skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The writer doesn't seem to be aware of the notion of flux when he/she writes that this innovation will make sun-tracking obsolete. Basic trigonometry shows you that, even if the panel absorbs all of the radiation that it intercepts at a high angle, at higher angles the panel intercepts less radiation.

The cosine function is a wonderful thing, and 100% of nothing is still... <mumble>carry the four, divide by seven, minus pi</mumble>... nothing.
I mean Visual jQuery :)
"If you don't vote, I could [sic] care less about your political opinion."

Odd phrasing aside, what if (for example) my political opinion is that voting is immoral because it legitimizes a corrupt or intrinsically broken system?

Why is abstaining from a process so dismissed?

I've heard people say, if you don't vote you can't complain, yet if you opt in to a system then how can you bitch when it doesn't swing your way? If you vote, then you can't complain; you can't have it both ways.

(I'm not quite convinced of this myself, but I'm puzzled by people who won't even consider it.)
I personally thought that the Banach-Tarski theorem was a mess, and these non-measurable sets had to go. So I started studying nonstandard-analysis: analysis with infinities and infinitesimals as genuine, arithmetically viable, quantities.

Imagine my distress: the same problem occurs, Banach-Tarski still holds, unless you go into the rather more weird, Smooth Infinitesimal Analysis or Synthetic Differential Geometry; basically, treating geometry as made up of little discrete infinitesimally small points.
Has new physics been found at the ageing Tevatron?
Most young Republicans I know despise him.

Was it after a few catastrophic war/spending decisions, or did they always think he was a bad choice? For the life of me I can't see how the party propped him up over McCain back in 2000. In my eyes, even back then, he was such an obvious cipher.
i don't think that's fairly representing his case. he stopped using his olpc because he feels that the project has lost sight of its original goals, and that they are now doing more harm than good. if he continues to use an olpc, he feels that it appears he supports what they're doing, when clearly he does not.

i don't agree with a lot of rms' ideals. he's far too dogmatic, which has driven away a lot of would-be supporters. but i have to admire the guy anyway. it's very rare to find someone who believes in things as strongly as rms does, and is willing to go so far out of his way to practice what he preaches.
The physical mechanism is that quantum mechanics governs a probability distribution (the "wave" in "wave-particle duality") on configuration space, not "physical" space.

Imagine you have two particles in 1 space dimension. The first particle has a position x (1 real number), the second particle has a position y (1 real number). "Physical space" would be the set of real numbers (R^1), while configuration space is the set of pairs of real numbers (x,y) (this set is R^2). The first number in the pair represents the position of particle 1, the second the position of particle 2.

An entangled state is simply a probability distribution on R^2 which is not a product state (i.e. P(x,y) != P_1(x) P_2(y)). This means that knowledge of the position of particle 1 gives you (possibly incomplete) information about the position of particle 2.

One example of this is "probability 1/2 that x=0, y=0, 1/2 that x=1, y=1". The minute you know x, you know y.

That's what entanglement is. What makes it weird is the idea that "knowing x" (measuring it) changes things. An explanation of this is trickier. Still understandable in principle (not just 'follow the math'), but too long for this post.
gnip is one of those cool services that is so fringe that it may have more developers than users. its another sharecropping deal, just like facebook app builders...get too popular, present a threat to unseat the core services...you get unplugged. it would be a triviality to simply block their ip ranges should they ever get traction against the core services' own webservice strategies
My experiences with heroku has been very positive so far: The online IDE and tools are very robust and they've been responsive to me when I needed to ask questions.

I don't think you'll be disappointed.
yup, only two ways to approach this market:

- skype - 1-1, no moderation needed

- anywebcam - we want you to beat off
Thanks, but a bit expensive for some just getting started, no?
The overriding factor, I think, is that the overall scope of the Mac platform (and Windows, too, for that matter) has grown so large that it supports a wide variety of UI design philosophies and styles.

Apple has also wandered around a lot over time, especially cosmetically. Remember 10.0-10.1? The horizontal pinstripes and garish drop shadows? http://www.guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/macosx101 is an example of 10.1. Control Panel, Safari, iTunes, etc all had disparate styles, especially over a version or two. System 6.0 -> OS 9 got a lot busier with no clear benefit, as well.

As far as I'm concerned, one of the biggest things about Apple's human interfaces, especially contrasted with Windows is something that can't be taken in isolation in a single screenshot. Namely, Apple will readily rework a flow for a task (such as changing an IP address, for example) that Microsoft would just put a wizard over the top of but otherwise leave in its archaic form for multiple generations.

Part of maintaining an Apple-like UI is keeping the visual appearance fresh, adjusting to new widths, spaces, gradients, etc. with most every release.

So far the iPhone has centered around minimalism for one good reason -- most every other smartphone is horribly fiddly, with a zillion options (Nokia S60) or an exceptionally busy (WM) or crude (BB) UI. Minimal is Apple's schtick, and there was an underserved market for it right there.
It is expensive. Perhaps consider starting on Heroku and moving the EY later on. If you read testimonials, there are some really amazing stories that show why EY is worth the money. Things like messages from EY helping people with optimizations and tracking down problems in their code.
Ask YC: What is the Best Way to Find an Experienced Person to Build a Custom Made Computer
I want to spend $1000-1200 on a custom made computer and want pay someone who is experienced and qualified to do it. Where should I turn?

Hell if someone here is interested, email me at htmlajax[at]gmail[dot]com with some pictures of past projects, references, and/or anything else that would show off your talents.
3 Year Study of Near Death Experiences Probes Potential New Mode of Consciousness
I'm interested.

Parveen Kaler
Smartful Studios. iPhone Application Development.
pk AT smartfulstudios DOT com
The methodology sounds very similar to the one described in Connie Willis' science fiction novel Passages

http://www.amazon.com/Passage-Connie-Willis/dp/0553580515/

where the experimenter put a child's toy up on a high shelf in the operating room.
Why do the fonts look so ugly? Doesn't it use ClearType or something?
Tell HN: Vote.
If you can, vote. It is your duty as an American to speak for yourself. We have the power to change things, we have the power to make the world a better place.

Just vote.
"I've tried messing with those variables in the script to point to the install path, but I must be missing something. "

Have you set your environment variables? I think the code is going to look for ENV['JDK_HOME'] (if it's Ruby code) or $JDK_HOME (if a shell script.)
Use Arrays in HTML Form Variables
I posted this on the original article but I might as well post it here as well, with bonus typo corrections.

The question is if XMPP can be made into an efficient application for streaming events to multiple (or multitudes of) subscribers. Chat is a 1-to-1 limited tima affair. PubSub is not. I am afraid this is not simply a matter of a bette rimplementation of an XMPP server but something much more fundamental. Roy fielding has argued (http://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/2008/paper-tigers-and-hidden-d...) why the economics of XMPP for pub/sub do not work out and why the solution is simply to better structure the HTTP APIs that the various services provide. This is why large customers are needed. There is cost involved and somebody has to pay it. The recent Twitter/Gnip moves serve as testament to Roy's foresight.
Don't just vote; vote Obama.
what's wrong with the rich getting richer if the size of the pie gets bigger? Sure they may have gotten a larger percentage of the total traffic, but how much more net traffic is there in 2006 vs 2001?

I'd rather have 1/8 of a 14" pie than 1/3 of a 8" pie.
What about Nader, McKinney, etc?
Homer: America, take a good look at your beloved candidates. They're nothing but hideous space reptiles.

[unmasks them]
[audience gasps in terror]

Kodos: It's true, we are aliens. But what are you going to do about it? It's a two-party system; you have to vote for one of us.

[murmurs]

Man1: He's right, this is a two-party system.

Man2: Well, I believe I'll vote for a third-party candidate.

Kang: Go ahead, throw your vote away.

[Kang and Kodos laugh out loud]

[Ross Perot smashes his "Perot 96" hat]
Congrats, guys. Your product is excellent.
> Namely, Apple will readily rework a flow for a task (such as changing an IP address, for example) that Microsoft would just put a wizard over the top of but otherwise leave in its archaic form for multiple generations

That's a good point. Overall, Mac OS X feels very complete and one whole, whereas Windows shows its many generations here and there, in an icon (e.g. most system tools' icons), in a never updated app (take Paint or Notepad for example)...
I'm not sure what you mean, I get stuff from Amazon all the time and never need a box cutter. Usually they have this folded-but-not-taped-much box thing going on.
I really don't understand the Obama-ness of HN. I'm certainly not busting my ass working on my business just to see Obama "spread my wealth around".

I understand the realities of having a progressive tax system, but Obama crosses a line with me when he is going to tax the rich just to hand it straight over to everyone else in $1000 cash increments. At least in the past the Democrats wanted to buy the poor $1000 in fishing equipment instead of handing out $1000 worth of fish. His plan is the very definition of Marxism.
Also, if you can, try to vote in the middle of the day to both alleviate and avoid long lines. They say 9am-3pm is the least-busy time.
Which is not at all bad for a site that's just starting.
FYI I'm fine with someone disagreeing and down voting my comment, but I would appreciate some sort of response if you do. I'd like to know why you think I'm wrong
Voting is one of the few things the system asks you do to around here. So get off you arses and vote!

My son is a ardent Democrat. My wife a Republican. Each year, she stops by and picks him up on the way to the polls.

The act of voting should be important on a personal level that transcends statistics or apathy. It's a common duty and celebration of our right of choice.
Marx believed that the government should distribute goods, not money. Don't be silly.
Throwing this out there:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/06/magazine/06freak.html?page...
I'd say trust your intuition more than the math, but I'm more physicist than mathematician.

To prove Banach-Tarski, you need to assume Zermelo-Frankel set theory (just ordinary set theory) plus the uncountable axiom of choice.

In my view, this means the uncountable axiom of choice is false. This actually breaks far less than you would expect. For most practical purposes, you only need the countable axiom of choice, which is the intuitively reasonable version.

The main thing the loss of the uncountable version breaks is the Hahn-Banach theorem on spaces of dimension higher than countable infinity. This in turn breaks quantum field theory on free space (not in a box), but that's broken anyway.
"[39.6 per cent] is what it would be under Obama's proposal, what it was under President Clinton, and, for that matter, what it will be after 2010 if President Bush's tax cuts expire on schedule."

"During the 2000 campaign, on MSNBC's 'Hardball,' a young woman asked [McCain] why her father, a doctor, should be 'penalized' by being 'in a huge tax bracket.' McCain replied that 'wealthy people can afford more' and that 'the very wealthy, because they can afford tax lawyers and all kinds of loopholes, really don't pay nearly as much as you think they do.' The exchange continued:

YOUNG WOMAN: Are we getting closer and closer to, like, socialism and stuff?...

MCCAIN: Here's what I really believe: That when you reach a certain level of comfort, there's nothing wrong with paying somewhat more"

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2008/11/03/081103taco_...
doh sorry!
I'm in grad school and watch all my lectures using the approach described in the blog post. After following this accelerated viewing approach for almost 2 years I can tell you that in reality the content doesn't get consumed "much more quickly".

First, for most lecturers it isn't possible to listen to recordings more than 1.5 times faster. At this rate, there is a roughly 33% reduction in the time it takes to view a lecture. It is noticeably faster, but not really significant unless you are viewing more than 1 lecture at a time, for example a lecture is typically 50 minutes, so one saves about 17 minutes per lecture. In my experience the savings fail to realize for the reasons I'll cover further.

Second, the rate at which the lecture can be accelerated varies significantly depending on the professor who is presenting the material. Some professors speak quickly and once the playback speed is increased to 1.5, their speech becomes blurred and unintelligible. Often the native English speakers are the ones who can't be sped up much. Luckily, at my school most of the professors aren't native speakers so a rate of 1.5 is adequate. For non-native speakers, the useful playback rate varies pretty widely. One of my professors who is from Turkey speaks slowly and his lectures can be played and understood at a speed up of 2.

Third, the playback speed does affect comprehension. Even at a normal playback rate I find that some topics covered in the lecture require a rewind and a replay. Accelerated playback requires closer attention and more frequent replays. Of course how often one needs to replay the lecture depends on the content and varies from person to person.
I will vote.
Good points to remember in case we all weren't cynical enough already.

Bush 2000 = "We don't do nation-building".

Bush 2003 = "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended."
We live in interesting times.

(1/2 of the possible results of an ancient Chinese curse. I think.)

We all know that voting is statistically meaningless--in fact, even if the vote comes down 50.0 million to 50.0 million, the actual result will be decided by whoever has the better lawyer in the inevitable supreme court spectacle.

So really, the only value is in the psychological effect voting has on yourself. Libertarians sometimes say "Don't vote" for this very reason, because voting makes you a participant in a corrupt system. (It's a standard brainwashing tactic to get people to say things they don't believe. Even if they know they don't believe, the honorable sense of "keeping one's word" overwhelms reason.)

Therefore, 3rd party votes are completely legitimate, since elections are pyschologically valid and mathematically pointless.
that's a very good plan. i looked a bit into LLC and apparantly there's an extra tax i have to pay for being in texas O_o

oh well i guess this is one of those things that it's best to get out of the way so you can move on with one less potential bump.

thanks for the input, gents
The upper class can go without a few luxuries so that the lower class can actually afford necessities. Don't be such a selfish pussy.
Wilson was elected to keep us out of war. He maneuvered us into war, cooperating with the British against the wishes of the people. Ditto for FDR, who also deliberately pursued a policy of provocation against the Japanese.

Nixon was elected to end the war. Instead he bombed Cambodia. Reagan pulled a 180 on middle east policy and withdrew from Lebanon.

With the possible exception of LBJ I think every president in recent history has contradicted their indicated foreign policy. (LBJ was just bonkers from the get-go.)
Viggity,

This is my only comment on the matter, and I comment because, this voting system makes no sense and it's hard to use it as a feedback device.

People vote you up or down based on whether they want to look at your comment. This site is heavily Obama-ish -- I'm guessing 80% or so. There are some libertarians such as myself rambling around. Probably some Republicans too, but they're deep into some sort of witness protection program I guess. :)

You won't get a conversation. They'll just keep voting your comments into the mud.

Stupid, huh?
Voting is not statistically meaningless. Voting gives us a good way to judge where the majority of the nation wants to go. Just because your vote doesn't decide the election does not mean that your vote is meaningless. It carries the same weight as mine, McCain's, or Obama's. This is a good thing.
Find me one candidate that isn't completely full of s&%t, and maybe I'll cast a vote. Maybe one person that understands English enough to actually answer a question in front of a camera. It's insulting.

90% of the population doesn't have a single clue about how the government runs, anything about the economy, foreign relations, what any of the candidates are even speaking about. It's a population voting blindly based on which TV shows and commercials they happen to watch. We have states that practically automatically turn towards a certain party each time. An electoral college system makes all of the difference. Overfunded campaigns that buy your vote like big companies sell you their garbage. It's a mess..
It's not just about the presidential election. Perhaps the greatest impact a voter has is on his local community/state. Here in California, our referendums have far-reaching consequences. Too much emphasis is placed on the presidential election.
Aside from your language, which violates board terms, can I point out that captialism, the thing that drives startups, is dependent on people acting in their best interests.

"Selfish" is a loaded, emotional, subjective term. Not something to base a policy on (and I don't think Obama or McCain is doing that)
i'd suggest forming an LLC in delaware.
Here's how you're wrong: Obama's platform is, for the most part, not that bad. The only real way to attack Obama is by guessing at what his real policies will be. This is very tricky and (to people with an existing predisposition) completely invalid.

http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?seci...

Obama's sympathies are not just "redistributionist" but genuinely communistic. His racial views are consistently nationalistic. Consistently. But...until he actually wields power (he has voted "present" over 100 times in his short Senate career) it's all speculation.

McCain, by constrast, would be crustily predictable.
The executioner? Or the Simpsons guy?
Vote if it makes you feel good---whether out of a sense of participation, obligation, or duty. But don't kid yourself that you're "making a difference". The probability that your vote makes any difference is negligible. And please don't give people who don't vote a hard time; theirs is arguably the more rational choice, so there's no need to be self-righteous about it. (I am voting, BTW, but mainly to have an answer to the question "Who did you vote for?" I have to admit that feels a little cowardly.)
In most cases, your vote is meaningless. The common duty and celebration of whatever is kind of BS. You're better off convincing someone who would have voted differently not to vote at all. Instead, the two of you can celebrate your rights with beers, which is way more enjoyable, and has the same effect on policy.

If you live in California, Obama will win this state. It's not even a contest. Why not do something creative with your vote? Have some fun with it. You know, you can write in ANYONE's name for the presidential election.

Hypnotoad 08!

Proposition 8 really is pretty close, and is evil. It's worth going to the polls just to vote no on that. Religious fundies come out in force, and we need to balance their hate.
+ idiots who think their campaign 'promises' we all be passed and implemented by Nov. 5th
Perhaps part of the issue here is that young people are only young (for your example, 18-20) for a little while, whereas old people are old for decades.
I do as much browsing in WebKit as possible. Heroku does not support WebKit and till it does I cannot spend too much time with it.
I say my opponent's 2% tax goes too far!

And I say my opponent's 2% tax doesn't go too far enough!
You contradict yourself. You're saying that politics has a place in my self-interest yet my self-interest doesn't have a place in politics.

Capitalism is based almost ENTIRELY on acting selfishly. However, as we can clearly see, people suffer greatly from the near literal implementation of capitalism. Therefore, there needs to be a system in place to help those people who have become victims of it.
That's why I wrote in a vote for the Ron Paul/Hypnotoad ticket.
I'll probably hold my nose and give him a protest vote, considering he's not quite as bad as the Socialist Party, the Fascist Party, and the "The Constitution Authorizes a Theocracy" Party.

Besides, my vote doesn't matter.
if their votes cancel each other out why bother?
Rhino with continuations and tail-call elimination
Right. But a lot of material is just too boring to pay attention to at all. Especially for new or occasional speakers (for example, lots of tech talks.) So this is a nice thing to have.
FREE Coloring Pages - Jonas Brothers
No more election news after tomorrow, yay!
Libertarian beliefs do not presuppose a lack of Obama support.
here are a few points worth considering:

all tax systems are "spreading the wealth around" unless they're a flat tax system.

obama is proposing a top tax bracket of 39.6%. under the "conservative lord and savior" ronald reagan, the top tax bracket paid 70%. that was eventually lowered to 50%.

sarah palin presides over a state that siphons money from oil companies and uses it to cut checks to their citizens. this year's check was, iirc, for $3200. in addition, alaska is #1 in the country for pork barrel spending, leading the #2 state (arizona, [un?]ironically) by approx. 2500%.

on the y2k campaign, john mccain, when asked about why the questioner's father (a doctor) pays a higher percentage in taxes than others, said this : "Look, here's what I really believe: That when you are, when you reach a certain level of comfort, there's nothing wrong with paying somewhat more."

almost every person in the top 10 richest americans (not all were asked) stated that the current tax system unfairly favors the top. that includes warren buffet and bill gates.
Near-literal implementation of capitalism? Where?
Isn't this a bit like saying the kinetic theory of gases is statistically meaningless? Even if the motion of individual gas molecules is pretty random, we can measure and learn something about the direction and speed of the gas as a whole that is not random at all.

If Obama, for instance, wins 330-208 in the electoral vote and 52-44 in the popular vote, we can hardly call those statistically insignificant margins below the noise floor.
Depends on your version of capitalism.