skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
They were studying these sorts of devices at Western Washington University when I was there back in the late 90's. They were using simple black-body radiators and the efficiency was pretty poor, even with a recuperator pre-heating the combustion air. They also had to run coolant behind the solar cells to keep them operating, so some of the energy was lost through that route.

One thing I was never able to quite pin down is what the theoretical efficiency limit would be for a device like this, specifically whether it was analogous to a heat engine or could do better than the Carnot limit. Any physicists/physical chemists care to chime in?

EDIT: Wikipedia says they're limited to Carnot efficiency.
Yeah, this is basically true on any other platform as well. While it may be more difficult if everything else is a blob, too, I think the reluctance is more about the audience that uses Linux than the capabilities of Linux itself. People can break the DRM on Windows too.

The reason Moonlight cannot play with Netflix's standard player, by the way, is that Microsoft refuses to license its DRM component for desktop Linux use. Moonlight runs the player on embedded Linux devices just fine, but since Linux is still small enough that MS can get away with slighting it, and since it benefits Windows to keep Linux as incapable as possible, they refuse to allow non-embedded Linux systems to run the module.

Frankly I'm surprised that people haven't cracked the MS DRM just out of spite for this move.
Worth noting that my original title said just that ("Airbnb horror" story hits CNN) - and that this was corrected by a mod or automated process within a minute of posting... but not instantly.

And from http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2834426 I hear that EJ's story was also retitled to be less enticing.

Sounds like some nice double-standard going on here, considering this one maintains its title. I'm sure it will be blamed on "the gremlins in the automated system"... funny how they seem to favour YC startups in the middle of a big funding round.
"Terms will apply to the program and may vary (e.g. by country)."

What are the T&C's I can't find them?
No dice for me with Chrome on a Mac.
That's a very huge project. It's best to start with one of the commonly-used toolkits for machine translation, such as Moses and Giza++:

http://www.statmt.org/moses/
http://code.google.com/p/giza-pp/

When using a statistical method, you also need training data. One good source is the EuroParl corpus, which is based on translations of texts of the European parliament:

http://www.statmt.org/europarl/

The programming language is not really important. Use whatever makes it the easiest to use one of the existing toolkits.

Note that this is a very active field of research in natural language processing, and open domain machine translation is hard to do correctly. Also, the more data, the merrier. Syntax-based systems also require a parser in the pipeline (and good-quality syntactic annotations for the training data).

Since (please do not feel offended) your question seems a bit naïve, let me advise you to do two things if possible: 1. follow a course in machine learning, 2. follow a course in natural language processing, covering at least parsing and MT.
Now THAT is a good response. I wonder if it'll be abused though.
The mouse's too sensitive. A tiny flick of the finger and it is maximally zoomed in or zoomed out. Zooming a small step is practically impossible, at least for me.

Google maps has the same problem for me. I prefer to use the scroll wheel only for scrolling.
So they're turning into an insurance company? Will they have auditors?
This was just posted today: http://blog.airbnb.com/our-commitment-to-trust-and-safety

In particular:
"With regards to EJ, we let her down, and for that we are very sorry. We should have responded faster, communicated more sensitively, and taken more decisive action to make sure she felt safe and secure. But we weren’t prepared for the crisis and we dropped the ball. Now we’re dealing with the consequences. In working with the San Francisco Police Department, we are happy to say a suspect is now in custody. Even so, we realize that we have disappointed the community. To EJ, and all the other hosts who have had bad experiences, we know you deserve better from us."

Looks like I wasn't so lame after all in taking some lessons learned. If AirBnB can learn some "obvious" lessons from this incident, so can I... and you.
You should ask him to do an AMA, if you can get a hold of him. I wonder how profitable this was - especially compared to, say, mining bitcoins.
Actually, I'm impressed. The apology is pretty comprehensive with no weasel words, and the new features seem pretty serious. My personal chances of using the service as a host have gone from 'just might try it' a few weeks ago to 'yeah, no' a few days ago, back up to 'I'll think about it' after reading this blog post.
It's amazing that someone would admit that they f*ed up with such humility. I hope people are as quick to appreciate AirBnB as they were to criticise them.
> Airbnb now has an in-house task force devoted to the manual review of suspicious activity.

I just finished reading the businessinsider piece and maybe they'd want to hire an outside firm to manually review all suspicious activity, from both the host and renter perspective and Airbnb itself. Also, and this may be a little bit of closing the barn door a couple of months too late, but one assumes that guest/host welfare would've been paramount right from the beginning, as one case like EJ's demonstrated how vulnerable a publicly-facing business model can be, as any real life business/insurance executive could've explained.

Is it me or did the idea of making off with $50,000 in renovations cross anyone else's mind? I think telegraphing the intent to pay a guaranteed specific amount sets the new minimum for fraudulent activity and removes the burden of responsibility from the hosts, whose relation to Airbnb is that of a customer, not a business partner.

And yes, back in the old days and out of necessity, people did stay in other people's homes, but not every apartment was a rooming house and the landlord was usually on the premises.
I'm guessing a call from certain interested investors put Brian on the right course as he mangled this over the past few weeks. A good lesson for us all going forward on what to put in place first.
I wonder too.. They are proposing a worldwide guarantee, how could they verify each claim?..By partnerships with insurance companies all over the world?
There is a common sentiment in this thread that advertising is something we should accept willingly for the privilege of enjoying a free or discounted service. while that may reflect the current reality of the situation, indifference towards the current model doesnt promote innovation and change. Am i doomed to see banner ads and interstitials for the rest of my life? I rather like the idea of being ad-averse if it means there is an increased incentive to find an alternative way to monetize on the web
Inspired by the one on their job page, I wrote this quick test to see the distribution generated by JavaScript's Math.random(), interesting to visualize.

http://creori.com/rand.html
PSPDFKit for iOS: Render PDFs Faster
Great work Kyle!
Zepto.js v0.7 released
Startup Quote: Seth Godin, Founder, Squidoo
I live in a town of spectacularly bad drivers so I may be jaded, but I just can't believe folks will "figure this out". People where I live have a hard enough time figuring out what lane they should be in on a straight two lane road let alone merging, signalling, stopping at intersections, one-lane roundabouts, etc.
Is it possible to damage a condo, without damaging the neighboring units, in such a way that it would cost more than $50k to repair? (Spraying putrescine doesn't count. I don't know why.)
Most people are searching for a path to success that is both easy and certain. Most paths are neither.

- Seth Godin

http://startupquote.com/post/8353614743
I think it's fantastic that they're implementing this, but it's still rather depressing that it took a month of time and a weekend of bad PR to get them to do it in the first place.
They have something similar near the town I grew up:
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=columbus,+in+&hl=en&ll...

It was terrible the first few years. Nobody could ever figure out which lane they were supposed to be in, and ended up driving on the wrong side of the crossed-over section. Granted, the people here are still having trouble figuring out roundabouts, but I found this very confusing my first couple times through the intersection.
The Vernor Vinge books are excellent...
Yes, it's been shown that looking "up" causes increased eye fatigue, since the tear ducts have to work harder. 0-20 degrees below horizontal is optimal.
Presumably by not paying out except in the case of a successful police investigation.
That's a funny site. I see the links go straight to Amazon. I was wondering if they were actually selling these items themselves, that would be slightly disturbing.
I heard these arguments before but nothing happened so far, facebook has still one of the worst return rate in the industry.
Always great to see artists' perspective on "piracy", the people actually making that "copyrighted work" and having to make a living out of it, rather than the opinion of the big corporations.
I remember that one of the most fundamental criticisms of Rutledge's work was his assumption that newspapers shouldn't have/didn't need much advertising. I did a text-search for "advert" in that long mess of a rant and did not find it.
This is pretty much exactly what they should be doing. The fact that it took them several weeks to do it is what constitutes a poor response to the crisis.

Regardless, it looks like they're doing what they should be doing, and I hope it works out both for them and their customers.
SEEKING WORK (mostly RUBY, iOS, Python) (REMOTE)

Ruby on Rails developer for 3 years (mostly large, internal Rails sites). Before that developed desktop apps on the Mac for 5 years (using C++, some Cocoa, some Pascal).

I have about 1 day worth of availability myself, but I work with other freelancers if your project/position requires more time than that.

Github: http://www.github.com/rwilcox

Website: http://www.wilcoxd.com
I think if you're going to call Asymco "misleading" then you should, at least, cite the specific article by URL.

I have found them to do a very good job of adding proper labels and caveats.
the fact that AirBNB has managed to implement an international insurance/guarantee program in as little as a month is a heroic feat.
Two things immediately pop out from this:

"Earlier this week, I wrote a blog post trying to explain the situation, but it didn’t reflect my true feelings."

I'm not sure how I feel about this line (I assume it's referring to his TC post). On one hand, it's nice that he's now 'fessing up with a this-is-how-I-feel post. On the other, it's a pretty clear admission that he's had no problems in the past sending out PR spin as a blog post under his own name - so what should make the reader think this (or any future posts) are actually him, and not more spin? It seems like it's muddling the authenticity of the message a bit.

"In working with the San Francisco Police Department, we are happy to say a suspect is now in custody."

Haven't they been saying this for a while, and each time they do, it turns out that when someone tries to verify it with SFPD, the suspect isn't in custody (because they've been extradited to another community)?

As for the potential for fraud, that doesn't concern me that much. If they're doing a blanket insurance policy like this, then they're contracting it out to a legit insurance company - who will presumably have adjusters and claims people who will investigate every claim, the same as other forms of consumer insurance (like you get on your rental car).

I'm also interested in the legalities of this insurance - particularly in places where short-term rentals to strangers are illegal/contrary to bylaw/in violation of the occupant's lease. You'd think that insurance companies would have a problem selling a policy to cover the side-effects of a prohibited activity; that all Airbnb hosts would have to sign a line that certifies under penalty of perjury that they're legally allowed to host a place on Airbnb, which most can't.

If I was a landlord who had a tenant who put their place on Airbnb, and which then got trashed, I'd make the tenant fix it up (which they'd pay for, presumably, from the insurance), and probably try and sue the tenant for violating the terms of their lease. Could I then sue the insurance company as well, for helping my tenant break the conditions of their lease?
there have been quite a few posts about this situation. Many people would leave this community if that was the situation.
Airbnb Offers Unconditional Apology, And $50,000 Insurance Guarantee
I don't know why this makes me so happy.
An unbounded guarantee isn't necessarily reasonable or practical.

On the other hand, your concern probably presages an eventual headline of the future: "AirBnb guests burn down host's home; AirBnb guarantee only covers less than 10% of loss."
Show HN: Tumblr theme generator, first project ever
I disagree. Changing your support model to a 24 hour call center in a month is a big, impressive feat. Think of the hiring/training/management/infrastructure challenges.

Not to mention the insurance policy, which is international?

This is not trivial stuff. It would take most companies several months to even get close to this.
Seems like a disconnect regarding how the up arrow is defined on Hacker News and how it's actually used. I imagine most users use it to promotion awareness of submissions to the site ... but HN describes all up-voted posts as "Saved Stories" in the link from your profile page. Different people save stories for different reasons ... so maybe the "Saved Stories" link could use a better name.
What, exactly, do you think is average about Steve Jobs?
> "why on earth would he effectively join the dark side?"

Money.

> "How would comex rid Apple's entire development process of error?"

It wouldn't - but finding exploits and security holes isn't a matter of course. There aren't altogether that many people who have the talents for it, much less the ability to package it into a coherent tool that normal joes can actually download and use.

I have a feeling that there are few enough people who fit this description that Apple can effectively buy them all out.
> Sam, you've certainly made an enemy out of every member of the Perl community with this sarcastic and incomplete post.

What does the Perl community mean to you? It must not include Sam.

Is it people who organize and participate in conferences and get indignant at the slightest negative comment?
What i would like to see is an Hg implementation in Go.
Well wait, they're not talking about using the car's momentum to power the car, just its heat. The heat is waste, this just makes it somewhat more efficient.
I get the crash in safari on osx but not firefox or chrome
I must thank you for this tip, that will help me quite a lot...
The "what topics do they discuss on the view?" search initially failed for me. So I went directly to Bing and typed it in manually and it worked from there on out, even going back and clicking the link in the article.
Is it just me or do they say they'll be covering losses after August 15th, and before August 1, but not August 1 through 15?
I think that's the point of disagreement. Advertising is often inane and wasteful, but in my opinion it's not fundamentally evil.

If we serve more relevant ads resulting in clicks/sales/etc, we get more revenue. We get happier advertisers, and give users access to things they demonstrably want. There is a clear alignment of incentives to have good standards and to try to square that circle. There are other "crosswinds" which make this task hard, but also (to me) a very interesting optimization problem.

People can (and should) complain when we fail to do it right. But to assume the worst, or to write off the entire industry because we make money from advertising, leaves no room for a meaningful discussion.
Thank you very much. Been wanting to join for a long time now.
No mention of a deductible in the 50k coverage. Is that an oversight or are they actually going to cover minor damages like a broken plate.
Cue Lloyd Dobler: "I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don't want to do that."

(from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098258/quotes?qt=qt0367508, or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEgu7jdc_fs).
All the examples mentioned worked fine for me (on FF5, Chrome + IE9 on Windows 7). Weird...
That one was flagged to death.

(I'm going to kill this now, as I do with any post complaining about submissions getting killed.)
It took me months to figure out you wanted me to comment on the design of the item on the page. I thought it was an ad
Wasn't aware of Avro, but I often find myself wanting something in exactly that sweet-spot. Hopefully it'll be a more successful project than Caucho's Hessian has been.. which I've found pretty poorly stewarded.
Thanks!

I'm getting "This page has insecure script." [sic] in Chrome FYI.
I didn't get very much sleep last night, but it seems like a more complicated solution than just using "jug handles".
How aggressively is the Apache stack moving to Avro?
As far as I know I have never seen a Whole Foods advert. Not sure they advertise here (uk). I spend a fair amount of time finding new grocery shops in the area.

Considering all labelling to be advertising is, as above, overextension of a reasonable definition. Although I do buy stuff out of cardboard boxes and sacks too.
just open it up, dudes.
As a home owner and someone who has used airbnb, trust me, $50k will more than cover everything in pretty much every place airbnb rents out.

Just because someplace costs $200k doesn't mean it costs $200k to rebuild from the ground up (a lot is in property, structure, etc...). Realistically, you'd really have to try hard to do $50k+ damage to a typical airbnb property without the cops being called as it is happening.
Good point. My thinking was that these were brands I know are marketed towards 'average' people (Levis and New Balance).
Kiva branchout: $25 to loan to someone in need
disclaimer: I get a shirt if enough people sign up. It's not about the swag; it's just a great way to make a difference, right now.
Not beautiful, but upvotes for being very, very practical.
He said A came up with the idea first, not that he implemented it first. You could have this timeline:

A comes up with the idea, starts working on implementing

B later, independently comes up with the idea, and start
working on implementing

B completes implementations, files for patent

A later completely implementation, files for patent

Under first to invent, A wins even though B implemented first. Under first to file, B wins.

> B could have seen A's idea and filed a patent on it

A could challenge B's patent on the grounds that B was not an inventor.
"It seems instead of XML databases, we're seeing JSON databases."

Even that one grain of truth doesn't hold up if you read his original prediction. He was talking about pretty XML-specific stuff like XPath and XQuery, and even things like DTDs and Schemas; so schema-less document stores just don't fit Yegge's story.

I don't have anything against Yegge for making such a prediction, and I'm sure he's not all that concerned that he was wrong. However, I don't think the author is being intellectually honest when he tries to twist it into a "partially right", and I do have something against that.
Nuclear plants are safer than what we thought
They should be interesting to read, since the current statment - "personal property will be covered for loss or damage due to vandalism or theft caused by an Airbnb guest" - offers a whole lot of wiggle-room.

For example, what about non-personal property? If I live in a rental apartment, put it on Airbnb, it gets trashed, and my landlord says I have to fix it up...will the policy cover that? It's damage, but it's not damage to the personal property of the person connected to Airbnb.
I feel the same way reading this — but there's a small voice in my head asking whether they're being honest even now. Both EJ and Arrington have accused them straight out of lying in their efforts to manage this, and it looks like at least one other Airbnb host has had something similar happen, so I wonder how many other people this has already happened to. Are we going to find out in three months that there's no $50k, no customer support team, etc.?
If done right, I think they'll gain more credibility through these measures and lure more people from using other services. And with the financing they have, they'll have a greater capacity to execute this than imitators.
Bleach Episode 333 English sub
Bleach Episode 333 English sub Bleach Episode 333 English sub
Say what? Not sure where you're going with that. You think this whole incident was just to provoke AirBnB into responding?
fbcmd
Well, the price of the jeans is overstated for sure. Levis 501s are available for 30 bucks.. The amazon link shows a range of 33-50 or so. I run, so I will spend 120 bucks on my Sauconys and say they are worth every penny.
If you click on the items, you'll see that the jeans and the ipod touch are signficantly cheaper. The sweater (cashmere) is much more expensive, and the shoes are roughly the same price. Not sure what the deal is... maybe out of date.
Shouldnt be too hard, perl does just about anything.
You might think so, but everyone says this everywhere in the world. For example, this is the top argument that people use against the implementation of the generally-safer, higher-throughput modern roundabouts. Without fail, every time a modern roundabout is installed, the exact same thing happens: congestion is eased, the incidence of fatal accidents falls some 90%, and a multitude of people say things like "well, I just couldn't believe that these people where I live were smart enough to handle it, but it worked!"

What people usually attribute to bad driving is usually the fault of poor traffic planning. Humans tend to be the same, circumstances change.
some of the older greg egan stuff (he was a programmer). i can't remember any titles, but a look at the summaries should make things clear (or his site - http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/)

[edit: ok, so after looking there (ow my eyeballs!) permutation city is one i remember, and there was also a collection of short stories...]
disclaimer: I get a shirt if enough people sign up. I'm not in it for the swag; this is a great way to make a difference, right now.
To be fair, they've said they'll implement it, not that it's implemented already. The truth of this will be shown when someone who isn't EJ and isn't riding on the crest of a wave of internet pitchforks tries to collect.
> With "First to File" all you need to do is be first to file.

No. You have to invent, and then you can file. You seem to think that "first to file" removes the requirement for invention. It does not. It just changes the priority determination in the case where two independent inventors have both invented overlapping inventions.
So why have they been publishing pictures of the skinny guy on a semi-regular basis for nearly a decade now, with no apparent shame? This whole thing makes no sense.
"Like Airbnb, the world works on the idea that people are good, and we’re in this together."

Seriously? I usually just roll my eyes when I hear this sort of feel good, warm-fuzzy cheerleading. But seriously, wake up! The reason they're in this mess is because they lacked preparation for the reality that people have an incredible capacity for bad. This is a false premise on which to rent out your most private, personal space.