skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>not using disposable napkins results in reproductive tract infections. That seems unlikely.

Some sources that show that infection, death and loss of reproductive ability is a clear concern:

http://www.wateraid.org/documents/plugin_documents/addressin...

Addresses many forms of health problems caused by using rags, e.g. in flood areas and where dangerous insects live.

http://www.probonoaustralia.com.au/news/2011/10/aussie-launc...

"..unhygienic materials use to deal with periods lead to rashes, sores and bruising, and the women are regularly exposed to reproductive and urinary infections."

http://www.corporateknights.ca/article/sanitary-pads-some-de...

"..women rarely washed their rags in clean water and hid them in dark places, which encourages the growth of mould. This has led to vaginal infections and cuts that are hidden and dealt with in silence."

Lastly a note about reusable cloth and cups: these require clean water, which is the first problem here for these communities. Bring clean water to a village and the schools and workplaces and a safe place for cloth/cups to be boiled and dried and you have solved the problem. But clean, running, untainted water is not easy to provide.
Who really uses SimpleHTTPServer in production or for serious work?
Show HN: HTML5 Holiday Canvas
Out of curiosity, what are you doing for which arrays are more suited than NumPy?

I've been using NumPy for a while now, and I've literally never had a reason to use array.array where NumPy arrays have worked.
You seem to be describing a problem that needs to be solved rather than a situation meaning that there is anything wrong with the technology. I used to have speech control turned on on my computer - you can set it to listen to everything which is basically the situation you describe with all its problems. Alternatively you can ask for it to listen for a keyword or only to listen when you press a key. I imagine similar solutions will present themselves for brain-computer interfaces.
Excerpt:

"In fact, studies like the Rodale trials (www.rodaleinstitute.org/fst30years) show that after a three-year transition period, organic yields equalled conventional yields. What is more, the study showed organic crops were more resilient. Organic corn yields were 31 per cent higher than conventional in years of drought.

These drought yields are remarkable when compared to genetically modified (GM) "drought tolerant" varieties, which showed increases of only 6.7 per cent to 13.3 per cent over conventional (non-drought resistant) varieties."
Anyone know if they Amazon is actually hijacking "http://market.android.com/... " links, or are they just taking over the "market://..." url protocol handler? Huge difference.
One of my best friends just finished his phd in brain computer interfaces and "mind reading" totally already exists (for certain very specific definitions of "mind reading").
Tried this with a previous startup. Soft-launched an iterated on the idea. A few months later, started pitching the idea to press. The reaction we got was very negative—no-one wanted to cover us unless there was "news". We had already launched so there wasn't anything "new" to report. We had to invent features to put in the product and sell that "story" (it worked, sort of: people wrote about us but reported on the new feature rather than the fact that we existed).

I recommend putting some sort of beta-wall or limited access on your launch if you're going to do this, if only for the excuse of being able to announce public access later. I wish PR tricks like this weren't necessary, but they really are.
Certainly providing a global opt-out would help your stance in that you care about the end-users, and not just the advertisers using the service. There are probably also ways to figure out how many people opt-out using no-script also.
Ive used Khan Academy to teach myself a few courses. Hes really good. I believe he was featured on ted.com as well. www.khanacademy.org
I do. I'm a huge fan, actually.
Underworld 4 The Awakening 3D (2012) Movie Online Streaming
The stock Android browser treats all URLs as Intents; this is by design so apps can catch URLs from their service. Normally, when you hit a URL that an app has registered for, you're prompted for what you want to open it with.

Amazon's broken this behavior; any market.android.com Intents get bounced to the Appstore; other apps aren't given the chance to answer these intents. While it's true that one can't download Market-sourced apps on the Fire, blocking a website for any reason without communicating it is fairly shady. Also; market.android.com is the home of Google's music, video, and book stores; the first two I'm certain would work in the Fire's browser. They're blocking competition to their own stores; I don't think there's any way to defend that as a legitimate action.
Marcin Jakubowski: Open-Sourced Blueprints For Civilization
Men North Face Down Jackets 03 Men North Face
But as a VC, wouldn't he want to use his best predictions to run a successful VC fund?
Some people like the Google toolbar. I don't use it personally (nor would I ever choose to), but that doesn't mean it doesn't hold value for other people.

That said, two facts for you:

1) We don't gain any kind of advertising revenue from this app, nor do we serve adds through this app on behalf of third parties. This app is specifically intended to be a value-add for our users.

2) Apture really is one of our most popular third party apps, and apps are entirely opt-in. You'll see that through your own lens, of course, but through ours it means that, when Apture shuts down, our users will lose one of the features that they enjoy using through our service.
Knowing the Risks that Chemicals in Shampoo Can Bring
Looking at your shampoo bottle will give you an idea if what is contained in them. Unknown to many, some ingredients can be very dangerous to your health.

According to studies made, some chemicals found in shampoos may cause skin and eye irritation. They can also pose risks to one’s health and can result to hair loss. At its worse, these chemicals can also cause cancer.
FYI should work on your iPad also
Remembering What is Really Important
Inventor of the wiki, Ward Cunningham, asks for Wikipedia donations
I have a hard time taking this at face value. If organic farming is so much better than "conventional" farming, why did farmers ever start using these toxic chemicals and other non-organic processes? There must be a reason for this. I might imagine that switching to a chemical-based approach produced better yields initially, but production slowly decreased over time (such that people didn't notice) until dropped below the yields of the original "organic" farming methods. But this is just a theory, and I'd love to know the reality.
The problem isn't that we're asking doctors to locate their mouth, ears, and thumbs.

The problem is that the resume and candidate pipeline is so crappy, that the interviewer cannot be sure if the person sitting across the table is a doctor, or a plumber, or a carpenter, or an accountant, or maybe a bum off the street.

My interviewing life would be a lot easier if there was a firm guarantee that every candidate knows at least basic programming - and by basic I mean basic - i.e., can put together a for loop that compiles, in a language of their choice.

The second part of this problem is that the industry has so many jobs where the absolutely clueless can survive that "X years experience" in-industry is not a trustworthy metric for competence. "5 years at County General" for a MD, with a clean record, is a pretty decent guarantee that your candidate is in the ballpark. "5 years at Accenture" for a programmer guarantees nothing, not even the ability to write FizzBuzz.

Elsewhere in the thread someone mentioned being incensed that, even with his years of experience, he was being asked elementary questions. That's why - years of working experience is not a valid signal for competence.
In Chrome (Win 16.0.912.63), the checkbox and description are there for a split second as the page loads and then disappears. I turned off Adblock in case that was the cause, but the checkbox is still invisible even when I do that.

Adblock is the only extension installed, so I don't know why the checkbox is invisible to me. I'll assume it's a bug - but figured I'll call it out here in case people signup and then wonder why Timekiwi made an 'authorised' tweet advertising their services.
The Hit Song Equation
A charity donation platform using New York City subway cards.
He hasn't talked about any cool stuff like siri/majel, augmented reality, kinect, robots etc. Social networks and online stores, pretty dismal in the grand scheme of things.
Include a Post within a Post or Page
I think there is some truth to that but I'd say the one difference between speech recognition and brain recognition is that speech is a voluntary action you control, while your thoughts have a largely involuntary component to it. Involuntary meaning when someone says "an idea just popped into my head" - the idea seemingly was not an action deliberately triggered. Think if while you were "mind typing" an email and suddenly the thought "god I hate my boss" popped into your head. If the filtering mechanism of the computer was poor, your computer might, assuming it was being helpful, shoot off an email to your boss saying "god I hate you". I guess what I'm saying is the way by which you could filter your own thoughts to be interpreted by your computer or not seems like an incredibly difficult proposition.
I think in one day you can learn such things as the fundamental nature of data bits and the concepts of variables and loops in a day...that sounds lame but ask a non techie friend if he/she knows that HTML is just a text file. A depressingly few number of people realize this.
Just the other day I started sketching out plans for something similar to run on top of Intel's Threading Building Blocks' task scheduler for a personal project I'm working on.

What I'm basically looking for is low overhead lightweight threads that can be run in parallel in a pool of real heavy-weight threads. Coroutines with multicore, as this library does, should do exactly what I want and I can avoid the "lthreads cannot block or other lthreads in that pthread will not run" rule since in my codebase I can replace blockiing calls with ones which would yield so useful work can continue.

The only feature that I would also like but don't know if lthread has is being able to move lthreads between schedulers (something like TBB's work stealing would be ideal).
The money was 'paid back' by banks who got zero-interest loans from the Fed discount window. This way, they get to say "Hey, we paid back TARP", the Obama administration gets to say "The bailout wasn't a boondoggle", and the banks also borrow money from the government for free (from the discount window) and then loan it back to the government at 2% (by buying 10-year T-Bills.) Wholesale rate arbitrage for doing nothing. Must be nice to be "too big to fail".
Not cool. For this to be defensible as "curating the device for an inexperienced user" (see comments on linked article) the behavior would need to be:

- display a modal dialog explaining that the device does not support downloading/installing apps from the Android market, and that the Amazon market contains apps for the Kindle Fire

- dialog includes "no really, do what I say" option

- dialog includes "do not offer to redirect me away from Android market in the future" option
Going down the list of 5, for each one I was thinking to myself, "Yeah right", then going through the explanations I was thinking, "Oh, well if that is what you mean by that, sure why not".
It wasn't obvious after Facebook implemented it?
"jihad"... Apple has indeed an islamic mindset : they have a prophet you cannot criticise without violent reactions (like being permbanned from forums).
I think it says something about this "prediction" that most of the text on the IBM page about it (http://asmarterplanet.com/blog/2011/12/the-next-5-in-5-mind-...) is:

Vote for this as the coolest IBM 5 in 5 prediction by clicking the “Like” button below.

Join the Twitter conversation at #IBM5in5
Leave as fast as you can. I just got out of a similar situation and it was killing me. Leaving will suck, and you'll feel like a jerk, but its your life to live and you have to do what is right for you.

Seriously, leave now.
I think you're taking a lot out of context to make a point that I'm not sure I understand.

First, the democratic constitution allows an amending process so naturally it makes sense that you can repeal it. Transitioning from a democracy with checks and balances to an authoritarian one-party system is 'legitimate' if you want to use that term. The end result is not a democracy.

Secondly, don't let your apparent dislike of Krugman cloud your reading of this.

Under laws that preceded Fidesz’s election last year, political parties that are anti-constitutional may be banned. Some have suggested that Fidesz could eliminate Jobbik in this way. In fact, Europe probably would not mind if Jobbik were excluded from public life because other European countries can ban extremist parties also. But what about Fidesz’s primary competition – the Socialists?

Scheppele's concern with this is not that socialists will get punished, but that the only two viable parties will be eliminated.

Democracy or no democracy, that's payback.

This statement is so ridiculous I don't know if you mean it seriously or not. Do you mean to say that you would rather have no democracy with revenge than a functioning democracy with unpunished crimes from the past? The laws of a country are not where you go to get 'payback' against people you don't like. You take it to the courts... if you have any left.
U.S. Considers Combating Somali Militants’ Twitter Use
I'm saying that I don't necessarily want consolidation, but I don't have anything against it: I can see potential scenarios where each option here could both help and hurt consumers.

We'll see about LTE. From my understanding — and the fact that they recently tried to sell the company — Deutsche Telekom isn't interested in transforming T-mobile USA into a competitive player. We'll see, maybe with an extra $4B from AT&T they'll re-evaluate and attempt to stay competitive, but otherwise I can't see a disinterested parent company want to invest heavily in LTE rollout.

And, once every other carrier and most phones are on LTE (I'd say maybe 2013 or 2014, although I don't have any backing for that timeline), then T-mobile USA will be uncompetitive (without LTE). I've used LTE, and I don't think T-mobile can compete with ~4Mbps real-world speeds when I've (already!) used LTE at up to ~25Mbps, even if the prices are cheaper.

And I completely agree that small players can survive (I'd even say that T-mobile USA has a distinct possibility to survive and thrive), but in their current situation, I feel that it would take more than just not being purchased for that to happen: more interest from their parent company, an agressive (and probably expensive) LTE rollout, and maybe even the iPhone would be necessary to keep them competitive in a few years.
or. if you are Groupon/Lightbank you heard orange and grey were the supreme colors to do a website in..so you hire a local agency ..do you tell them no and not get the job or subtly change their design anyway to make it less 'bad'..
Sort of off topic. But how much influence does Jupiter's gravity exert on the rest of the solar system? If it disappeared tomorrow what effects on other planets would we see?
As a kiwi I can confirm that it's pretty dumb.
Good to see that rails developers are progressively seeing the database as a powerful tool and not just as flat files with funny accents.
Who's to say a MRI machine has to weigh 5 tons 5 years from now? I imagine people once said "Sure it's great to store your recipes in a computer, but who wants to do that on a room sized computer?"
Most likely not same definitions that come to someone's mind when they read it within a sensational headline such as this one.
Services like Apture actually make the web stronger by exposing it's cracks.

A few years from now web browsers will have protected Copy/Paste. That will be a good thing but you wouldn't have gotten there without services that used scripts to hijack Copy/Paste in the first place.

And that protected copy/paste might have a metadata field that captures Apture-esque info on the client side while you do normal Copy/Paste and I can imagine a very useful Paste+ shortcut that spits out the clipboard contents in a link to the source.
Plus, much of the 'waste heat' produced in my house (computer, bike, cooking) is released into my house, not lost... the only one really is the heat lost from water down the drain.
Ask HN: I really need your help (resolved)
Hacker News -

I'm working on a mobile application called MinoMonsters. We are using a Ruby EventMachine backend to track behavior, persist user objects, and handle virtual good transactions.

I'm in a very sticky situation. Our user numbers are exploding off the charts and our backend is failing. It's silently crashing without leaving a trace. It's getting into some hard to reproduce states. The situation is not looking good.

And I need to get it fixed -tonight-.

I am looking for an experienced Ruby dev on a short term contract basis ASAP. I've set aside a budget to make this happen truly ASAP. Deep EventMachine experience is highly preferred, as that's the core source of my issues. San Francisco would be nice, but I'm willing to talk to anyone with the chops to help me fix this.

If you know someone who can help, please reach out. If you don't, you can help by sharing this post with someone who might.

I can be contacted at teej.murphy@gmail.com or by phone (410) 236 - 2894

EDIT: This is now resolved! Thanks for your help, HN. You guys are the best.
This makes sense, -cell service on BART (one of the local subway systems) is spotty at best- but isn't the reason why. My ATT-using friends tell me that they have calls which get dropped or fail to connect while standing out-of-doors in public parks or on the street.
I agree with some of what you say, although the argument might be more effective in less drastic language.

My reading of cdata's note boils down to this:

* We will collect your data if there's a buck to be made
* We will continue to muck up your copy+paste buffers
with URLs/attribution/info if our subscribers want that
to happen
* We will monitor your mouse clicks
* There will be popups
* I'm trying to be affable ;) ;) ;)
* Your browser will still work fine for certain
definitions of "fine" ;) ;) ;)
HTC phones banned in US next year
The correct response at this point is: Oh dear, I will endeavour to read articles in the future :)
Agreed, definitely a much stricter definition.
Snow E. Mann may have visited your LinkedIn profile today
Linux Advantages And Weaknesses
Linux is an Open Source
- Freeware is software that is free without any claim of copyright
- minimum hardware that is not so require hardware that is too large capacity and cost.
- Scalability.
Yes, but I think we can also distinguish, in our own minds, the difference between a thought that is fleeting or passing and a thought that we want to take action on. Similarly, a successful brain-computer interface should be able to make that distinction.
Advantages of Human Hair Wigs
Thank you for that. I cannot upvote enough. This subthread, with its heady blend of mathematics, philosophy and violent uprising is why I keep coming back to hacker news.
For what it's worth, I personally encourage the usage of NoScript, and other similar tools, to my friends and family.

That said, what I'm trying to propose is that the UI for the app could allow site visitors to communicate a dissatisfaction with the app to the site owner, as that seems to me to allow for constructive feedback not possible when scripts are simply blocked outright.
definitely a sensationalist headline but still a very interesting bit of tech to watch evolve.

the first thing I ever saw along these lines: recreating a cat's vision from brain sensors (1999)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/471786.stm
HTC Real winner in ITC Ruling
Short answer: No.

Long answer:
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.
I will give it a try, thanks!
- first impression, reeder UI ripoff.
- 2nd, I found myself reading saved articles on mobile more often, mostly commuting time.
I know that it has a great influence on the Kuiper belt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper_belt but I'm not sure if it would change us much, we might actually be safer. Or in more danger, Jupiter soaks up a lot of junk that might have ended up in our neighborhood.
Trouble in Node.js paradise: The mess that is npm
None taken. We're not focused on places or checkins. We're focused on hyperlocal things going on right now. Anyone can post something on mezz and it will broadcast to everyone locally.

It's more about the informal activities and events going on and letting anyone post. I don't think checkins are the solution for local.
Facebook checks in at its new home
Just out of curiosity, has anyone here flashed gingerbread on their kindle fire? Further, how does it work?
In a sense, speech is mind-reading: you can have in your mind what the writer had in their's.

This isn't just sophistry, but shows there are two problems, 1. to transmit information into and out of a mind; 2. to transform the information into a form that can be understood by another. A common language if you will.

This has analogues in relational databases, where the internal physical storage representation is transformed into a logical representation of relations, from which yet other relations may be transformed; and in integrating heterogeneous web services, where the particular XML or JSON format is the common language and the classes of the programs at the ends are the representation within each mind.

There's no reason to think that the internal representation within each of our minds is terribly similar. It will have some common characteristics, but will likely differ as much as different human languages - or as much as other parts of ourselves, such as our fingerprints. Otherwise, everyone would communicate with that, instead of inventing common languages.
"The planning session was enlightening because what became obvious is that it’s easy to describe how you want a user experience to feel--friendly, welcoming, and so on--but what you specifically want an application to do is separate from that."

If every non coder could learn this it would save us all a heck of a lot of time
Keeping in mind that whenever Google displays an immediate answer interested peoples go up in arms about them "favoring their own products" which somehow led to antitrust investigation in EU/US (new developments on that even today), I fundamentally agree that search is about showing the answers instantly and Google must have plans in place for doing so and ignore the antitrust nonsense or else they will be left behind.
Lawyers Weigh In on Appropriation Art and Fair Use
Hills and buildings are a concern, but are a solved problem. :)

Let's ask folks who live in Berne or the hillier parts of Tokyo about the quality of their cell service. I bet it's far better than ATT users get in NYC or SF.
Seriously, this is the company that made the '1984' commercial and touted themselves as being 'anti monopoly' just a few years ago?