skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Restrict technology during unrest? Fine, give it a shot. But start with older technologies, like fire and sticks.
Congrats Drew and the rest of the team. Quite an accomplishment!
I'd like to add Go, but I have a couple of reservations. First, I can't edit the page. Second, the list of features in each table is so specific. Go has a lot that the C-like languages in that table don't and vice versa. It seems there aren't enough axes along which to adequately compare.
They're (hopefully) only talking about shutting things down for a short time. And yes, public roads are shut down quite frequently, sometimes as part of crime fighting efforts. Snail-mail is completely shut off every Sunday even!
A couple of years ago, I decided I'd karma whore to see if I could get into the top list. I did that by pretty aggressively submitting new articles. And, it worked.

Part of the reason that I initially karma whored was because I was trying to get a bit of name recognition for when I finally applied to YC. I applied this past fall. Didn't even get an interview, so one of my big motivations for being as active on the site was gone.

In hindsight, I'm glad I didn't get in. It's given me a lot of perspective. I've thought a _lot about the incubation process. I've had thousands of conversations about startups and investors, and the incubator process at Hackers & Founders events over the years. I've also thought a _ton_ about why the demand to get into YC is so high.

My current answer is that the market for early stage capital is extremely inefficient, even in Silicon Valley. There are hundreds if not thousands of early startups here, who have _no idea what investors are looking for. They have no idea how to approach an investor. They have no idea what investors are worth talking to at what stages, etc... And, because that market is so inefficient, there is an extremely high demand for intermediaries like YC, Angel Pad, Tech Stars, IO Ventures, StartX, etc... that can show them the ropes.

But, these intermediaries don't really fix the problem. They are middle men, and they charge a premium in terms of equity stakes to be middle men.

For investors, the incubators do fix the filtering problem, and that's certainly worth a great deal to them. For the startups, a lot of them wouldn't get their start if it weren't for the incubators. But, if the market was more transparent and efficient, there would be less of a need for intermediaries and middle men.

So, we're going to try to fix these problems in the startup market at Hackers & Founders. It's a Quixotic task. But, I think we have a decent shot of being able to fix some of these long standing problems in Silicon Valley and help fix some of these problems globally.

So, this past summer, we boot strapped an incubator though Hackers & Founders, to try and see if we could "fix" some of these problems. And, it worked. The six companies that we had weekly dinners with have all raised a total of $1.5M. And, 3 of the 6 are still heavily fund raising right now. And, I'm still working as a nurse.

We're not going to make a lot of money at this. We're certainly not interested in becoming investors. We'll ask for an advisory stake, however. The chance to hack Silcon Valley is just a little bit too cool a hack to let pass by, however.

I'm done with YC. I still have a lot of friends who are YC companies, and I certainly have a lot of friends here.

So, now, when I come to post, it's to see what my friends are talking about, and maybe chat a little. I'm still picking up karma because of brand recognition, I think. But, I really stopped caring about how high my karma score was about a year ago.
Three Quake like drop-down terminals for Linux
This library seems like a good idea. I hope it is or will be based on Joe Gregorio's httplib2, so it gets close to correct.

Also, I can't believe it includes PATCH support. Surprising, but good, to see that out in the wild.
For me it's mostly what I had for lunch.
Since when does having three degrees equate to being a good employee?
Am I the only person who thinks this is a stupid question to ask? Either you are talking about a huge corp where you have employees that you can't trust to be honest about the amount of time they dedicate to the company, or a smaller company where if you can't trust your employees, you hired the wrong ones and just need to let them go. No naps in the former case and sleep whenever the hell you feel like it in the latter.
Ask HN:  Why is my avg going down...
I've noticed a few times that it seems my "avg:" drops when I'll make a comment that appears to score a few points. Is there another variable in the equation I'm forgetting?
Does anyone know of any other developers that have published these kind of stats?

I suspect that Instapaper was extremely popular with the techie/start-up crowd when it first launched but it has become quite well known in these last three years and I'm wondering if it has pushed through to your regular Joe consumer yet.

It would be great to get a couple more points of data so we can show that most people are using iOS 4 to help push forward the phasing out of iOS 3 support.
The Carbohydrate Hypothesis of Obesity: a Critical Examination
I wonder what effect this will have on other subway systems. Will they be more or less likely to install cell repeaters in their system now if they can't turn them off?
I hoped the author would go ahead and empathize that it's also artificial to bring out 1 and 0 as "important" constants.

After all, as author says, the formula can also be exp(i 180∘)=-1,
and 180 is (-1) - (-1) - (-1) - (-1) - (-1) .... after all. (or any other number given the appropriate definition of trigonometrical functions itself)

The fact that we give a special meaning to the + operation and to 1, is just psychological, it's just a matter of defining symbols.

So let's define a=-1 and the operator , as -, we get:

exp(sqrt(h) (h,h,h,h,h,h....,h))=h

So all we have is: e^x, subtraction, multiplication, -1, and square root (of -1 again).
While the original syntax for the formula has, e^x, addition, multiplication, i, pi, 0, 1.
So we reduced the number of concepts at the expense of making the expression longer (183 repetitions the symbol h)

But if we accept author's freedom to choose an arbitrary angle measure unit, we could define another unit for angles and have:

exp(sqrt(-1))=-1 (so only e^, sqrt and -1: magical link between e and -1)

Btw, there is also no need for operators to use 'symbols', letters are symbols, it's just a convention (as operator precedence), so let's rephrase it:

d'oh hahahahahah...h ugh

Isn't that beautiful? Homer Simpson is hiding in the most elegant equation!

legend:

d -> exp

' -> (

o -> sqrt

h -> -1

a -> -

u -> )

g -> =

(implicit) -> * (lower operator precedence than -)

I guess that the what's beautiful of this equation, it's not that it's short, but it's as short as can be by putting as many constants in it and yet don't appear to be trivially simplifiable. E.g.

given that pi = ln(-1) / sqrt(-1)

e^(sqrt(-1) * ln(-1) / sqrt(-1)) = -1

e^(ln(-1)) = -1

-1 = -1

EDIT: that's obvious just because we type it as ln(-1) instead of i * pi, but they do have the same value, so they are interchangeable symbols.

btw, IANAM, so not sure about the math, but as computer scientist all this sounds to me as playing with symbols, so one could argue that you can demonstrate that ln(-1) is pi * i by using euler identity, but perhaps going the other way around has the same mathematical value? any idea?

EDIT: I know that the ln(-1) = i * pi is a direct result of the euler identity, so using it to prove euler's identity is bogus. I meant we could define ln(-1) as being a primitive constant and the expression would have a different shape. It was just an example of why I think the canonical way of expressing the euler's identity is called beautiful, because it's not trivially simplifiable.
"No modern programming language helps you write huge codebases."

Have you used Go? This is one of our design goals. Go is a really simple language. Its features are easy to understand and predictable in use. Go code is also very readable in that you don't need a lot of context to understand a piece of code. There aren't any colossal Go codebases yet, but so far things are looking promising.
Operating System Options For Cloud Server Hosting
If it's not too personal, how do you pay bills? It seems like you are working independently. Maybe you should work within a group so that there is some external support combined with some external pressure to get past your perfectionism (much like @abcd_f mentioned).
I prefer ` (backtick) as my escape key sequence for both screen and tmux.

If you do this, though, be careful what you paste - if it has backticks in it, screen will interpret them as escape characters.
- US data is not available.

- The last update was 4 months ago.

- It is provided in KML format, which is quite difficult to work with in existing spatial tools beyond Google Earth.
There are two m's so of course I read it like mom ment
What was the "more" to the story? I'm interested.
I can understand the various arguments for a need to be somewhat secretive and that's fine. That being said, there's some no-brainer concepts to include in a job listing if you want it to be worth your time.

#1) Don't just say what the job title is, be clear on what it means to you. I've had job interviews for a "frontend developer" be anything from a PSD-slicer to a 95% backend coder.

#2) If you want a passionate employee (you do), you need to give enough information about your company so they can tell if it interests them. I could care less what cool technology you use if I don't know whether I'm reforming healthcare or inventing new ways to impose banking fees. You can say what you do without providing any sort of specific information.

#3) Sarcasm online can be very easily misinterpreted. I suggest being upfront and professional in any job posting but if you must use some kind of sarcasm, be sure to note it.

Note: This is by no means a complete list, simply some reoccurring issues I've seen during my recent job search.
Edit: Formatting.
It's not the fact that infrastructure gets shut down it's the reason and scope.

No Snail-mail on Sunday is unrelated to people using it for illegal purposes.

Public roads being shut down, even for crime fighting efforts, is not the same as 'shutting down' Facebook or Twitter for your citizens. The proper analogy would be 'Someone was hit by a drunk driver and we believe more drunk drivers will illegally use the road so no one is allowed to drive on any roads for any reason.'
I used to work in Search at Yahoo! and can say that you are correct.
It is quite impressive that in just over a year developers are able to start requiring iOS 4.

I hope that iOS 5's OTA updates we could get to the point where iOS versions older than a few months are considered obsolete.

Apple has done a great job at fostering this culture of upgrading as soon as possible. Microsoft and Google still have problems were the average consumers see OS updates as something that can cause problems, not bring new features.
> While these social protests — and their flash-mob, criminal mutations like those in London — are not caused by new technologies per se, they are fueled by them.

Untrue according to the conclusions in this study: http://www.cepr.org/pubs/new-dps/dplist.asp?dpno=8513.asp

There's no correlation between social media penetration and social unrest. It would happen anyway but through traditional channels.
What I see here is an organization staffed mainly by lawyers indignant that managers at BART did something important without consulting lawyers.

Question for those critical of BART's action: do you believe that a significant fraction of BART's users would rather risk getting stranded in San Francisco (which is what would have happened to them if the protester's plans had succeeded) than to lose the ability to use wireless services for the time it takes to transit the four downtown-SF BART stations?
And I think you're naive if you think that giants stand alone. They don't. They stand on the shoulders of the little people. Without restaurant finders, giants waste time trying to find a restaurant, instead of doing whatever world-improving they do.

It's a cumulative thing, and without all the little niceties, the important stuff doesn't get done.

Don't knock the little people. They're helping, too.
RedHat appears to have won the overpriced linux distro space. Amazon. People think of gmail as a late winner, but the numbers aren't quite there.
Yeah, that's a very valid point that I hadn't considered. I'm quite sure that a news organization like BBC News could make a convincing case for necessity of use in a lot of "breaking news" type situations.
I worked at a high end audio shop for a few years. I saw everything from $80,000 audio /cables/ to $150,000 turntables. There is a lot of snake oil, but articles like this upset me for two reasons.
Firstly, the lumping of "audiophiles". Most of the people who refer to themselves as such are nut balls (in my experience). There were a few that were great and heard amazing ears, but most of the time - nut balls. Guys that spent more time listening to tone recordings and day dreaming about their own perfect setup then they did actually listening to music.
Secondly, there /is/ a difference in wire/speaker box/electrical source/whatever - but it doesn't mean that the more expensive one is better. It is about synergy. Quick example: I had a pair of small rega speakers with a set of $5,000 nordost speaker cables. Sounded awful - worse than a car radio. I swapped it out for the set of the generic cables that came with it - blew away half the speakers in the shop that were two to ten times the price. There were also times when the /best/ sound really was a tube amp with separate power drop, acoustical treated wall, and the whole shebang. Every little change you make makes a difference, every solder joint counts.
Do yourself a favor if you are at all interested in this, and stop by your local big city hi-fi shop (not best buy, magnolia or any other chain, something that has upwards of $10k speakers in stock preferably) and try out the different sets. You will be swayed.
BitCoin ATM
That's why photographers demand 10x the usual rate after publishment. It's still cheaper than the court costs. Business as usual.
The point I was poorly making was that the powers that be will likely weigh the costs and benefits of shutting various things off, and the perceived cost (negative impact to innocent parties) for disabling twitter is probably so low it barely registers.
You're assuming the pg's awesomeness in everything he writes is a given. Like any smart, opinionated person who writes on a wide variety of topics, pg ranges between insights that make me think "damn, I wish I had thought of that" to "what is this I don't even". It turns out that pg isn't a Philosopher King on every topic.

In any case the point is moot. The original post in question isn't that profound (introspective insight is in rather short supply) and most of the evidence mustered in support of it comes from experiences where the guy is just telling us how awesome something that he did was. It could well be that he should have handled the situation by reading both disputants the riot act and breaking up the meeting; we have no evidence beyond his say-so. Maybe this clever-clever "I am the Silent One" stuff just wasted vast amounts of everyone's time...
Collapsing Communities
The first question needs a much larger matrix. I started writing the code, but then looked at the letters and saw the solution.
Reminded me of a quote from a long time ago (for me!):

"Don't disturb the silence if you can't improve it!"

Can't seem to find attribution now. An excellent maxim to live by nevertheless.
Lol, not everything in life can be hacked. Many people, including me, believe that humans are naturally bi-phasic sleepers requiring a short nap in the afternoon around 2pm.

To me, this is like asking to figure out the variables of why we need sleep at all so you can just go without sleeping.
The question is now "how", but "should you".

Doing something meaningful, in the way you described it, looks a lot to me like guilt over a perceived unfairness of life. Yes people are dying in remote places, yes people need healthcare in the US, and yes not everyone has a job. You want to try and fix the situation, but many others also have tried, and failed.

Maybe you want to do that to be relieve of your guilt, to try and find happiness instead. I mean it's very popular to say that you are trying to change the world, making it a better place, and so on, but then in the end, will it make you happy?

And even worse- what is your final objective? Being happy?

Maybe you perceive a dysfunction is the way the world works vs how you think it should work. Then your goal might be to "remove biais", or be "less wrong". Some blogger might help you in your path.

If your goal is finding consistence, there are many ways which do not always involve doing "something meaningful" in the sense of charity work. Abstaining from charity and being vocal about it, trying to make more people join such absentionist movements, might be very positive. A lot of people believe the problems for exemple in Africa are due to foreign involvement creating a long lasting dependance on aid, food, and so on. Basically, it might not be good to have more people on a continent that can be fed by the production of this given continent. Here the lack of action would have dire consequences in the short term, but would improve the situation in the long term - and it would be self consistent.

If you goal is happiness, a better shortcut might be finding happiness without having to resort to such a guilt-ridden trip of charity, ie learnt to not care anylonger!

If your your goal is being popular, ie respond to peer pressure which views charity work in a positive light, maybe you could find some other way that is also well received - say american idol, a free software project that'll make you famous, fight again racism/global warming/whatever is popular these days.

But from what I have read in your message, I would sincerily question your premises.

Instead of doing what is better "for the world" or "for the global good", have you considered the possibility of doing "what's fun", "what you like", or "what is important to you"? You do not need justifications or moral endorsement to do that. Yet it requires some serious introspection.

If you do have considered these alternatives, and if you are sure of your premises, have you identified limitating beliefs, ie the reason why you consider these alternatives not to be worth your limited time on this earth?
Just goes to show, you don't need a grand vision, all you need is a vision you believe is achievable. Once you've reached it, there's always enough juice to re-asses and readjust. With enough luck you will take over the world.

This probably also helps in getting the people around you to take you seriously.
1:00-1:15 or so. "Find information about you." Heh heh, well that part certainly works now.

I think it's perfectly fine his view changed from '05 to now about the use of Facebook.
Americans Elect - Internet Politics for the U.S. Through A Third Party
Maybe for some users, but by no means everybody.

1) Reading List is Safari only.
2) Many popular apps (such as Twitter for iOS) actually support Instapaper's Read Later, whereas I'm not sure that there is a Read Later API (someone correct me if I'm wrong).
3) Instapaper has social sharing built in.
Kingdom Heroes Rehber - Guide - Roleplaying Games
> Testing in Devon, the difference in performance between 2G and 3G phones is staggering: the former has 97% call robustness, the latter only 95%. What’s 2%? Actually it means you’re 66% more likely that any given call will fail on 3G

No, it means, a failed call is 66% more likely to be a 3G call.
I just started my first FT job as the first IT guy. It's the first 9-5 job for me and honestly I feel very sleepy around 1pm. I I've been going to the washroom to take a quick nap. It's a very specific type of nap where at the end, I feel a moment of my body shaking after which point I'm completely awake. I hold my phone loosely such that it drops soon as I have that moment and boom I'm awake, fresh and back at work.

At some point I'll tell my boss and I'm pretty sure he won't have a problem with it. I just don't want to be the guy who started napping in week 1.
And for the things that matter (i.e., not fake mount points) that will all mostly live in resident memory.
What I've read from publishers is that the actual productions costs aren't that much. The fixed costs are still there, and some additional costs because now you have multiple formats.

See, http://michaelhyatt.com/why-do-ebooks-cost-so-much.html
Microsoft has had such a service for a few years now, they call it SkyDrive. Unfortunately it wasn't a very good user experience when I last looked at it. It's been a while though (and I just use Dropbox now), so it might have gotten better.
I've worked primarily with human rights focused non-profit organizations for the last 15 years or so. I'm a generalist who can do a bit of design, tech, management and strategy so I offer a good mix of skills for organizations.

idealist.org is a good place to look for tech or design work with non-profits. I also got my start just cold-calling groups I respected. Most didn't know what to do with me, but all it took was one or two projects before word-of-mouth referrals started to spread.

If you are serious about starting a non-profit, the NOLO books are a good mix of legal and practical advice and often include the forms you need. Check nolo.com. But I recommend volunteering as a board member or advisor, or working with an existing non-profit so you can get a closer look at the mechanics before you dive in. If you have a very specific idea for a charity or project, perhaps get an hour consultation with a lawyer who specializes in non-profit corporations.

Feel free to drop me an email if you have more specific questions.
Eric Brewer (uc Berkeley) has been working on technologies for developing regions. Directional antenna for 802.11 so that villages can connect to Internet, software so that doctors can remotely diagnose patients. His presentation on his homepage is very inspiring. (sorry I am away from my laptop and can't provide a link.)

I really like the question in this thread and look forward to see insightful suggestions in the comments.
How can you comfort a crying girl?
~Ever since that day that my friend told me about her life, ever since that day that she told me about her problems and ever since that day I saw tears falling down her face….
My favorite scaleform bug was when the game suddenly ran at less than 1fps due to a setting that led to the UI having more triangles than there were pixels on screen. Scaleform is good at a lot of things, but it's not even close to a "solved" problem :(
Turning off Social Media during unrest won't have the desired effect: people will use their cellphones instead. Turn those off too, and they'll start distributing underground papers (like in WW2). Or maybe they'll just use their voices to shout out.

The only thing that really helps to control the crowds is spraying Soma gas on them during times of unrest. Or maybe mix Soma in the tap water.
Have you tried trickle[1]? It can limit the bandwidth of most programs I've tried it on.

trickle -u 10 -d 20 ncftp

This runs ncftp capped at 10 KB/s up, 20 KB/s down.

[1] http://monkey.org/~marius/pages/?page=trickle
That's the difficulty with books. People fee like they've paid for the physical object in their hands, when really, they've paid for all of the work that went into making that object possible.