuff from a store -- at a store I buy things when I have a higher utility for the item than the cost to the manufacturer to produce and sell it to me. Insurance is a zero-sum game. Actually, the article addresses that:

"The difference is quite fundamental. It’s that insurance is fundamentally
zero-sum — the only transaction is money going back and forth. When you
buy a refrigerator, say, your value for it is huge. (If refrigerators cost
$50k you’d probably suck it up and buy one — how the hell are you going to
live without a refrigerator?) So you come out way ahead when you get it for
[I haven’t actually the faintest clue what a refrigerator costs]. And
Maytag or whoever does too. Win-win! Insurance is fundamentally either
win-lose or lose-win."
Not really, because you've removed 'almost all' terms, but there are many ways to remove 'almost all' terms that do not result in a convergent series. For instance, you could remove 999 out of every 1000 terms. I'd say that counts as removing 'almost all' terms. Nevertheless, the resulting series does not converge, for the exact same reason that removing every other term doesn't work. The amount of terms that you remove has to increase faster than that.
I don't see the compelling reason to start with Android in the free-app-as-front-end-to-web-service case. Is it because Android phones (briefly) outsold iPhones? Last I heard, iOS still has something like a 60% lead in install base, and the latest data says iPhone sales are outpacing Android phone sales again.
Thanks -- exactly what I wanted.
Show HN: FreshStartups.org features startups like yours
A brilliant mind has been lost today. However, his brilliant ideals shall live on. My sincerest condolences.
I've had 3 kinds of bosses:

1. Hardass who pushes everyone to the limit, tends to micro-manage, frequently overrules consensus with his own views.

2. Total pushover who agrees with everything. Constantly seeks consensus and rule by democracy, never pushes anyone and just tries to be everyone's friend.

3. Somewhere in between the two above. Seeks consensus and lets people make mistakes in order to help them learn. Sometimes overrules people in order to make sure things don't get too far off track. Doesn't try to be people's friend, but is sensitive to people's needs and gives a reasonable amount of leeway.

The somewhat counter-intuitive thing is that #2 is by far and away the worst kind of boss to have. It's fun for about a month, and then everything falls apart. The teams never seems to get anything done. All the best people eventually leave because there is never any consequence to incompetence and so tons of people just default to being lazy (think: working in government.)

Although #1 is tough and often unpleasant, he tends to get things done (albeit with higher turnover and more grumbling) and most often at least ensures that the company succeeds (think guys like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, who are notorious for being insanely demanding and insensitive.)

Lastly, it's insanely hard to hit the right balance between #1 and #2. Really it's damn near impossible and requires some kind of magic innate talent to be able to inspire and push people to work hard without crushing their spirits.
Mark Zuckerberg's TopCoder profile
I wish I could make good money writing drivel like this. Here's his parting sentence, emphasized in the original to let you know that it contains Prodound Wisdom: "Therefore, continue using Dropbox for everyday file transfers where you value convenience over an absolute guarantee of privacy."

Let me stop to give the world's most sarcastic eye-roll. Where exactly should someone store their "stuff" (Dropbox's technical term) if what you want is Michael Krigsman's "absolute guarantee of privacy"?

I've you've paused, put you hand on your chin, and got lost pondering that conundrum, let me me help you out with an answer: There is no such place.

I have a lot of sympathy for these Dropbox guys. They're by no means perfect — those few hours of where their service was passwords-optional was pretty sad — but as someone just commented, they have their hearts in the right place. I attribute their PR troubles in part to the seemingly universal need for people to see idols toppled. I never had the Dropbox religion — a religion that some of my colleagues fell for, and hard — so I didn't suffer a mental breakdown when they revealed themselves to be merely human.

This is Hacker News. You're supposed to be here if you're a programmer or a technically-minded entrepreneur — or "starter," to use a term from 37signals that I am fond of — and that means that you should have an understanding and appreciation that products exist in the real world, where operational, legal, and business considerations complicate everything.

Upon reading about what Dropbox is dealing with here, the rational response for the Hacker News core audience is to do whatever irrational superstitious ritual you do to keep bad luck away. And also to hope that your products become successful enough to become the focus of the sort of scare mongering that this article perpetuates.
To your original point, Apple's WebKit didn't come from nowhere either. It was a fork of KHTML from the KDE project.
Little known fact about Zuckerberg and Facebook; the idea and the name came from his high school, Phillips Exeter Academy. Exeter has always had a physical handbook of everyone's photo and names that was handed out to all students each year called, "The Exeter Facebook". I would know since I was in the same dorm as Zuckerberg around that time (it was a boarding school).
Are you sure it's a good idea to develop iPhone or Windows Phone apps either? On average, those don't sell either... and they can be deleted by the Overlords for no reason whatsoever.

Despite the extremely high risk, people do it anyway. I'm guessing the risk vs. reward is about the same with Android, but since there's no Kool-Aid to drink, there are more people wasting time on iOS apps. Just a guess, though.

(As an Android user, I do think it's strange to pay $15 for the home screen when the whole OS is free.)
Where's the obligatory thermite test?
This is what I do when I'm too lazy to find my phone and set an alarm. It's never failed me.

(Actually, I use mplayer, but same idea.)
The latency would make this difficult. Even 100ms is a lot when you are trying to jam.
What problem is this solving?

I don't see any examples of what the site actually is or does, nor what other users are doing. I'm certainly not going to sign up just to figure out what it is.

Nice name, though.
I don't know if it's necessarily something you're overlooking, but the Diaspora situation likely had something of a cooling effect (as opposed to a chilling effect) on funding software projects through sites like Kickstarter. They sucked up gobs of money and have so far woefully under-delivered.

I've kicked a few bucks (or more) at a project or two through Kickstarter and similar sites (the recent $500 3D printer drive on IndieGoGo [0], for example, and somewhat apropos the linked project), but always with the expectation of receiving something tangible, even if it's just a t-shirt or the like.

Most likely, the thing keeping people from doing it more is the lack of successful examples. If a project or two can get funded, and deliver, the model would probably take off beyond anyone's expectations. Until then, though, the only example I can think of is Diaspora, and that's left a pretty bad taste in a lot of peoples' mouths.

[0] http://www.indiegogo.com/eMAKER-Huxley-3D-printer-kits
I go to school at Boston University and took an Energy class with a Nobel Laureate in physics, Sheldon Glashow, last semester. He spoke in great depth about Thorium reactors, and is very supportive of the technology.

One of the main hurdles is that we have poured money into our modern-day reactors, and have constructed hundreds of plants. If we were to switch to thorium, we would have to essentially start from scratch - new research, new plant designs, new training, etc. It is very difficult to justify a complete switch from uranium, as it would be incredibly costly.

In other countries, however, thorium reactors could be very beneficial. Countries using thorium would not be able to produce nuclear weapons, which would give the world great peace of mind. This could minimize risks in unstable countries - we wouldn't worry if Iran was building a thorium reactor, for example.

There are also other types of reactor designs that use nuclear waste to create power. I believe our nuclear future lies with these types of reactors, rather than with uranium or thorium.
Even though their open source contributions are nice, they are still just an implementation detail that can't really be counted as product innovation.
That's true, but I'm not sure everyone should be quite so defeatist as you with respect to implementing crypto. It has and can be done, after all, it just requires care beyond "hey, my PHP script outputs some HTML." The same goes for many, many aspects of programming: design, object lifecycle, memory allocation, error handling, etc. Programming is hard, and implementing crypto is no different. The difference is that mistakes are not immediately obvious and that they can be severe. But that, again, is the case with many things.
Although not a tax in the traditional sense this added burden to affiliates and out-of-state business is a real additional expense, the effect is the same.
This is really sad news; my honest condolences!
Also there are a lot of much cheaper, if not free, Android phones. I'm sure if people could get an iPhone for free they would "sell" many more.
Apple released before Android, and obliterated the market. Apple attacked the incumbents in the phone market at that time, Nokia, rim, palm, Windows. Android then entered the market, and "attacked" all of the incumbents again, which at this time includes Apple. Thus, as the last major entrant, it can be said that Android is fundamentally an offensive against all of the other preexisting platforms.

Similarly with the browser, Chrome is the "latest entrant", the latest challenge to the incumbents of ff, ie, safari, opera.

In each case, being the latest entrant, Google is not in the position of protecting market share from new entrants, they are in position of taking market share from incumbents.

This will change over time, as Google market share matures, and new entrants and or older incumbents make moves, but for now, as the latest major platform introduced, it can be said Google is acting in an offensive manner from each markets point of view. I think rather than "starting from zero" alone, the real context meant was "most recent to start from zero".
To publish this advice about Dropbox alone, without mentioning that the language is common to many online services, borders on malpractice. The author describes Dropbox's language as "particularly onerous" (emphasis added), which is just what it is not.
I suspect the etiology is quite simple - if somebody is behaving like an ass and getting away with it, it must be because they are powerful, otherwise somebody else would stop them. And so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
AppleScript does not take into account the system volume level or mute status. That should be the first line of the script.
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Short answer: yes, you do need to maintain an external neutron source for Thorium reactors.

The advantage of Thorium is that you can maintain the reaction subcritical. That means it is much easier to shut down by simply removing the neutron source. In a critical reactor, you have to physically inject control rods containing a neutron sink (usually Halfnium or Boron). These elements can jam or be ejected under certain unlikely conditions (this is one of the things that happened at Chernobyl, and has happened at a handful of military test reactors in the US that no one has ever heard of).

In practice, however, modern reactors are designed to take this type of jamming into account. There is no known failure mechanism where it would become an issue.

FWIW, I was an engineer on a nuclear submarine.