skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
So you want PF to retroactively check people's predictions to see if they were correct? That would be interesting to see, but it's clearly not what they do, they address current statements based on current information.

Now was there any reason to believe that something in that statement wasn't correct when he made it? (for example was it not going to be scored by the CBO?) Otherwise I don't see the bias.
That's true. The best help you can get is a textbook which teaches you something formal and concrete. Fluff is not helpful - it sells remarkably well because you can pad hundreds of pages with it, but it really can be compressed into a page or two of simple, self-evident propositions and advice.
Creating a Open Source Terrain Layer for OSM
Serialization has a very interesting influence on types; when variables are disposable you can use very expressive types and complex relationships without major consequences.

But when it comes time to serialize, the effort to map all the properties and relationships into an enumerated form can very quickly invade the codebase and dominate it like a lodestone. Either you "bash down" the most structured elements into more primitive forms so that version compatibility is maintained(leading you to code in a primitive style as well), or you escalate to the prospect of storing code as well as data(the "image" strategy).
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The US system obviously has issues, but there is no other country in the world with the same level of demand as the US so emulating another country makes no sense.
On becoming small heroes
Why would you rely on magical thinking when we have perfectly valid immune-suppressive therapies that are known to work?
super cool work
Small developer thoughts on a Drupal app store
I've been down the same road albeit everyone is different and the general scenario you painted isn't enough for me to warrant giving any advice off hand. If you'd like to get in touch, my email is my username at da google famous email domain.
People who don't want to read self-help books boggle my mind.

Self-help to me means seeing life as an MMORPG with infinite possibility: levelling up your player character, meeting cool guild mates, acquiring lots of loot, exploring new areas, etc. Who the hell doesn't want that?

Then again, most people probably think of the most egregious examples of cheesy New Age stuff when they think about self-help. What I advocate is more like "muscular self-help", ie everything that levels up life and leads to more winning! (heh). I will read anything that gives me a shot at that.

I even founded a magazine because of my belief in muscular self help: http://www.interestingtimesmagazine.com (shameless plug, I know).
I like this article. I'll have at look at the forked ad-blocker sometime.

It depends on the type of site you visit, but most sites realise that ads are hated and obnoxious ads can cause visitors to leave.

Punishing bad ads, and letting site owners know that they lost a visitor because of the obnoxious ad, is important. Whether that'll counteract the hordes of idiots who'll happily click those ads (see "evony" my lord) is another matter.
So when the vaccine fails you take the IS to stop the overreaction?
"Self-help doesn't work for a lot of reasons."

Okay, so what is the proper way to live then? To be miserable, not try to transcend one's limitations, never seek to improve oneself, etc?

It may seem like I'm arguing against a strawman here, but I am genuinely curious to hear your POV :)
The point is: would you rather spend your time playing the game, or reading someone's stab in the dark on the mechanics of the game based on his/her personal experience and questionable expertise?
Siri:Siri-Like::Lightning:Lightning Bug.
Revolution in blogging
Has anyone read the Kindle edition of the 59 Seconds book linked to in the article? Trying to decide if it's worth buying.
I don't think it's willpower that really determines things. Willpower is the ability to resist a cookie or do your homework even though you don't want to. I don't have a lot of willpower myself :)

I think self help comes down to willingness to learn and willingness to change. Simple, but hard to do consistently.

One thing that will massively improve one's chances is getting a Mastermind Group (which is a concept from Think and grow rich, IIRC).
The assumption is that autonomous cars would decrease the cost of taxi-style usage to the point where it competes with ownership, since you wouldn't have to pay for a driver.

When I buy a (non-autonomous) car, I size it for the maximum load I might want to carry. For the autonomous taxi, I can just rent the minimally-sized car for the trip that I'm currently on. If I'm by myself, the autonomous cab could even be a one-seater. Plus, I don't have to park it.
When we look at healthcare, what's wrong with it, and what needs to happen to fix it, we can't see as clearly how the web, technology, and large networks of engaged users can impact healthcare in a positive way.

Because we are not allowed to. I can't even write an iOS app that shows images if they happen to be X-Rays.[1] Its a group of giant monopolies and special interests who as an industry spend more on lobbying than any other industry ($250m in 2010)[2]

And they need to. The industry is ripe for disruption. It amazes me that we allow utterly fallible human beings to attempt to diagnose in a 5 minute appointment conditions that they may never have heard of. And we talk of older doctors having more experience, but only more experience in the stuff they see everyday. Meanwhile computers can diagnose conditions more accurately than humans [3] but we'll see how far the AMA lets that go. Probably require an extra specially trained doctor to operate it. They'll probably require a man to run in front of it with a flag lest this dangerous machine hurt a patient.

[1] http://www.macworld.com/article/161397/2011/07/fda_regulatio...

[2] http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?showYear=2010&i...

[3] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3219909
Vertical search for Twitter: food in pictures
If this software is a hoax -- and fair enough, it sounds too good to be true -- can someone explain how they were able to fake it in the live demo? I understand that this is supposed to be impossible, cranks often claim the establishment is 'suppressing' them, etc., etc., but if this snake oil peddling, then HOW did they do it? The demo LOOKS real.
I agree 100% with this statement, but as someone that's lived in IT all of my career, I believe there is one more point: education. The most successful organizations have an executive team that embraces IT as a necessary component of success (rather than evil) and communicates that to the organization. It's the purpose & perception of IT that causes bitterness and wrong expectations in the workplace, on both sides.

Just look at the fact that no one ever calls up IT thanking them for dial tone 364 days in a row without incident, but many will complain incredibly that ONE DAY it occurs for 10 minutes, it's no wonder there is such a disconnect.

While you might be able to link this situation/behavior to any support role, I would respectively disagree. Most support personnel are clearly disconnected from the activity requiring support, but with IT you often are interacting within 0-2 degrees of THE person responsible for your issue. This dramatically changes the dynamic of conversations.

IT people (just like anyone else) want to be appreciated for their work, in part because they typically sacrifice more personal time than any other department due to the nature of their job, without a reflection in compensation.

Assuming the IT staff are competent at their job, once people begin to embrace that department, and not talk to them like Dell tech support, then perhaps the stereotypes will start to change.

Incidentally, the reason that the IT staff may be so pleasant to deal with at Google may have less to do with IT, and more to do with the attitude & intellectual level of the user base.
Google Autocomplete Now Excludes The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, 4Shared and More
Looking for a gud startup Java/JEE/Python/Android
Hi All, I am a java/jee developer, residing in NCR India & having 4-5 yrs of experience (Enterprise java and mobile java) and looking for a new startup to join and doing something different. My Passion involves doing coding, learning new things, specially about technologies. Looking out for some great answers from great readers. write to me at panbhatt at gmail.com
If only there were some way to combine them http://www.brompton.co.uk/
I tell you a secret: Everyone hates every department beside from his own. It's kind of normal, because different departments rely on each other, but don't really know or care about the problems of the other departments.
Songs.PK -
> Now was there any reason to believe that something in that statement wasn't correct when he made it?

Yes, at the time Orszag made the statement many commentators (including the CNN link a few posts up) contested the CBO's projections and said they were manipulated, with a particular focus on the CLASS Act. Orszag doubled down just like Powell did before the UN, just like the yellowcake incident.

I happen to think this specific case is fairly cut and dried, but short of Orszag admitting to a "lie" it is impossible to know what was in his mind. (Though it should also be said that Politifact does not precisely distinguish between whether a statement is empirically false and whether the speaker is a 'liar with their pants on fire').

Anyway, this is one example that stuck in my head as a numerical one which was so important beforehand, and so checkable both at the time and today, that even partisans on opposite sides might meet up to compare notes afterwards.
I live in an older (1920s) house in upstate NY. I would certainly love the to save money on my heating bill but there is no way the electrical infrastructure in my house will support a cage full of servers.

How many houses have have the necessary electrical service to power a cage full of servers without the installation of a new box/service?
Isn't it irrelevant if it is scientifically proven or not, as long as it actually works for you?
Autonomous cars aren't (just) a competitor to high-speed rail, they can also complement it. Autonomous (=> cheaper) taxis help solve the last-mile issues at the ends of the trip.

I'd be surprised if an autonomous car could compete with the high-speed rail speeds, though.
What, only half? What am I paying you people for?

Back to the lab! Where's my Captain Trips?
Actually, as a non-EU national living in Norway but currently looking for (academic) jobs everywhere, continental European immigration policies are not that bad. I came to Norway as a highly skilled migrant, and the process was more or less painless; after three years, I got my permanent residence, also with very little ado. I did have to take a language test, but only for the permanent residence, whereas in the UK I have to demonstrate proficiency in English before I can apply for a temporary work permit, even under Tier 2 (skilled migration).

Europe does not have a great track for entrepreneurs (though hopefully that will change with the blue card program), but at least my experience with ordinary skilled migration is overwhelmingly positive. And anybody who thinks there is less bureaucracy in the developing world is highly likely to be living in a dream. At least in Russia the corruption comes on top of the ridiculous red tape.
A+ for creative thought!

But I think this will never be done by big business, because it sounds too much like a legal liability and security risk.

Still, it's a really cool idea and it might work for less sensitive servers.
They can address power and network redundancy in software. What they can't address is security: one of the primary reasons data centers exist.
My girlfriend's father has this saying:
"When you have a lawyer, you have TWO problems"

i.e. the underlying problem, and the lawyer himself
I would rather do both, actually.

I can find out a lot of stuff on my own, but it never helps to read what someone else has figured out.

Analogy: I can figure out design patterns of programming on my own, but I can speed up the process if I read a book on it. Same with design patterns for happiness and success.

There are lots of things I consider possibilities now that were not even on my map before I read self-help books.

EDIT: s/never helps/never hurts/
Some excellent points I hadn't mentioned in my reply in this thread. People often forget that keeping things up is a constant battle.

Your opening paragraph says it all though. When developers talk about how difficult programming is, I always explain IT like this:

"Imagine you have N sections of code you have to support that someone else has written. They may/may not be documented, whatever documentation you have may not even be accurate, you can't change the, and somehow they have to work together even though they probably weren't designed to do that. Oh and there's a good chance there's no one to call for integration help, but you're responsible for tactfully explaining this all to executives & end users without ticking them off, even though they'll only call you when it's broken."

It's too bad that the perception around IT's role has only gotten worse now with the cloud.
I think Reddit is too US-centric. I really like Reddit, but communities from all over the world are quite small.

World pageviews for Reddit must be very large, but when you talk about global penetration, Facebook and Twitter are far, way far ahead.

I cannot walk 300 meters here in South America without seeing a billboard selling me some shampoo, with Facebook and Twitter logos prominently displayed.
Nice
Much needed one
New Apache Reverse Proxy Flaw Allows Access to Internal Network
Very well made
it will be a great addition to the Wikipedia
I always feel like a retard when the discussion is about economics. Everyone seems to know exactly why things are the way they are and what needs to be done to fix the situation. Whereas I really have no idea myself why these various crises happen, beyond "them thar Mericans sure borrow alotta moneys hurr durr".

Am I the only one here? Is there something obvious I am missing? I am usually able to learn anything I want, but economics seems quite opaque to me for some reason.

Please help me level up this domain of my knowledge :)
But it did change. "hackers" used to be kids, tricksters and sometimes even criminals. Now, it's "cyberwar", and foreign countries are supposed to be involved even in the most trivial hack. Ooh they used a Chinese proxy so it must be the Chinese!
There are terrible IT people out there, that's for sure. Many don't go beyond the knowledge of someone from the Geek Squad. But then again, that goes for every profession.

Many times the nicest IT staff are those that are the most clueless and have to make up for their lack of knowledge with personality. The cranky IT people generally have too much to do, not enough time to do it, and are stuck dealing with trivial issues that stop them from getting to the critical ones their jobs (or the company's uptime) depend on.

I think your experience has been very unique (and fortunate) to come to the nice = smart conclusion.
:-) Great man..Keep it up..!!
I believe it was after reading a discussion here on HN that I began a similar experiment. It's been almost a week and I agree with bitboxer's assessment overall. Most of the ads seem to stay out of the way.

Some are overwhelming or at the very least a bit annoying. The first that pops to mind is space.com - which kept showing a footer ad even though I clicked the "X" - but that's only my immediate example because I'd been to that site more yesterday due to the Mars launch than I have in quite some time.

I noticed that a lot of newpapers seem to have ads that make me want to turn and run away. The full page ads with the "Click to continue" link at the top right. Forbes.com comes to mind immediately. Those ads are repulsive and make me never want to return. And while on the subject, any site that shows a 10 - 15 second video ad before a 15 second video clip will no longer get any of my attention, links, clicks, etc.

If I'm going to continue to try to use the web with ads enabled, I have to draw a line as to what is and isn't acceptable. I haven't tried bitboxer's fork yet, but it sounds like a step in the right direction. To take it further, it might be useful (to owners and visitors) to have a means for site owners to find out whether they are explicitly being blocked and hence losing potential income due of obnoxious advertising.
People are not wealthy in Wenzhou. Only the top 1-5% are. And the difference is not comparable to wall-street. The poor people are really that poor that they only have less or equal to $100 a month. If all in this story is true and you read it without pink sunglasses, you can see that "Guanxi" means Mafia, not relationship. These companys seriously use slave workers or at least keep their workers in a situation that is 90% comparable to slave work. The black market loan sharks are really more like what you know from the movies then a healthy businessmodel. They hire killers and use them to keep the workers in line and make the people pay back the money with incredible monthly interest.
Where do u think all the gambling boots come from? And do u think the whores in the Karaoke bars are all students who need some extra? Who do u think is paying back these interests if there is no knife threatining them?

What you think is happening only in bad gangnster movies is actually what is going on in these Chinese cities and villages far away from regulatory organisations. Not the paradise that improves peoples wealth.

(I feel the need to add that I was in in the same province as Wenzhou for a year and had a girlfriend there who's uncle is a knife killer for the mafia there. So it's not just my blooming fantasy speaking here.)
I think you would find that to be simply not true depending on the nature of the organization. Work for the government, or any security conscious organization, and you'll see how little control you have (for good reason).
There's precedent for well-communicating groups with a well-defined goal producing impressive results in the short term. Examples include the Manhattan project, the space race, and the more recent Polymath projects [1]. These redditors probably aren't the people to do it, but if the same attempt were made on comp.* or at google it might go somewhere.

http://michaelnielsen.org/polymath1/index.php?title=Main_Pag...
The article doesn't discuss it, but the CDN potential here is huge. This would be great for a company like Akamai, without too much confidential information on its machines.

You could also rig the machines to auto-delete if the cage is opened. Though most people don't go poking around their generators or furnaces.
This would also solve the fiber to the home problem (it's costs $10,000 per house)
The search engine and operating system landgrabs are over too-- just look at Windows 98 and Lycos.

- 1999
Ardamax Keylogger 3.0 SILENT + CRACK | Andra Little Notes
a lot of things don't need that much security, numerical compute jobs or static file serving
Learn Retail Success—the Apple Store Way
Supernatural Season 7 Episode 10-s07e10
Yes, an information for site owners why they are blocked would be great. But I don't know how we could implement this in a good way. If someone has Ideas in this direction I would love to hear them!
Immigrant living in Australia writing here.

The problem in Australia is it can get rather parochial, especially in areas such as medicine. In contrast, the US is more open in this regard.

The degree of difficulty to immigrate to US or Australia is relatively similar. Therefore, it is difficult to say that more immigration will create more jobs. Rather, there are some deep seated structural problems with the US economy at present, and the way Australia copies the US in all manner of politics, it will not be long before these problems arrive at our shores.
You are likely seeing the SD card or 'external storage' contents. The filesystem isn't exposed without extra work. Rooting of course, gives you access to write (and read some areas)
Show HN: a social platform for artists on a quest
http://www.wysp.ws

Hey HN,

So I hacked together this website over the past few weeks. It's a social platform for artists that want to focus on improving their skills.

The artists:

-are given each day an 'inspiration theme' to sketch on

-are also proposed each day a personalized technical challenge that get them to practice the domains in which they need to improve

-can expose their work and receive feedback

-can discover and follow other artists

-can discover and bookmark other people's artworks

I'd love to have your feedback, whether it's about content, design, bugs... :)

Also you can read more about the future of the project here : http://cognitivesocialweb.com/home/2011/11/26/wyspws-beta.html
A robotic cab doesn't NEED a smaller engine. It can get by with a much smaller engine.

A robotic cab doesn't need a driver. Or a front seat for him. Or a powerful engine to suit his lead foot.

A personal robotic car will be the same size. But a lot fewer people will need them when they can call cabs for less money per mile. Especially in urban areas where storing cars is a big expense.

Frankly, I don't see how public transportation will be able to compete. Its too slow and inconvenient and completely unavailable after certain times.

In other words, the bullet train is doubling down on old technology that is highly inflexible and a big time waster.

But, hey, maybe people like going to Bakersfield.
Cool Ruby Resources
I often wonder why large datacenters are not put in colder places and use the temperature difference between inside and outside to generate electricity (sterling engines, thermogenerators) to help offset the electricity used to generate that heat?

Perhaps the relative inefficiency of the heat engines vs the cost to implement them? Still, you would think retrieving some electricity after generating all that heat would be useful.
US does have a net surplus in terms of basic necessities. If their welfare system can distribute it efficiently, then it would make having work less relevant, especially during times when there simply isn't enough work to go around.
I suspect it's also centered around a specific US demographic, say 14-30 as a perhaps too large estimate, and doesn't have much to offer those significantly outside it.
> I noticed that a lot of newpapers seem to have ads that make me want to turn and run away.

The top offender on my list is NYTimes.com, to which I am a paying subscriber (unfortunately there was no "pay for ad-free NYTimes.com" option). I am particularly annoyed by flash ads that shift DOM elements all over the place; my favorite was a recent full-screen ad that mimicked the appearance of the real NYT frontpage.
and Orkut in 2002. Also I remember in one of the postings on early stage Google story, someone remarked, when prompted to use Google that. "Thank you..I use Altavista. no more serach engines" only to come back next year to find out that Google was the more popular search engine then.
Frustrating. Hard to evaluate as a biz idea without knowing how valuable these things are - much energy/heat they would actually provide.

Also, I don't see a reason why it couldn't do realtime stuff as well...

And if this was at microsoft research why did microsoft not do something more strategic with this? They can't start running azure nodes in people's houses? Maybe it's because the economics don't work out...