skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I see Scratch was mentioned (although in unfairly disparaging terms, IMHO). For those who insist on a "real language", check out some of the stuff that Mark Guzdial has done at Georgia Tech. It focuses on what Guzdial calls "media computation" and comes in Python and Java flavors:
http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/mediaComp-teach

Guzdial's work is aimed at teaching programming to undergrads (who may or may not be CS majors) but would make a great starting point/inspiration for designing something for younger kids.

Other things that might be interesting:

Alice:
http://alice.org/

Hackety-Hack/Shoes (please come back, _why... we miss you :-):
http://hackety-hack.com/
http://www.shoesrb.com/

The Inform 7 system for creating interactive fiction:
http://inform7.com/

Scripting languages for virtual world software, e.g., the Linden Scripting Language for Second Life/Open Sim -- it's a nasty, nasty language (even its designer agrees :-) but lets you do some really powerful and impressive things:

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LSL_Portal
http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Main_Page

Open Cobalt:
http://www.opencobalt.org/

Open Wonderland:
http://openwonderland.org/

I used to teach a course covering this stuff which was designed for teachers:

http://contraterrene.com/course_outlines/VirtualWorldsOutlin...
Before jumping right into the new schedule. Make sure you read the post of why he changed back to monophasic.
Sure, lots of us have done more than half of those things.
Its supposed to be illustrative of how a person is a gadget for figuring out how to do whatever comes along, instead of being programmed for a particular life plan.

But you knew that. I'd have to wonder why the pedantic complaint?
It runs pretty horribly though. I like that I have the option of using Flash if I really need it, but it's never anything close to a pleasant experience. In it's current form I wouldn't consider building anything in Flash if I wanted to target mobile devices in any way.
I don't really understand why fat people are so... well, upset at being fat.

What I mean is, I would personally be OK with myself if I were 285lbs.

Ok, this comment isn't really coming across very well. What I'm saying is, at worst, being fat would only shave ~20 years off my life expectancy. Since I don't want to live until I'm 70 anyway, I'd personally be happy with a ~50 year total life expectancy.

I don't care what other people think of me.

I don't need to run, ever.

If I'm hungry, I eat. Thus I enjoy life.

So I just don't understand why fat people have this desire to be skinny. Does it really just come down to... well, wanting people to think of you as attractive? (Caring what other people think of you.)

I'm asking an honest question here, so I hope people won't skewer me for it. But since it's an interesting question, I'll eat the inevitable karma loss.
The contrasting points of view seem useful. On the one hand, we need amazing specialists, to advance the state of the art in a field to a new level. On the other hand, we need amazing generalists, to find novel ways to put advanced technologies together, and to help bridge the gaps between levels of expertise. Slowly, the baseline level of knowledge goes up, and the depths of both specialists and generalists can encompass more.
Steve Jobs' Last Big Project Was The Redesigned iPhone 5
"Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or come with me and change the world?"

I wouldn't be surprised if cosmetics were lumped in with sugar water on that one.
Because you didn't say any of it. The quote is amusing; using the quote to contrast with the post it replied to adds much more. And personally, I got something entirely different out of the quote than you did, and I found the point of view you just explained interesting.
The quote doesn't substitute for a good response, though there's always the chance that someone hasn't seen it.
However, the contrasting points of view seem useful.
Google Phone Gallery
Woof! Someone's been out of high school for too long :P

exp(x) takes e (the constant) and raises it to the x power. Log(x) finds the power to raise the base (usually 10 but sometimes e) to produce x. They are essentially inverses of each other. Log(exp(x)) = x;

Graphically they are quite different:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=exp%28x%29

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=ln%28x%29
Those wacky analysts. They say the darnedest things!
This comment is for all the decedent comments worrying about silicon wafers.

Computers were possible long before electronics, see Babbage.

Computers were built long before integrated circuits and silicon wafers, see Vacuum tubes.
"For someone who is "protesting" corporate greed it seems contradictory to wear cosmetics from a protestor's perspective-- they have a gigantic profit margin."

And, when did Revlon get that TARP money again?
What was your experience with CoreImage like? Is the accelerated rendering noticeably faster than compositing with CG?
I'm disappointed that the Government is working so closely with special interests like the RIAA to set legislation.

It'll be a while before every voter has heard of public choice theory. Public choice theory

http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/PublicChoice.html

http://perspicuity.net/sd/pub-choice.html

http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/publicchoice.htm

in political science predicts that interest groups who have money to gain from a particular policy will fight harder to get their way on that policy than will voters in general who might gain more from a different policy. In education policy, there is HUGE access to the legislative process (especially at the state level, where most education policy is made) for the schoolteacher labor unions. The general public doesn't get the same kind of place at the table, by far. But politicians are not embarrassed by that. They call special access for special interest groups "taking care to consider the point of view of stakeholders," and don't think about policy in terms of what's right in the abstract, but rather in terms of what's expedient for staying out of political trouble. A quiet majority has less voice than a noisy minority on ANY issue, so there is nothing unique about the political tactics of music copyright-holders in this regard.
We need a new human layer to truly make meaning and create value over all the technology.We need all this to come together to change our lives in ways that parallel the invention of the wheel and the computer.Its clear the next big thing is Personal webs!
Spookify is like a halloween version of Instagram :)
A Jim Jones quote??
I'll just reinforce some of the thoughts already left by others here (which I also agree with on pretty much every count).

- Your preview should really show it. Having something that small makes it practically useless to have there. As a programmer, you might consider something like SlideDeck (slidedeck.com) to make a really nice presentation of your apps various screens.

- In your price break down, it seems that your main differentiator between plans is the number of teams someone can manage. You say each is "designed for" a different purpose, but don't indicate in any way how. If there are truly design differences, you should highlight them.

- If there are NO differences, here's an idea: Completely remove the plans and pricing. You offer the free plan to manage one team. Give EVERYONE that plan automatically (since you force users down this path anyyway). Don't mention price or anything. Leave indications in your control panel that they can add additional teams to manage. When they're ready to add them, prompt them for payment then. You'll likely see an increase in conversions because interested parties won't be swayed by potential future prices (even if they'll never hit it). Typically, if they want to add more teams, it means they're very happy with the features and are more likely (probably) to give you their cash.

- See if you find a way to progressively reveal your interface. Your signup asks for the typical details right up front. I'm certain you could let people poke around in your interface for a bit before asking them to save their progress and register a new account. This would even indirectly solve the problem of your tiny screenshot. :)

Hope this helps a bit.
Your mom couldn't recognize that a message was "verified" as having come from her Doctor?

Or click the "encrypt" box (which causes Gmail to determine whether it knows the public key of every one of an email's recipients).

Or click the "sign" box, to add her signature to the email before it sends?

Sure, sometimes Gmail would have to say "this email cannot be encrypted because of insufficient information about recipient X". But if anything this might lead to more people using large email providers.

Sure, consumers don't know that they want PGP. But when they suddenly discover that can trust that all their messages are seen by only a particular recipient, and that they'll always be able to tell when a message is or isn't from their coworker, they'll quickly start insisting on it the added security.
Founders of SSL call game over?
> You'd be much better off choosing a road that leads via relays

One Portland State University professor built a relay computer, with an ALU:

http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~harry/Relay/

Quite impressive to see it in action.
You should be thinking about indices as you design your data model. You're going to put them in eventually so the ad-hoc performance testing you're doing as you're building the site should at least somewhat reflect the final, real-world scenario. Better to know sooner rather than later that your data model is so broken that even extensive indexing can't make your queries fast.
This is Hacker News, not HystericalOccupyWallstreet News.
Same thought occured to me. My first thought was it sounds like these people essentially set up Burning Man on Wall Street. I haven't been to the former, new to the Bay Area, but got real curious when it was held a few weeks ago and read up as much as I could about it. This article sounded very similar to the ones I read describing BM.

Makes me wonder what cross section of OWS are also burners, especially among the OWS organizers. Is that where they learned how to pull off something like this massive temporary settlement?
It's uncomfortable. You get chronic back pain. Your joints age faster. As you “grow”, clothing options shrink. People assume you’re lazy. Flying becomes uncomfortable.

Don't ever assume you'll never need to run. Running is a natural reaction to discovering the building you’re in is on fire, for example.
Telling women not to wear makeup is like telling guys to "be yourself". Great advice if you're a naturally gorgeous woman, or an extroverted and socially adept man. For the rest of us, not so much.
"You seem angry."

The reply by tptacek discarded the point I was trying to make and claimed that I was just complaining because, according to an uninformed claim of tptacek, I was having trouble raising equity funding. The goal of tptacek was to try to gain upper status via an insult. That was a personal attack for no good reason, and I was angry at tptacek. Otherwise, I'm not angry at VCs.

For PG's post, it seemed to be deliberately a bit far away from what VCs do. It's frustrating to see such from the other side of the table.

"Traction isn't necessarily the same as revenue." Well, one form of 'traction' is a lot of users, and in some cases can have that long before any revenue. Examples include the early months of YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. So, they had a lot of 'unique eyeballs' per month, and the assumption was that there should be a way, somehow, to 'monitize' that. Maybe. Usually.

In my case, a lot of eyeballs mean a lot of Web pages served and, for my Web pages, a lot of ads displayed. Then a lot of eyeballs mean a lot of revenue and, in my case, nearly all that revenue pre-tax earnings. Or, yes, I thought of 'monitization' up front. My most important Web pages have been carefully designed to have a banner ad of 720 x 90 pixels across the top and some number of ads 300 x 250 pixels down the right side. So in my case, 'traction' and 'revenue' go together.

"PG's view of the world isn't a universal rule." Yes, that is a weak version of my main point.

Maybe some LPs have asked their GPs to fund only 'traction', but likely some VCs are still able to fund something off the back of a napkin if they really want to. Even if they could, to me that's a bit moot: VC funding or not, likely not, like anyone on Main Street, I still need to build a successful business. At one time, a shot of VC funding could have helped my project a little. But now I'm so close to going live that what VCs do is getting to be a bit irrelevant. I'm still in touch with some VCs in case my personal funding runs out, but my guess is that it won't. Lots of pizza shops get to earnings without VC funding, and my project should be able to, also.
They are not just protesting TARP recipients, but "corporate welfare and corporate greed." I live in New York and went down to Zucotti Park a few days ago and was told this. They were also flying upside down American Flags. It's not just Wall Street they are upset with.
1) You might be happy with 50 years, but most people want to live longer.

2) Quality of life is worse when you're overweight. Some things that are easy for most people are hard for you; some things that are hard for most people are impossible for you.

3) There's a social stigma.

4) I agree that enjoying a shorter life is better than not enjoying a longer life, but it's not completely black and white. If eating whatever you felt like took a year off your life and didn't affect you physically, I'm sure many people would consider that trade-off worthwhile. But if it's 10-20 years off your life, it starts sounding more like a fool's bargain. Also, if you really eat whatever you want, you probably won't be feeling great physically day to day (food comas, occasionally nauseous, less energetic, etc).
I think the gp might mean that he doesn't care for the spray of pixels around your logo -- the stuff highlighted in the arrows in my image. To be honest, it isn't to my taste either.

http://earlh.com/dump/hn/20111016-ctj3ptc2jqf1m46bg1sh4skhis...
For me it's about enjoying life, I really like the outdoors, I really like being able to walk up the stairs at wreck beach with out panting.

To me being fat is fundamentally an issue of body chemistry and being fat to me says that chemistry is out of wack. Too much cortisol, insulin levels spiking out of control, your body putting trigylcerides in your blood because it can't put the sugar anywhere else.

My opinion on obesity in north america is that it's largely the product of metabolic syndrome rather than 'wanting to eat too much'. Don't get me wrong I love eating, especially meat, but ask yourself this, what if you could eat what you "wanted", eat great tasting food (foie gras, etc, etc), AND not be fat?

What if your being fat was a product of how much fructose you consumed and the amount of stress in your life?

Is setting your alarm clock worth putting on an extra 20 lbs?

Is having an asshole boss worth 15?

Is drinking soda worth an extra 10?

Is having a nagging wife worth 30?

If you're really enjoying the fructose and the stress keep on going, it's absolutely no skin off my back.
How did FOSS come into this? You're all over the map here.

To remind you, this was a conversation about products that allow kids to learn through tinkering vs those that are completely locked down.

I don't particularily care to debate you on random semi-related topics especially when you aren't really debating with shit like this:

> When you assume, you make an ass out of you and me.

Ok, since my little rhetorical device gave you a smart ass way to evade the question let me put it another way:

You say "A closed system is more tightly controlled. The user cannot fuck every aspect of it, and so he wont. You cannot assume the average users knows what he is doing or what he is installing on his device. Historically he has been shown unable to do so."

Why does this problem not appear in any other industry? Normal people seem to do just fine with their cars, clothes, power tools, etc. All things that it is possible to tinker with and break doing so. People who take the risk and have some expertise do and those that don't just enjoy the purchase and leave that stuff to the experts. Historically they have been show to be able to do so.

I think we agree that forcing users to tweak all sorts of configurations either during setup or during normal use isn't the right way to design software. That's not related to whether it's possible to modify things if you want to.

Do you honestly not understand that this is a narrower subject than the Apple way (closed, novice centric simple UI, proprietary) vs. the Linux Way (open, expert centric UI, free)?

My points where only ever about open vs. closed, as was the article we commenting on.
Ignoring the sexism of your second statement, your first statement is filled with self-righteousness.

Capitalism is a system of contradictions. Saying someone cannot argue with capitalism because they benefit from it is just an ad hominem attack. No one in the modern age can live outside of capitalism therefore everyone becomes a part of it. The equivalent stance is "feudalism should not end because you have benefited so much from feudalism which has given you your life so far and all you own" if said while feudalism was the norm. Everyone on this planet is presently affected by the positives and negatives of global capitalism.

Feel free to argue the ideas of the protests or the point of the article, that some people are living in New York very cheaply. Constructive debate is always welcome.
List Of Car Brands 
If you would like a list of car brands take a look at this site.
New Tools for Today's Investigative Journalist
There already exists a wealth of awesome write-ups documenting methods and tools for journalists creating data driven stories.[1] [2] [3] Rather than add to it, my focus is on another important and evolving component of investigative journalism: sources, communication, and protection of privacy.
I don't think you've disagreed, there; you just haven't distinguished two kinds of work: the kind you do because you need money to get by, and the kind you do because you want to, for reasons such as "make the world better" or "build/accomplish something awesome". If you get lucky, those two kinds of work will overlap heavily for you. But still, minimize the amount of the former kind as much as you can to achieve what you want.
There's a pretty high (but not perfect) correlation between obesity and sleep apnea, which I think is under-diagnosed because a sleep study is kind of an expensive hassle.
Why Finland’s schools are great (by doing what we don’t).
glad these are helping people.
Did you also check out the app, pretty proud of it.
The problem with this is that the benefit to humanity from analyzing the effects of extreme old age on the human body and investigating the questions of extreme old-age heritability that super-centenarians raise is much greater than the benefit from the decomposition of an old lady's biomass.
Unfortunately, the English (Australia) recognition is infuriatingly bad.

It works okay (75%) for built in commands, but anything to do with transcription (messages etc) is about 50/50. And that's really not good enough for a shipping product.
NEW Motorola Xoom for Family
While I do understand your arguments about rationality, I'd also point out that the prices cited by hospitals have very little relationship to reality and costs. Quite a few tests become far more rational when looking at cost rather than price.

(Not intended as an argument for any particular structure of healthcare, just an observation.)
The next iPhone is going to be slimmer, lighter, faster, bigger screen, has 4G, runs iOS 6, and will come in capacities of 16gb, 32gb, and 64gb.

Oh look, I can be an analyst too. And if some of those features don't make it into the next iPhone, I'll just say it's being considered for the next one.
You might even be better off: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Perpetual_tra...
So you're telling me that there's 359 previous versions of the Xbox?
I've been wondering about that myself.

iPhone (1) -> 3G (2) -> 3GS (3) -> 4 (4) -> 4S (4) -> ??? (5)

The 3G made sense as it isn't the third iPhone, it just marked the transition to 3G. 4 Made sense as it was actually the fourth. The 3GS and 4S were both regarded as minor upgrades, but otherwise aesthetically identical to the previous generation.

It actually wouldn't surprise me if the next version were "iPhone 4G", or something completely different altogether.

On that note, with Steve gone and running out of large cats, it's time for a new naming scheme for OS X as well.
I'm wary of what would happen if I had interesting genes - didn't some plant genes, found in the wild, get patented? I'm not sure what my due would be, but I'd rather not get sued, at least.
Like most articles, can't trust this one at all.

Gruber has some excellent thoughts (with actual reasoning) on this which contradict much of what this guy and his "source" is saying.
The discussion document is interesting and spells out a lot for of what is intended: http://sciencecodemanifesto.org/discussion

One thing that is missing is whether the quality of code should be used in peer review. If you are going to make software essentially part of the publication record, then is it valid to reject a paper because it's code is spaghetti and not understandable. A paper whose derivation the reviewer cannot follow because will get rejected, should a similar standard be applied to the software?
I've found the Stanford videos a tad bit too long. Our courses are much shorter, and you can learn to build a simple app in an hour.
Lots of sloppy inaccuracies in the story. My favorite:
"The best of them [customer service reps] could answer a dozen emails a minute". Ummm...that should be "hour".
Possible. What were they used for before? Voice control?
I understand that you are located where you are and that is how you ended up with the lampost group but I have to say that I don't see in any way how these investors and this incubator is the correct support group that you need for what you are doing.

If you look at the experience of the leadership of Lampost it simply doesn't appear knowledgeable in things that would be important to a company such as yours. Read the bios. It seems like a "me too" from a bunch of guys that saw The Social Network and decided to give investing in internet startups a whirl.

http://www.lamppostgroup.com/lamp-post-leadership/

Look at the other companies that they have invested in and you can clearly see what their focus is on.

http://www.lamppostgroup.com/company-roster/

While there is probably little you can do about this now this is something for others to keep in mind before they take an investment and end up waking up scared.
> The 3GS and 4S were both regarded as minor upgrades, but otherwise aesthetically identical to the previous generation, and released in the fall (as opposed to summer).

Not true. The 3GS came out on June 19, 2009 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_3GS). I'm pretty sure that the 4S is the first iPhone to not come out in the summer.
$270/month for my half of the rent+utilities
$50/month for my half of the car
$50/month for my half of the dog
My wife spends a similar amount per year.

HE doesn't live on $7000, THEY live on >$14000. Those are two completely different scenarios. I'm also willing to bet his wife is taking up a lot more slack than he admits or realizes.
So the rendering is definitely faster but I think the biggest advantage to non-computer graphics engineers is in the available API's over the actual improvement in rendering time, at least with what I ended up doing with it.