skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's refreshing to see a counterpoint to the MSM's enthusiasm for over-dramatization and poor fact-checking; this wasn't a breakthrough in the science of photovoltaics, as some headlines seemed to read. And I'm particularly happy that the author took great care to not target the boy. He should be encouraged to continue this kind of scientific pursuit and not be dissuaded by mistakes in the research. In fact this is a good example of how peer-reviewed research actually functions. That said, I feel the MSM only does him a disservice by misrepresenting the implications of his project as something more than it might be.
If you're looking for inspiration code-wise, look at uzbl (see http://uzbl.org/ ) which is basically the simplest browser you can possibly build on top of webkit.
A bigger point here is how we all mistook the results. There is always a struggle between extreme peer review, which leads to insularity, and going by the net real impact- 'don't publish, build'. In the latter approach, the winner often forgets whose shoulders he stands on. In the former, you cannot stand too high from your peers' shoulders, and there are few real winners- 'everybody is great, everybody wins /s'.
Enriching The 'RSA Employee #15666' Dump + Stats
It kills me when I watch my non-technical colleague editing a document by repeatedly selecting words, right-clicking, slowly scrolling down to either Copy or Cut, then click somewhere else, right-click, slowly scroll down to Paste...

He also regularly "checks" spreadsheets with a handheld calculator... Sometimes going as far as not using formulas at all.
Praising Kernel (The Axis of Eval)
Wide Angle Macro lens Photography | Wide Angle Macro Lens TRUTH
He could have been more polite but one can always be more polite.
It's the name.

Thick lips sounds like a lot of things to a lot of different people, none of which are particularly flattering.

Fat Lips might be a better choice for this market.
It's nowhere near the big issue that the self-described activists think it is.

I'm certain the data suggests that using real names isn't a problem for the vast majority of people but merely the obsession of the very loud and self-righteous few, besides it's still a closed beta product and any such criticisms don't apply until they say that it's ready and open for all.
UDID Alternative for iOS5
Try using the search box to find people mentioning Sheffield, a quick search indicates there's a least a dozen or so HNers there.
that's embarrassing!
做下瑜伽
Well, it’s a bit too early, isn’t it? Here’s a time-lapse from a year ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZV-AFnCkRLY
You're right, thanks. My bad. : P
I've been looking at HiWave (formerly NXT) in Cambridge (UK) to let me use their HIHX14C exciters for tablet touch panels, in order to let give my users the effect of depressing mechanical keys when touching the panel surface. I hope to combine this with the fact that these exciters can be used essentially as drivers to conduct sound through the panel, so I can turn the whole tablet into a speaker. You can see the parts here: http://bit.ly/nc16KY

Not that I expect my target audience (people fighting attention deficit in dementia or in childhood) to type for hours every day, but I wonder if this might be a way to improve the experience and accuracy of typing on the whole: haptic/sonic feedback...
"How do they prevent Masters students who are on an OPT from creating their own companies and sponsoring a H1B for themselves? No regulations on the amount of investment required?"

Why prevent masters students from creating their own company if that creates more jobs and will probably help the economy.
SMS is arguably less secure than email over an SSL connection. Why would you even consider sending credit card details over SMS? Not only can SMS messages be sniffed and you have no idea if carriers are encrypting it or unencrypting it, but your SMS messages are stored unprotected on both the sending and receiving phones. These could get lost, stolen, or hacked. News Corp cell phone hacking scandal? Celebrity cell phone hackig scandals? If you have an smart phone and sync back up to a computer it copies over your SMS history in plain text. If a police officer pulls you over he has a device that can copy over the entire contents of your cell phone. Common criminals or anyone else aren't far behind.

The best way to exchange credit card information safely is when every step is certified to be PCI compliant which has very strict rules for how credit card information is transmitted, handled, and stored and who can handle them.

I would sooner speak my credit card number to a trusted vendor's call center employee than SMS it anywhere. I have yet to give out my credit card over the phone and I'd never email it.
I don't think you can put this out there any less harsh than this. Plus, all the harshness that's there is towards stupid journalists, not to the kid. And, well, they deserve it.
You have become lost in high level reasoning. This theory is akin to saying that wakefullness is caused by sleep, therefore if you are sleepy and want to stay awake, the way to fix that is to go to sleep, so that you can wake up. True, but not profound, because the problem was how you could avoid sleep in the first place.
Chrome is actually an interesting example, because the UI for find-on-page is identical to the one in iPad Pages - click on a spanner/wrench then on "Find...". It makes even less sense in other applications - "Find" is normally in the "Edit" menu, but finding is quite specifically about reading, not writing. So why in the Edit menu? It makes sense that 90% of people wouldn't be able to find it...
The proposition that "real names" significantly enhances a user experience is a bit silly, I think. It may contribute in some small way as far as what you're willing to admit, but generally it doesn't seem to change behavior a lot.

The quality of commentary on a public comment platform has much more to do with a given community's moderation and social mechanisms than the username that appears above the comment. YouTube is a mess because it's a hit-and-run system, there is no social obligation, you just type what you think about the video and never look at it again. Additionally, YouTube has a short length limit on comments precluding in-depth discussions, and YouTube's audience is very varied and primarily non-specialized.

There are many public messaging systems online that have flourished and maintain a high level of quality even though they allow pseudonyms. Hacker News, for instance. I can think of five or six high-quality messaging systems wherein I have actively participated off the top of my head that were not flooded with YouTube-esque idiocy -- the name policy really has very little to do with it, I think.

Google+ is completely controlled by its users; you must explicitly accept any author's content that you wish to view and you can block and explicitly reject any author's content that rubs you the wrong way. It is a fundamentally different model than YouTube. In this case, people are generally only going to accept you into their circles if they know who you are at least vaguely, whether the displayed name is "cookiecaper" or "Jeff Cook". I just don't see the point in even having the argument regarding Google+ when it has to be explicitly regulated by the user anyway. Facebook likewise.

I think the real motivation here on the part of both Google and Facebook is to discourage the use of multiple identities so that it's easier to target advertising.

Pseudonymity is still possible, though, so I'm still not sure why this is such a major deal, because you can just go create a Google Account with whatever plausible name you can dream up. You can then reveal your identity to the persons you'd like and everyone else knows you as generic John Smith. In fact, I do this on Facebook, and I presume that many others with an interest in pseudonymity do so as well.
Have you even looked at http://my.nameis.me/ ? These aren't (just) activists, these are individuals who are directly affected by this issue and have many individual reasons for using pseudonyms. None of them are allowed to participate in Google+.
It'd help if there was a way to trigger a search dialog via javascript.

document.searchfind.open();

and have that open up the browser's search box - be it a dialog or a bar at the top or bottom. That would allow us to associate clicking an icon with action that brings up a search input.

Or hey... have the search dialog always open. Many users (most?) at least understand the notion of internet search, and it's helped a lot that there's an internet search box at the top of all major browsers for the past several years.

Adding a default 'page search' box that's open all the time would be a big signal to users that this functionality even exists in the first place.

I'd say the same thing for privacy - screw 3 levels of SSL certificate hell and warning - give everyone a little cookie icon that shows, in nice easy language, the sites tracking you and the data they have stored in your cookies, and give an easy way - from the main browser screen - to poof them away. Shrill warnings about "web privacy" would go way down if the average user had one-click access to see what's being tracked.
Sounds like a really intriguing idea but why? What exactly do you want that up voting to do for you?

It could be a way to ensure that emails from contacts with higher votes are prioritized. Is that it?
No, HP, you’re off the mark
I've often wondered this. I had a friend who couldn't spell to save his life when he was writing prose - but when he wrote code he was fine. Never understood how that worked.
Show HN: nyan-mode.el - Nyan Cat for Emacs (my first real Emacs minor mode)
Mulberry Totes
I voted this up -- it read very well -- but I am a little uncomfortable about voting up an article the author clearly wanted to delete.
The author is exactly right. There's no way that a tree array of panels that are half not even pointing at the sun will outperform a linear array of panels that are mostly pointing at the sun. Panels efficiency is measured in Watts, and this kid is not going to be able to record their efficiency with a simple probe DMM. In order to get a full picture of what's going on with his arrays, he would need to hook both arrays up to a load and measure throughout the day, or better yet a battery array / charge controller and measure at the end of the day which array produced more power.

I kind of wanted to say something yesterday, but really didn't want to pile on the kid, and everyone here just wanted so badly for the kid to be a genius. The few comments that pointed out that he was wrong were voted down.

This is something that really bothers me about science fairs. Back when I was 13 years old, I did a school project to redesign a local troublesome intersection. I just made a model of what it might look like and people loved it and they even wrote about it in the paper and displayed my model in the municipal building, and talked about what a bright young kid I was.

Now that I'm older, this bothers me a lot because in doing the project I didn't do any real research, I didn't talk to any traffic engineers, I didn't learn about intersection designs.. I didn't learn anything really. As an adult, I can see that my plan for the intersection was silly and unworkable.

I kind of wish that schools emphasized mentorship programs rather than science fairs. Kids would learn far more by partnering with knowledgeable adults to do their experiments, rather than having these silly competitions where nobody learns anything and the winner is the kid who puts the most work into having the nicest presentation.
Also: have a look at https://github.com/manuel/schampignon (an interpreter for a Kernel-like language)
Google cache link: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...
> So successful has the iPad been—and so unsuccessful were Windows tablets of old—that the iPad's flaws and limitations have been extolled as virtues.

Alternatively:

So successful has the PC been - and so unsuccessful were Windows tablets of old - that the iPad's virtues have been extolled as flaws and limitations.
Ogre 3D (C++ library for realtime graphics) also uses the word colour, designed by a bright guy from Channel Islands, South England.
I expect that it's not a theory well supported by data.

I would expect that peaceful societies are conquered by warlike societies, at a lower rate than warlike societies are conquered by other warlike societies.

Logically this ought to be true since (a) the conditions for long standing peace should necessarily mean either a protection from warmongers due to natural geography or political reality and (b) warlike societies seek out conflict and each conflict carries with it the chance of societal death.
I agree with this.

First off, I may consider a name change. Thick lips is ??? whereas Fat Lips means something different. I'm not too up on slang so I don't believe that means anything else other than "giving someone a fat lip" when you hit them. It also works for you because I think what you're getting at is the moles have thick lips. Not sure though.

For "Americanizing" it, you're probably going to have to play with the mechanics/sound effects/art. Wack-a-mole is nothing new; you may have to spice it up with something like bowling pins or baseball bats or chainsaws or ACME anvils or ??? (if you want to keep the melee aspect). I suspect that will keep people playing.

It's like the shooting fishing game that was featured a while back. Fishing games that drop a line is nothing new, but shooting the fish afterwards is novel enough that people will pay for it.
Possibly but economic collapse might be necessary to rebalance our economy and society to accommodate the newly freed labor. The labor force freed up from factory work needs to be redistributed to some other industry; not necessarily directly. We still educate people to be human robots but now we have real robots so we don't need people for factory work anymore. What we need are innovative and creative people for the cultural revolution. Ideally it would be nice if this transition didn't require economic collapse but our society is reactive not proactive.
It's time that this book is being discussed more here on HN. A lot of topics show up from time to time which discuss aspects of Ford's thesis. Typically people who react in the affirmative that there is a problem are being dismissed as neo luddites. Everyone who read Ford's book knows that it's not that easy.

Even if this book is wrong, and I haven't found any good rebuttals, it's important that as many smart people and current and future employers are aware of the line of argument so that they can add the effect to their thinking patterns.
I'm not saying that pseudonyms are without legitimate purpose, I'm saying that Google has decided to enforce certain rules to build their community and this response is deafening and unnecessary.
The point of the book is that the jobs that are likely to disappear next are at the top end of the economic spectrum rather then the bottom. Think Radiologists who will probably be replaced by software within a decade as opposed to nurses who actually work with humans and are much harder to replace.
> I'm wondering if you're just trolling - "studied a lot of history" and then saying "exceedingly good relations with China" combined with "japan remilitarises". I don't think you've read enough history there...

I tried writing up all the credentials I have that make me have a clear understanding here, but I don't know how to do it without looking snarky. But anyways, today I'm in Beijing, yesterday I was in Hong Kong, last week I was in Japan, and tomorrow I'm getting my hair cut with the nephew of one of the top CPC officials who is my friend and occasionally someone I do business with. And yeah, I read a lot of history.

So anyways. I think you might be uninformed about modern Japanese/Chinese relations.

For instance, there's only four countries that get visa free entry into the PRC without any public business.

Guess who is on the list?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_policy_of_the_People%27s_R...

Huh. Interesting point? Don't the Chinese hate the Japanese?

Answer: nope! The leadership doesn't, anyways. The common people do, it's a common enemy for them, just like illegal immigration from Mexico is a common enemy for much of the American Midwest. But the leadership of China are extremely practical, intelligent, and unsentimental people. If a good relationship with Japan is good for China, they'll do it. If Japan makes friendly overtures simultaneously with re-arming and stays on good terms with the USA, yes that's all very possible.

As for the rest of your comment, man you've seriously got to check your own claims more. For instance -

> Far from renouncing war, the US both pursues and idolises it.

Okay. So, you'd expect a greater number of people among the upper class to be joining the military, a greater number of representatives to be coming from former soldiers, and more presidents to be former servicemen too?

Right? You'd expect those numbers to be increasing if American militarism is increasing? Are they increasing? No...? Is there a hole in your theory...? Hmm...
Point #3 is not entirely true. The article seemed to imply that the law was all about advocating for the child, instead of pandering to a disagreement between the biological parents at the (possible) expense of the child.

This implies that I may not even need to have sex to be forced into child support payments. For example, what if someone sneaks into my bedroom at night (or maybe we're sharing a hotel room while travelling) and is able to make off with some semen while I sleep? By the legal argument that we must advocate for the child, I would be forced into child support. Sure, I could attempt to seek some sort of relief from the mother for what she did, but that would be completely separate from whether or not I am legally obligated to pay child support for the next 18 years.

Maybe all men should be forced to wear locks on their genitalia lest some crazy woman somewhere decide that they want to force the man to create a child?
Right. And? G+ isn't some right that Google is required to make available for everyone.

Google's handling of this is a bit ham-fisted to be sure, but equally irksome is the vitriolic entitlement mentality that a lot (not all) are bringing to the discussion.
Couple points.

1) The name isn't really descriptive of the game play. With the obvious caveat that many games, indeed, have names that don't relate directly to their content, many of the most successful ones do. Angry Birds, Halo, Super Mario Bros, World of Warcraft, etc.

2) The term "thick lips", while not directly insulting anyone, still has many negative connotations in the US of referring to folks of African descent. A similar scenario might be present if you made a game about collecting firewood and called it "Fags".

3) Your game might just be boring. (Please don't take this the wrong way as I haven't played your game)
Both of those world views are limited IMO.

3. Look for multiple often contradictory world views and evaluate them over time.

Most people try and create a world view where they have the 'facts' and there may be a few unimportant things they don't know and a few things they are wrong about but they got the big picture. Unfortunately, it's easy to answer 'What is the best car company?' with Ford and then always buying that. Even if sometimes Honda might be a better option.
> Unfortunately, they can't wait too long, because eventually, they'll lose out to younger women entering the same market

Consider this scenario: a man seeking marriage is likely to continue seeking it through his old age (e.g. doesn't become an eternal bachelor or celibate).

In this case, a woman of that same old age is likely to marry someone young because they can provide for their young husband materially, and from the young mans' point of view marrying an older woman is a good chance for marriage in a market where older men are using their own value to attract younger women.
Also see Athen's bellicose behavior wrt its "empire" (the Delian league) which lead directly to its decline and eventual defeat in the Peloponnesian War. Or Rome is the fourth century. Or many other ancient examples...
> it can be readily and universally exchanged for goods or services

I'm pretty sure all of the retailers in my area only accept USD. Nobody even bothers with the Canadian exchange rate on this side of the border, although some (and any vending machine) will refuse Canadian coins instead of accepting them at a 1:1 value with American ones.
Honestly, one little thing that would make me happy is no longer feeling like a second-class citizen on certain sites because I'm using a computer that is 3/4" thinner than the one I just stepped away from. I'm looking at you Hulu!

If the tablets did nothing more than claim to just be a PC and not some special mobile device that you should charge me extra to use when I visit websites, it would be a huge upgrade.
Get Out While You Can
You listened to the comments in the last post's comments (the one with only a couple comments).

This is MUCH healthier for a 13 year old, title wise, and article wise.
Ask HN: What are your favorite PG essays?
When I first got introduced to the world of start ups somebody suggested that I read all of PG's essays. Curious to know which ones have influenced the hacker news community the most...
Are you saying that you don't? I most definitely think of code as being an extension of language. Code occupies this rather unique field where it is part machinery and part language. Approaching it only as machinery, limits your possibilities.
A cloud service that sends your data across the web unencrypted.
Math ~ You're doing it wrong
The scientific method wins over mechanical application of top-down rules? Why yes, yes it does :)
Let's not turn this into an atheism circle-jerk. I really don't come to Hacker News for this...
Paypal disables Mass Payments API without prior warning
Maybe that's why I'm a terrible programmer then.
I wonder, if this idea come from a someone older without any real experience or qualifications in solar would it have been fact checked a little better before it ended up everywhere?

I would want to encourage young people as much as possible, it's just that some of the things you heard about are only considered impressive when those doing the story have factored age into it. If the person was say 30 it wouldn't even be a story.
I don't think there has to be an ulterior motive to this sort of policy, they have decided upon a set of rules to build their community and that is it.

And persons with theories about how socializing on the web should be, start chiming-in as they chose this pseudonym topic to publicize and unfold their theories and criticisms. They can go elsewhere to be as pseudo-anonymous as they like, I recognize that pseudonyms have legitimate purpose but all this self entitled rhetoric is just trolling.
> I also assure you that my country (germany) has a really bad track-record of listening to guys with "easy answers" whose arguments started out strikingly similar to yours.

Right. That's the whole point - there will be beligerent nations, and pacifist nations will get rolled by them unless they've got a strong ally to bail them out.

It was the militant nations (USA, Britain, Russia) that bailed out the appeasement/pacifist nations from Nazi conquest and rule.

No easy answers, indeed!
You're doing this in plain view of God? Seriously, dude, go hide.
preg_match might actually be better expanded as practical_extraction_and_reporting_language_regular_expression_match. (I'd comment on the original but it's currently too overloaded for it, I gather.)