skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I run Wave in a Box - easy to build, configure, and admin. I can think of at least two good use cases for WIAB: a private setup for family use, and a private setup for a companies' work groups. I don't see much value in global large-scale WIAB deployments. However, it seems well tailored for collaboration in small groups.
Tell HN: Unhappy and I don't know what to do.
I'm unhappy and have been unhappy for years. Pressure landed me in a field I have absolutely no interest in. I'm far into further education, have many more years to go and will be in tons of debt soon. Dreams of being a hacker, working in the valley at a young age with relatively few responsibilities are quickly vanishing. I see Facebook pages of high school friends who are living the life I wished to live. Regret settles in, optimism is brushed aside by reality, and I realize there's really no feasible way out. I've sought to find the "brighter" side of this, but there really isn't one. I'm deep in a hole, absolutely unhappy with the path I'm on, and jumping ship would put me in a worse situation. What's frightening is that suicide has been a thought I've always jokingly entertained, but as time goes on, I find myself lending the idea more validity. I don't know what to do.
I'm doing this sort of thing with Kawa Scheme and a JSON parser written in Scheme.
Golden orb web spider spins ant-repellent silk
It's slightly unclear whether the OP is talking about risk assessment and reducing unknown unknowns, or simply advocating becoming more well-rounded in your problem domain.

Also, I would argue there's much more to consider before offhandedly determining anything you don't know "is the riskiest part of your business". The real answer probably lies in the question: Can I hire somebody to do this, or is it important enough to distract us from other goals? If yes then do it, otherwise reconsider when resources free up.
Truth goggles sniff out suspicious sentences in news
You're misunderstanding. I disagree with your fundamental premise, which seems to me to be that SICP will take someone from zero to hero quicker than more accessible methods.
Mango Cheese Cake
As a matter of fact, in Europe and the US, when it becomes known that a public official spends much more money than what he/she should be able to afford, it is a scandal. I'm not saying that there is no corruption in the West, just that it is by no mean a double standard to talk about (alleged) corruption in Communist China, as it was said in the comment I was responding to...
S�lo 30 minutos, tu cuerpo te lo agradecer�
Async includes a module called Monitor that lets you correctly handle exceptions in async code. The signature of one of the most commonly used methods is this:

Monitor.try_with : ?name : string
-> (unit -> 'a Deferred.t)
-> ('a, exn) Result.t Deferred.t

It takes two arguments. Name is used to tell you what monitor the error was caught by. The second is a function that returns some kind of Deferred.t. The whole thing returns a (deferred) Result.t (: [`Ok of 'a | `Error of exn]), letting you either do something with the results of the async call or handle the error. Usage might be something like this:

(* query_or_print : Db.t -> Db.Query.t -> Db.Result.t option Deferred.t *)
let query_or_print db query =
Monitor.try_with (fun () -> Db.query db query)
>>| function
| `Ok result -> Some result
| `Error e -> print_endline (Exn.to_string e); None
I have always seen creative as coming from two different sources, what I call "local creativity" and "way out left field" creativity.

To thoroughly explore a potential area of opportunity requires local creativity and this is best done with intense focus and concentration.

There are times though when you get stuck, you achieve a kind of local optima but the solution still doesn't feel right. This is where the second type of creativity fits in, and it is specialized for taking a much broader perspective than the conscious mind can handle.

This of course requires a completely different approach, as focus and concentration is definitely not welcome here. To get with this you need to disengage your conscious brain and let the subconscious take a crack at it. I find this is best done by using physical/mental distraction such as going for a walk, running, taking a shower or interacting with others.

A good nap does wonders too.
I think frustration about college can be good as well. I have always used that frustration to put my time to better learning and projects. Each time you encounter those problems, think how can you make things better. Start making things better for yourself, like start your own group for similar minded folks in your college/school. Maybe you will arrive at solutions that may help build better educational resources for people who actually want to learn and not just clear exams.
I'm probably a non-geek by HN standards, I primarily use my computer for internet, writing documents, media consumption etc... I have been using Ubuntu for 5 years or so and for my purposes it is "like windows, but better": (Practically) no viruses, no strange bugs, easy to reinstall/upgrade/backup.
Personally I didn't like Unity and the changes at all and I didn't want to bother to learn / get used to it. Which of course is no problem, since Xubuntu works fine for me too.

Where I don't agree with the author is the image of the "average joe". The characterization is possibly correct if you are talking about non-computer literate users ages 40+ or so. But in the age group <25 there are alot of non-geeks that go from InternetExplorer->Firefox/Chrome, MicrosoftOffice->OpenOffice without considering "gloss" at all.
Alienating current users (geeks) for prospective users (non-geeks) is always a bad move regardless of what the product is.
They have 3 options I think.

1) Get people to jailbreak their tablets and install it. Fair enough but it will be very niche and more of a novelty, will never reach critical mass to get useful commercial apps. Will probably get picked by Chinese manufacturers who will resell cheap tablets with Ubuntu re-themed to look as much like iOS as possible, probably called iBuntu or something.

2) Make deals with manufacturers and produce mass market tablets, they will have to compete head on with android and I'm not sure what their USP would be here. They would either need 100% android compatibility or would need to magic allot of app developers out of thin air.

3) Go exclusively for niche markets, for example selling to car manufacturers developing bespoke in-car entertainment systems. This would be a whole new business strategy for them and would basically remove the need for the "ubuntu project" as it exists today.
Just installed Linux Mint Debian Edition. I'm conflicted. It seems nice, but a number of things don't work, the biggest being the nvidia drivers. Turned a bunch of old stuff into a standing dual-screen multimedia center in the garage, so plenty of room for fun and education, not sure I'd switch to it full time.
Regarding an OS being intuitive...my wife is typically the ultimate test. She's not a power user...she just wants to surf the web, process photos, and email. She also has very low tolerance for UX deficiencies.

I've had Windows 7, Ubuntu with Gnome 2, and OSX Snow Leopard and Lion in front of her. She was ok with Windows 7...it was tolerable, but we hit our first virus soon in and I ordered it off the machine. She liked Gnome 2 better, but it took a bit of getting used. Unity was pretty straight-forward for her...she likes it very much and prefers it above all others. OS X, however, was an entirely frustrating experience. I gave her my Macbook Pro because I was using my Lenovo Ubuntu notebook far more often and felt my hard-earned Apple investment was going to waste. She gave it a fair shot but HATED it. OS X's insistence on keeping applications open in the background even after the last window is closed slowly ate up memory. If two users are logged into the system and simply running a web browser and nothing more, the system crawls...no clue why. But the absolute worst part of her experience was the completely obstinate, bizarre OS X window switching and minimizing behavior. I realize many of you are accustomed to it by now, but she still rants about the fact that command-tab won't switch between all windows, and how minimizing a window requires right-clicking the icon to find it. Anyway, I'm sure there are ways to work around this behavior, but it should give one pause when someone calls Mac OS intuitive...I'd argue it's far from it.
As a dancer and photographer in my spare time, I've thought a lot about this too. I've written a couple of articles about it, though neither is as detailed as this:

http://stevelosh.com/blog/2008/04/shooting-girl-jam/

http://stevelosh.com/blog/2009/02/how-i-shoot-dances/
Green Goose looks interesting. But the TC article says that they were going to start selling kits on 02/28/2011, but I don't see any on their site.

To me, it's basically a matter of cost. If the "washer is done" sensor costs $50, I'd much rather just get up and check it myself. If it costs $5, I'd be more than happy to buy it. A lot of these sensor companies seem to be targeting the $20-$30 price point; to many, that is too expensive!

Make a base station that is about $20, and a sensor that costs less than $5. You'll be selling millions of those things in no time.
Put on some(only some) google adsense. They pay really high for any disease keyword.
Thanks for that. From wikipedia, surface atmospheric pressure is less than 1% of that on Earth so you're probably right. A wind pressure from 500 kph wind at the surface of Mars would be roughly equivalent to wind pressure from a 50kph (Force 7) wind on Earth. It will be less still higher up in the atmosphere. (Assuming I didn't just get the physics embarrassingly wrong, please correct me if I did)
Interesting article on learning to shoot but....

To me, taking SLRs everywhere turns you from a participant to a documentarian. Additionally, and I say this as a former professional assistant and current serious amateur, SLRs for family stuff are really inconvenient, and often times just collect dust. Lastly, SLRs can take intimacy away (though they can add gravitas).

You know, photographing people is really equal parts psychological and visual. Avedon was a master of the psychological for instance, shooting people repeatedly in the same style, but with wildly different effect. SLRs to me up the psychological stakes taking what you're doing from photography to capital P Photography with a whole raft of associations there between you and your subjects.

Lastly, from a technical perspective, sensors and lenses on cheaper cameras are pretty good these days, and generally when you shooting you don't want full manual. I can shoot using the zone system if I need to (well, if I hadn't sold my light meter years ago), but with digital photography these days, the two controls I really use are Aperture or Shutter Priority and exposure adjust. If I really want to lock the exposure (for a complex strobe setup or super-consistent color) manual's nice, but it's rarely that important for casual photographers.

That said, learning to shoot an SLR is fun, just beware the significant risk that it'll wind up rarely used on a shelf.

Here's some more compact cameras I'd recommend:

Panasonic Lumix LX5

Nikon S95

Canon Powershot G12

Fuji X100 (My baby, but pricey, and it's a camera with some intentional limitations many may not like).
Twitter is just a medium. Fine, don't use Twitter. Use SNMP or Finger or Email or a broadcast over the subnet; it doesn't matter.
It is hard to define what the "general public" is in your post. But I will assume, that you mean, at one day will 50% of the population that has access to a computer will be able to code.

And from me, I think that is an easy "No". I don't know why they would want to either. A lot people are not interested in buildings things (physical or digital) and are not interested in how things work. If they were, then I think by this point the general public would know how a car works, but I would say most people don't have a non trivial understanding of a simple motor.

Moreover, I think you are highly overestimating the ability of the general public in that it is a "small step" from going from wrapping text with some kind of special marker (<b>,<i>, etc...) to change the font style to how a DOM and layout engine works. In my experience, obviously this is very anecdotal, it is hard to explain the difference between block elements and inline elements, margins and padding to people that are smart (at least in my opinion) and truly want to learn.
Exercises To Increase Height - Does It Really Work?
Alt-tab works, but alt-shift-tab does not - or at least did not work for me when I upgraded. Not wanting to waste time looking for a workaround, I just reverted to my backup and forgot about Unity.
The introduction of the menu bar and other javascripty-ness demonstrates this is less the case than it used to be.
For a more apt analogy, the human immune system is like an old piece of critical software that society depends on, and H5N1 represents a piece of shellcode that exploits a serious flaw in the system which is currently a 0day. It allows an attacker to remotely disable a large number of machines, err, people. There is currently no patch -- vaccine -- available to fix the hole.

The relevant buzzword is full disclosure. Even I'm not sure if you can take that so far, but I'm pretty sure that if this is released, nobody ever gets to complain about someone publishing an exploit for their personal project, because that's nothing in comparison.
I may not have made it clear in my post, but I have never downloaded music illegally for two reasons:

1) Spotify entered the market about the same time as I started sharing files, and that was good enough for me

2) I mostly listen to music that artists choose to distribute for free

I have also bought a few albums from Bandcamp.
I have no idea where urbandictionary.com is from, but its page on `git' describes the meanings it's always had for me, and indeed probably most UK (and Australian?) readers:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=git

This is partly why I have, so far, not joined the "Git Hub".

All in all, I think a better name could have been chosen. But, most of the time, I only type it - and it IS certainly nicer to type than `svn', I'll give it that.
None of these options make what they do now viable.
NASA 'Curiosity' Rover Mars Launch [video]
Most likely no. This is where the systems biology aspect comes in to play. Stated simply, biological organisms are highly non-linear, tightly intertwined systems. For example, you can develop resistance to malaria, but you'll also end up with sickle cell disease...
Do you really need a reminder for when your washing machine is done? Is this a problem that society really needs to solve? My washing machine has this sweet feature called a buzzer. And that feature can be turned off in favor of wait an hour and go downstairs.
Emacs cheat sheet (from the beginner's tutorial)
I imagine allot of power users do use 2 monitors , especially now that they are so cheap. And I don't just mean developers either, I've seen plenty of estate agents , accountants , lawyers etc using 2 monitors with perhaps a large spreadsheet open on 1 and their email correspondence or web browser open on another.

To be honest I don't know what the Start + 1 shortcut does, so perhaps it would help or perhaps not. If you have to use keyboard shortcuts though I don't really see how this is simpler than the taskbar where I have a clear list of everything I'm doing on the most spacious axis of my monitor.
Yeah seriously. The be all end all of languages has yet to arrive. Language and programming is an art, not some maximist metric. The Mona lisa is as flawed as JavaScript and every other language that exist.
Pre-School Greenfield Mass
Watched the launch with the kiddies on NASA TV.

Then went outside and saw it come over South Africa.
Got a picture of it as well.

To see the little white dots we saw check...
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/600/igotapicofit.jpg
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/14/picofitand2nd.jpg/

Now I can justify to the wife that I NEED a 15" telescope

-edit-

Sorry, it is more like, see if you can spot the white dots with these pictures.
52mm lens is not that great.

The dots are about 5mm to the left of the arrows

-edit-
The individual files are good to read, but are there any links to .tar or .zip of all the files? I have looked and didn't find any....
In Latin, you mean?
1. Thirty years ago, this dutch novelty pop act charted #1 in the US Billboard charts http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bGQ1-Gmoso (watching it now is kind of great, actually)

2. In much the same way I tire of Node people claiming it's The Best Thing Ever because it has the shiniest Cargo[1] I also can't stand people who hate things purely because other people like it. You hate them because they have the shiniest Cargo.

I'm sure it has a purpose and it solves problems. I'd much prefer to discuss its technical merits, though. (Note: this was not an invitation to discuss its technical merits in this thread)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult
But, no more do we need these photography tutorials now that we have lytro :P (http://www.lytro.com/).

BTW, is that the Peter Norvig from AI-Stanford!!
Is this the simplest sequence of events and machinery they could come up with the achieve the landing? There are a lot of motors, sensors, and propulsion engines that could fail.
I don't think that is what it shows at all. People follow the projects they find interesting or will need to use in the future. This doesn't make it "The most popular thing on the internet", but it does show that people find it useful and fills a need they had.

Your comment was really unhelpful and rude.
This is a pretty horrible plan, all the power users who helped report & fix bugs + answer questions on forums/wikis for ubuntu will move onto something else so canonical will be on their own for providing testing and support which will either slow down their release cycles allot (no bad thing). Or they will keep pushing buggy untested software straight into the hands of peoples grandmas.
I feel you are engaging in a bit of the "hubris" I mentioned before. The problem with your initial "what if?" is that viruses and their hosts are not simple programmable systems.

> There's nothing that says a virus that kills quickly and efficiently can't also spread well.

There is, though. The fitness of a virus is reflected in its ability to reproduce and spread. The ability of a virus to kill is not a positive for fitness, and over the long run is in fact a negative evolutionary influence. After all, if you leave your host alive, you then have the chance to mutate just enough to avoid detection by the immune system and re-infect the same host (hello seasonal flu!). If you killed the host the first time...whoops!

This won't kill 3 billion. If it kills in excess of 100 million I would be completely shocked. I suspect the world would go full "madagascar" ("shut...down...everything!") if deaths reached more than 10 million.

And that's the real problem, isn't it? H5N1 is deadly, sure. But, much as the human immune system overreacting to an infection is the most common cause of death by H5N1, humanity's overreaction to a pandemic will likely be far more damaging than the pandemic itself.
1. Disable your Facebook account. ASAP.

2. Stop comparing yourself to other people, especially your high school friends. They also have problems, probably just as unhappy as you, and dislike the smell of their farts. To conclude their level of accomplishment based on their wall posts is never going to work for your self-esteem.

3. I don't condone suicide, but a death wish helps put things into perspective.

4. What do you REALLY WANT in life? How do you get there? Imagine getting there (through meditation, writing, whatever), are you really going to be genuinely happy?

5. When you find out what you want, plan your way of getting there. Spoiler: it's not going to be easy, may not be fun at all, but if you are entertaining suicide at this point it would definitely be worthwhile.

6. Next time you go out, stop to smell the flowers.
First and foremost, suicide is not the answer. The number for the suicide hotline is 1-800-273-8255 and you should either talk with them or someone you know that is truly looking out for your best interest (this might be exclude a friend a family member sadly).

Second, this is just my advice that has brought me a lot of happiness. And I have no idea if this works for other people. But as time has gone on, I have learned to do things that make me happy. Which is often goes against conventional wisdom. A good example, I bought tickets to a movie one night with a friend. We went out to dinner with other friends before hand. We were having such a good time, we just skipped the movie even though we had both already paid 10 dollars for tickets. I scaled this idea to high profile decisions in my life. Like leaving a job everyone thought I was foolish to leave because of the money, etc.. Its your life, you have limited time to live it. You have to make decisions right now to make you happy. If you don't like getting your degree, just stop doing it and do something else.
I don't know what to say other than that it never seems like it will get better when you're in a funk, but nothing could be further from the truth.

If you want someone to talk to, please call 1-800-273-8255 (National Suicide Prevention Lifeline).
So I think one need to avoid clichés and presuppositions about "non geeks".

Indeed. And the concept of dividing the world into geeks and non-geeks is flawed to begin with, because non-geek covers so many different kinds of people, like kids, chemistry professors, Belgians, housewives, the mentally retarded, taxi drivers, muslims, the poor, the rich, and on and on. The "average user" doesn't exist (and isn't called Joe).
Try Twitter (create an account for your product and follow people with related interests). Post relevant content and hopefully followers will come by.
ExtremeTalk: Why aren’t you using an SSD yet?
However, the truest part of the article for me was "In the meantime, HDCP continues to bother only a single group of people: those who buy stuff legally."

AMEN. HDCP is the reason I can't use my large computer monitor to play my PS3 while my wife is using our television...my monitor won't support HDCP, but it does have an HDMI input. Very frustrating.
AppMobi open sourcing HTML5 mobile libraries
> they weren't a hard core group of bioengineers--just some guys who happened to get hold of some anthrax spores.

They aerosolised the spores, and released them for over a week. That's not as simple as putting powder in an envelope and putting it in the mail.

(http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/281/18/1735.full)

> Most experts concur that the manufacture of a lethal anthrax aerosol is beyond the capacity of individuals or groups without access to advanced biotechnology. However, autonomous groups with substantial funding and contacts may be able to acquire the required materials for a successful attack. One terrorist group, Aum Shinrikyo, responsible for the release of sarin in a Tokyo, Japan, subway station in 1995,6 dispersed aerosols of anthrax and botulism throughout Tokyo on at least 8 occasions. For unclear reasons, the attacks failed to produce illness.

> * the OP is arguing they wouldn't be able to create it in the first place.*

The point I'm responding to is this:-

>The only likely way such an attack could be carried out would be with massive support of some unfriendly government.

I disagree that "massive support of some unfriendly government" is needed; the example I give is Aum Shinrikyo weaponising anthrax spores (albeit the wrong anthrax spores.) AS successfully recruited undergraduates and graduates; getting access to suitably stocked labs wouldn't be that hard for them.