skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
An artificial environment would be ideal, but it's currently impossible. The issue is: how do we recreate the environment with the right organisms? How do we know that they're all growing like they would in their natural environment?

I remember in an environmental micro lab, one of our exercises was to grow a newly 'cultivable' bacterium. For a while, it had been considered uncultivable, and all research was done in the field. There had been a breakthrough at the time, though, that let us actually culture this one species in the lab. We used the technique outlined here:

http://www.northeastern.edu/adc/publications/Lewis2010JARevi...

It took us about a week to set up the proper environment and rig a filtration system to approximate the right conditions. A quarter of the class couldn't even get the bacteria to show up after all of that work. (And that was with detailed instructions!) Bottom line: figuring out growth conditions for novel species is hard, especially with the relatively mysterious archaebacteria. Until this decade, the primary way of growing them was to see what showed up on a petri dish with a generic broth.

The reason this pit (and others) is crucial is that it holds tons of unidentified bacteria, bacteria that probably wouldn't survive transportation to a controlled environment. We only know they're there because of the bits of DNA we've recovered from dead organisms. Without knowing what we were trying to recreate, our class wouldn't have been able to carry out our controlled experiment. The same probably holds true for the organisms in this pit.
I thought he was going to say that cheap devices will be smart as in they will collect our data, etc (so they can monetize) and expensive devices will not (because they're expensive and come with the added advantage of privacy)
I participate in the same behavioral genetics seminar attended by Tom Bouchard and his colleagues

http://www.psych.umn.edu/courses/fall10/psy8935/default.htm

from the University of Minnesota Twin Study most weeks during the school year, in an effort to learn more about the latest research on human behavioral genetics. The larger lesson here is that most initial studies of genetic associations with ANYTHING of interest in human beings get a lot of press from their gee-whiz value. Human beings have a cognitive bias toward assuming that their differences with other human beings are a matter of nature rather than nurture, if the other person can be deemed to be inferior. (The fundamental attribution error in psychology

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error

results in most human beings most of the time concluding that their own faults and foibles are an outcome of the press of circumstances, while the other person's faults are mostly an outcome of the other person being a bad person by nature.) In fact, what human genetic research has shown over and over and over again is that any one genetic influence (from any one gene) on human behavior is very small indeed, usually all but undetectable even in large sample sizes, and that many human characteristics thought to be highly controlled by genes (highly "heritiable") are exquisitely sensitive to environmental influences.

http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20O...

http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20O...

http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20O...

It will take a long time for the general public and people who mostly read blogs to get their information about science to catch up with what the professional research literature says on this point, especially because human cognitive biases run against understanding the facts on this issue. But if the research program continues thoughtfully, we may eventually have opportunity to form a more correct understanding of just how much and also how little influence genes have on human behavior.
I must be doing something wrong, because it just drops a bunch of notes/rectangles on me and I lose within half a second. What's the purpose?

Chrome on Ubuntu, by the way.
Whether or not you recognize or care about these issues doesn't change the logic behind BSD developer's complaints regarding GPL re-licensing of BSD code, or somehow create a double standard.
That, by the way, is a popular myth. It's closer to the truth to say that the Pilgrims sailed to America to establish an intolerant, over-mighty government.
Add Site Link, Free Add Url Site to Ask Matrix Web Directory
Thanks! Taking the time out to post that really means a lot. It's nice to know I'm not the only person who enjoys listening to these types of presentations and ideas.
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Girish, you pull in a random quote about nationality from a source absolutely unrelated to ZenDesk as a means of sensationalizing your argument. It's a valid conversation and thread of discussion, but it has nothing to do with your dealings with ZenDesk.

If your product is as good as you say it is, I'd leave out the part about nationality and focus the message on your product, not incendiary sensationalism.

edit: Thought I'd add: I'm from India and am not associated with ZenDesk, FreshDesk or any other Desk company.
I seem to recall hearing that one of the main drivers of people's preferences for Android or iOS scrolling is how far you have to move your finger before scrolling starts. The delay in space, rather than in time.

I can understand why Andoid would have theirs set as they do, but I also understand how someone used to iOS could find it unpleasant.
It is "mint" as in the personal finance tool mint.
How Overcoming Jealousy Could Make Your Life A Bit Happier
I think the urge to seastead comes from the same place as the urge to refactor code. "Let's just start over, it's bound to be way better because of all we've learned." But as well know, there is no guarantee that refactoring from scratch is going to produce a better product.

Modern states are like old codebases. They are a huge pain in the ass to maintain, BUT they also contain bug fixes and tweaks from 1,000+ solved problems. In fact all those fixes are probably why it is such a pain in the ass to maintain. That doesn't mean they aren't good fixes that are still relevant and necessary.
To Opt In Or Not To Opt In – Email List Building Basics The Ultimate Guide
Do you realize how much funding law enforcement agencies around the world get? They can do their own damn jobs.
Can someone enlighten me as to why "pure CSS" is seen as the pinnacle of web design? It seems that for problems involving a computational element like this, Javascript would be much more concise and readable. Having said that, it is beautifully done.
The mainstream who shop at stores where every single appliance/device has "works with your iPod/iPhone!". The mainstream who go to hotels that have iPod docking stations in the room alarm clocks. The mainstream who go to fitness gyms that have iPod/iPhone docking stations in the workout equipment.
Realtime visualization of Wikipedia edit streams
Interesting. Should start fairly slow... The idea is to catch notes that are in key (black ones) while avoiding those that are out of key (red ones). I'll try to slow down the blocks a bit to make it easier.
Iran claims to shoot down U.S. drone aircraft
What the science of human nature can teach us
To be fair Harry Potter is about evil witchcraft, it just doesn't promote it...or rather It's about the power of friendship (and good witchcraft) defeating evil witchcraft.
No, they both involve software, writing to a framebuffer. (By software, I mean code - software/firmware/etc).

A crappy 'hardware' accelerated GPU can be slower than a 'software' framebuffer write.

My point was that saying "It's hardware accelerated" is meaningless marketing speak.
I hear this all the time, yet not one person can tell me precisely what Chrome is lacking when it comes to dev tools. What is it you're missing? Anyone?
I didn't downvote (can't actually), but some possible reasons are:
* The writing style was not considered relevant to the conversation about sexism.
* No one is interested in the GP's bookmark list.
Looks like I won't be using either of these products.

Think of all that could have been accomplished on the product had they not been squabbling and setting up websites to argue with one another.

No one comes out on top in situations like this. I think it's best to end it with something like: "I'm sorry you feel that way. We'll let the customers decide."
All the windows phone 7 devices I have seen work extremely well in terms of smooth scrolling. Definitely on the same levels as ios devices if not better.
Intel working on 14nm circuits in its lab
My experience in finance IT business is different (but it depends on finance business itself - the difference between writing systems for mortgage industry is different than what quants write and that's different from guys writing integration/real time market data/trading systems).

But what's the most important thing in finance IT business is to keep with business knowledge. Having only pure IT skills will get you nowhere. You need to understand a business side of your finance domain which means being able to easily communicate with your clients/customers in their language. It's pretty common to see IT guys in finance having Series 7/24/63 or CFA certificates on their resume (I'm one of them).
Again if you want to be in finance IT business for a long haul, focusing on general IT knowledge only is not enough.
Facebook Apps - Classifieds Goes Live
Interesting....
You're welcome. I transcribed it for my own records, so I could do a text search on "reinventing the flat tire" (yet another Alan Kay bon mot) and find the context. I figured others might as well benefit.
That's a stupid idea; helping law enforcement do their jobs. THey have large budgets, they can figure this shit out on their own and there's no need to help them oppress your fellow human. Drug laws in most countries are insanely stupid where non-violent drug offenders are locked up for a long time with violent offenders.
Firefox is too slow, and it is getting slower with every release.
Mozilla should stop using Gecko, and switch to WebKit ...... or should release a WebKit version.

I believe that there is still huge scope for a better browser. Chrome is Google's browser - and open community cant trust Big G.
Chromium has a big minus point: no auto-update. You need to download and install newer versions manually.

I want a fast browser (may be WebKit + V8) developed by any non-profit and reputed organization like Mozilla.
i remember seeing an example simulation 6 months ago out of europe where they were using high speed rail with feeder cars that would pull up alongside the main fast train to let people on/off, without slowing down the main train. this was thought up to speed train travel as the acceleration/deceleration of maglev trains contribute to their energy and time delays.
Ah, fascinating. Thanks!
At my 15 year mark, I was learning perl, html, css and JavaScript at the 20 year mark, it was PHP, now nearing the 27 year mark, I'm doing SSJS. Stop? Heck no, I'm just getting started.

One of my uncles retired at 66 still writing COBOL.
Great response. :)

I will be reminded of this incident every time i see the Zendesk logo when i submit a ticket on a site that uses them.

What an awful way to lose respect and damage credibility.
A quick Reminder for ALL
Since I sometimes commute by Caltrain, I have been very interested in this "last mile or two" transportation problem.

A remarkable number of engineer/entrepreneurs have sprung up attempting to offer devices that solve it. Here are some highlights of what I've found:

Segway: easy to ride and reasonably fast, but expensive, and worse, much too heavy (100 lb) to pick up and take on a train.

YikeBike folding electric bicycle: looks not too hard to ride; a little slow, perhaps, at 15 mph. A technological marvel (anti-lock brakes!) but correspondingly expensive ($2000 for the 31 lb model, $3800 for the 24 lb carbon fiber model).

Conscious Commuter folding electric bicycle: this is a very nice-looking design whose development was recently funded on Kickstarter (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1585753369/folding-elect...). No specs yet, but looks extremely promising.

Trikke EV: a very creative design. Looks fun to ride, but a little heavy for this purpose (38 - 46 lb depending on model) and not particularly fast (13 - 16 mph).

Metroboard electric skateboard: reasonably fast (20 mph) and extremely light (~20 lbs depending on model). I have one of these and it's an impressive piece of engineering and fun to ride, but it does require substantial athleticism and, uh, a certain risk tolerance. Not a mass market product.

If those aren't exotic enough for you, a number of people are working on self-balancing electric unicycles (!!).
To clarify, there is an urban density limit on this conclusion:
"Time to get to a station (walking, or drive plus park) kills the effectiveness of most personal rapid transit and light-rail systems until you have a population density of 5000+ ppl/km2."

So for population densities of 5,000+ ppl/km2 this might work (emphasis on might).

Interestingly, urban areas of the developing world might qualify:

http://www.citymayors.com/statistics/largest-cities-density-...

The problem is that many of these cities might not maintain their high densities as their economies grow. My guess is that a lot of the high density is due to extended families living together. But maybe not, there are quite a few developed world cities on the list (e.g. London, Madrid, Seoul, Tokyo).

Unfortunately, I cannot vouch for the reliability of the statistics presented here, there just a result of a very quick google search. I've got to stop spending so much time on HN.
Machine learning/entity extraction: Resolving Surface Forms to Wikipedia Topics
I agree. When I wanted to make a new jQuery plugin site (until this post!), I planned on being able to view the plugin source online, like on GitHub. Aside from viewing the code and its quality immediately, it would also let us copy-paste plugins that are just one .js file. It's a bit bothersome to have a .zip in that case.
Should start a bit slower now, and speed up as you play.
Ask HN: Finishing science program - should I switch to programming?
I'm mid-20s and finishing my undergrad ("hard" science) soon at a half-decent school. However, I'm ambivalent about continuing on as I'm not sure I have much to offer as a graduate student in my field. ("Good, he did not have enough imagination to become a mathematician" - David Hilbert).

This, and reading threads like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3310355, leaves me worrying that in a few months I'll be just another science grad with no career path. I like CS but I feel that my skills (a mixture of pure and applied math, physics, a little CS, and stats) aren't really valuable to anyone and I don't know what to do to change that.

I've tried several times to learn web programming, but haven't managed to get deeply into it after encountering too much framework magic, or too much language ugliness (I like Lisps and ilk, but where are the mature, understandable web stacks to learn from?), or feeling that I'm dishearteningly far from understanding how a full-size interactive web site really functions. At the same time I don't even know if this is something I want to do - maybe I'm too perfectionist or thin-skinned or something, but maybe it's not a field where I can really do contribute something worthwhile - I have no idea. I thought about something more mathematical like machine learning or something more systems-oriented but again don't think I can develop useful facility in these areas during the next semester or so.

So apparently I don't really know what I'm asking. As it stands, maybe I have the wrong mindset for programming (see above) - but should I try to do something more 'academic' (like try to get into a CS or stats grad program) or what? Should I just try to be more obsessive/less perfectionist or is programming the wrong choice? What about in the short term?

Thanks!
Chromium does have auto-update on linux, using system package management.
If you claim sexism then you need to show sexism. None is shown here that I can see.
It is funny how deftly libertarians turn "freedom" into slavery. Note this passage in the end of the article:

"Indeed, as Mr Keenan notes, the most viable political model for a seastead may not be a libertarian democracy but an enlightened corporate dictatorship."

Yes it will probably be a dictatorship of some type, but I would not go so far as to assume it would be "enlightened." What will most likely happen is these will turn into floating work camps for poor desperate immigrants that have been promised a lot of money and then find themselves in a floating prison with no legal system to protect their rights.
Why Time Travel Won't Be Like the Movies
Whose religious text is this mocking? Text below:

Mammon slept. And the beast reborn spread over the earth and its numbers
grew legion. And they proclaimed the times and sacrificed crops unto the
fire, with the cunning of foxes. And they built a new world in their own
image as promised by the
sacred words, and spoke
of the beast with their children. Mammon awoke, and lo! it was
naught but a follower.

from The Book of Mozilla, 11:9
(10th Edition)
I think Freshdesk might come out on top on this. I know Zendesk but I've never heard of Freshdesk. Now I know them because of this drama. It's on HN front page and some HN readers might become potential customers. It's free media coverage for Freshdesk. (Zendesk doesn't need this because most already know who they are). I think it was a bad move by Zendesk.
IT industry is very young but in next 20 years it will be pretty common to see a lot of 40+ folks in this business.
It's obvious that we don't see many 50+ folks in IT today since when they started 30 years ago IT business was more or less a niche. Plus majority of them were unable to keep with dramatic changes and knowledge absorption thorough the years.
I like how MRGirish admits that FreshDesk wouldn't exist if it wasn't for ZenDesk. Doesn't that prove the point?

So my question for FreshDesk is this ... How is your service more innovative than ZenDesk?
Entra en otros mundos
I looked into HTOP a long time ago and noticed that it used quite a bit of resources. How does glances perform?
Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Grants for Cutting-Edge R & D
Peter Thiel discusses the long view future of tech (47:20)
People like to push a technology as far as they can. It's part of the satisfaction of mastering a tech that you think of ways to push it beyond what is considered the comfort zone of that tech.

There might be some inherent value of avoiding javascript, but I think this is just a hack for the satisfaction of being able to do it.
It seems unethical, sure. But a "bad idea"? Consider that all of the following must be true for it to affect how you are perceived by a non-trivial number of people:

1) someone on the admissions committee must come to know you (that is, match your face to your name)

2) they must then remember that you were one of the people who identified as black on an application

3) they must then assume that you aren't actually black based on appearance alone (knowing that there are indeed many half-black people who don't look obviously black)

4) they must then decide to tell other important people about this

This just seems really unlikely in any reasonably sized school. If you really want to be careful, find out who is on the admissions committee and avoid them.
We have estimation; it's just not featured in the video. Whoops! The estimates are the bubbles next to the item cards. We use S, M, L, XL for all item types.
Granted that as an example of sexism in the industry, the post could have been written more thoroughly. In defense of anyone in a situation like this, I often find myself frustrated at a particular thing, and tempted to write about, except that I realize I don't have good enough notes (or often any notes at all) and I don't have a precise enough memory to get enough of the background right to be able to present it well.

> Quite frankly, the fact that she's raging over...

"Raging" seems loaded to me. Tone-wise, her post struck me as more sardonic than anything -- detached.

> ...leads me to believe that even if she has been directly accused of being too emotional in the past, then maybe there's something to the accusations. Some people really are overly sensitive to perceived slights...

We really should try harder to not psychoanalyze people we don't know based on their blog posts. Clearly she was in a frustrating situation, and that situation culminated in this particular event, which she felt was unfair. I'd be inclined to leave it at that at this point -- sort of an Occam's Razor Of Psychology.
Agreed. Compatibility check hack is not so obvious. They need to fix it.

I was just suggesting that you can install it once and set to disable checking compatibility for once and all. Your relatives can ignore any warnings after that.
Switching to Webkit isn't going to speed Firefox up. Gecko is very fast, especially now. As is SpiderMonkey. Firefox's biggest enemy when it comes to speed is add-ons -- which ironically is one of its best features.

Also, Chrome does definitely auto-update. It does it better than Firefox does (and I'm saying that as a Mozilla employee).

Give Firefox 8 (or 9 or 10 or 11, if you're into betas or nightlies) another chance, with a clean profile. I think you'll find it to be incredibly fast.
Which service, specifically, do you feel benefits significantly from economics of scale?

And since most of these services are provided by city governments, why would a town like Edison, NJ have economies of scale that a similarly sized sea-based nation would lack?
Se�ales de Alerta en Relaci�n de Pareja
We have estimation; just wasn't highlighted in the video. We use S, M, L, and XL (rather than 1, 3, 5, 8) for scoring all tasks.
Which non-browser features have been tacked onto Chrome?

That's a genuine question, the only thing I can think of is the 'Apps' dashboard with a link to the Chrome Web Store, apart from that Chrome seems to consist of just the essential elements of a browser.
You sure are pushing your product hard. Drama attracts attention, which you then direct towards your sign-up page. Kind of sleazy.
China Mieville wrote a great piece ripping apart this concept: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3328/
Google search has mind share, which (unfortunately) is more important than actual search accuracy.
You make a good point here. Future transport system will have to leverage existing infrastructure to be successful. Multi-modal transport, like you are proposing, has are not easily solved. The time required to switch from one system of transportation to another requires hubs and introduces bottle necks and very advanced planning, perhaps even magical foresight, in regards to developing areas. A unified, personal transport system can scale more easily and has the benefits of privacy. That's why cars are relatively successful and haven't been replaced yet.

I'm unconvinced that collective transportation is the real solution to the problem, but it is the best intermediate solution we have right now. Downsizing cars, removing manual control, unifying speed, and adding distributed routing capabilities seems much more promising to me.