skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I understand the "cardinal rule". But I think HN users should allow for "blips" like "oh shit, we may be heading for economic Armageddon" or "how does this election effect us".

Although as a 40 y.o. American, I can't say I've ever seen democracy practiced well enough to receive the supposed benefits, I'm a firm believer none the less. If the majority of people on HN can't keep the blips to a acceptable dull roar, what's the purpose of having voting and karma in the first place?

I say, let it go as is and lets hope for the best; that HN doesn't devolve into reddit.
Of course it had nothing to do with that 30 to 1 leverage the investment banks were undertaking.

Or lack of regulation.

Or lack of enforcing exiting regulation.

Or Greenspan's successive bubble-blowing.

No, couldn't be any of those things.

I can't believe anyone voted this crap up.
A privacy statement for a usually public username anyways? I don't think this kind of stuff needs to be done client-side only. If passwords were being sent along too that would be something different but usernames are meant to be shared and usually somewhat public information.

Unless you're worried about the maker of the site "stealing" your identity on some site... although thats a pretty weak argument. If there is a "mitchellh" on some site I just make a "mitchellh3" or something of the like... no big deal.
Computer Graphics vs Bio Engineering
So I'm a first year CS PhD student at a top school (say one of MIT / CMU / Stanford / Berkeley); and I'm not sure whether to go with computer graphics or comp. bio.

Problems I have are as follows:

Con:

computer graphics: what are the big problems left to solve? recent looks at siggraph shows lots of me-too work; doesn't seem to have an abundance of funding either; really cool in that i can largely work alone; that all I need is a laptop; and that in the worst case, I won't accidently do anything that results in health damage to self / ppl around me

bioengineering: not bioinformatics; amazing things going on, with metabolic engineering, people building a cell from scratch; plenty of funding. on the other hand, impossible to do anything without lots of funding, bad experiments / accidents may result in health damage (also in buildings where other ppl's bad experiments may result in health damage to me); but very high impact work if pulled off successfully

have others here debated this? "computer science vs bioengienering" for research; if so, what conclusion?

thanks!
how about zune?
I still have my first gen Macbook Pro (Core Duo 1.83Ghz) and its still running great for me.

Although I play WoW on it so I wish it was a little faster, and Photoshop takes its time to open, its great for web development! :)

Screen size is what you should be looking for, I wouldn't want the Macbooks screen — so you have 2 choices, the new Macbook Pro 15", or the old Macbook Pro 17". :)
> It's hard to make a case between the two on "expandability".

This would be true if you don't care about FireWire or ExpressCards.

I didn't care much much ExpressCards (that changed when I got a Lexar ExpressCard SSD), but I've never been able to live without FireWire.
For a dude who builds a super car, by hand, mostly by himself, it is merely a technicality.
They need to spend more money on it first ;)
I recommend a thin hardcase like the ones from Incase and Speck. The one I use is the clear one from Incase (they call it "frost"), and while it protects against the usual stains, scrapes, etc. it has the unexpected side effect of making the glowing Apple logo on the lid look absolutely amazing in the dark.
Here are two reviews of the X25-M SSD you're talking about:

http://paulstamatiou.com/2008/10/29/review-intel-x25-m-80gb-...

http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/2008/10/so-i-got-one-of-...

I'm waiting a few months until the 160GB version is available (and costs about the same as the current 80MB version).
Apple's really far behind on ultra-portables because they tried too hard to make the Air thin. Nobody sticks a laptop in their pocket, and any bag is designed for a much thicker one than that, so there's really no use for it.

What there is use for is a spindle and multiple USB ports.
It's very interesting physics, but not exactly magical. One can think of it as magnetic field lines connecting or disconnecting between the earth and the sun. Charged particles, like in the solar wind, follow this field lines, and so there's a lot of particles transferred. Additionally, the particles themselves are rotating, and 'lock in' magnetic flux, so they transport magnetic flux between the sun and the earth, too.
Google Technology Roundtable: MapReduce
I had a similar experience when attempting to transfer ownership of a domain I purchased through their 'apps' system. It doesn't seem possible, and the canned answers are horrible:

http://journal.dedasys.com/2008/09/23/caveat-emptor-dominium
You're arguing that people should use Qt or GTK on *nix. The article is about using Qt with Clojure. Qt also looks and works well enough on Windows - at least, I never hear any complaints about Opera related to its UI toolkit.

The startup time can be a problem, and Clojure offering only JIT compilation doesn't improve things.
You didn't explain why it's a good thing.

From what I understand, it only complicates development even more without providing any real improvement.
So we have portals, but where's the cake?
Doesn't this call out for a modern version of "My Fair Lady"?
MarsPhoenix Epitaph Contest
What is this different from http://www.couchsurfing.com/ ?
Less people? Better layout? You even have to pay?
Heart attacks more common after Spring daylight savings shift, less common after Fall
Hey thanks... The silly thing is that I can't even update the mibbit blog right now, as it's using my google account on blogger. I think I'll be moving that very soon.
Well in this case I've also lost the ability to login to blogger, youtube, adsense, adwords.

This is one massive argument against unified logins for a start.
Is it realistic for a social networking site to partner with a record label and use the network as a means to:

1. Promote new acts

2. Promote new events, tours, shows, releases.

3. Sell music, merch, tickets, and everything else.

The reason why I choose record labels and music is because people are very connected, social, and passionate about their music tastes. Also I would think there are many opportunities available in the music industry. For example if you are huge like fb you partner with Sony and the like. If you are small, there are countless indie labels to work with.

I've always liked this idea, but I'm not big on SNS so what do you guys think?
More like "Founder's Bitch"?

Seriously though, what a euphemistic job title.
Agreed. And I also see the point about not relying on a single google login for several of their services, even though they encourage you to. Resist the temptation and create a separate account seems like a far better idea...
A nice reminder that there is much to learn about this world. There is far too little humility in science (and I speak as one who aspires to make a career in academic fields).
I think I read an article here about simulating jet-lag for lab rats by altering the light in their cages. Apparently the old ones died at a much higher rate when they "lost time." Just like the spring transition.

Being a lifelong city guy I've always thought that daylight savings was silly. I know there are agrarian reasons for it, but being able to argue that it's deadly is going to be far more effective than arguing that it's annoying :)
These bring back memories. But it's also kind of sad how all the modern minifigs are branded. Spongebob? Ugh.

It sounds crazy, but I actually credit Lego as a huge reason I became an engineer and programmer. It really cultivated my desire to build things.
Would't the experience of actually founding a start-up be a more valuable way to spend two years then working as an intern/executive assistant in a successful one?
If it's "almost impossible to raise achievement", then the implication is that the "leaking pipeline" in higher ed, where minorities drop out at a proportionately higher rate at each step, reflects an inherent difference in aptitude between different races.

It would also mean that Americans are inherently "dumber" (loosely speaking) than Europeans, since they on average score lower on tests of math and science. After all, nothing can be done to raise achievement, so it must be inherent.

I don't believe that for a minute.

I also think the statement is empirically false; It is perfectly possible to raise achievement, and I think it's much more probable that the difficulties doing so on a large scale are rooted in flawed educational practices and cultural/societal factors.
So the people who wrote Conservapedia did it as parody?

I guess that'd make more sense.
FA and TV chiefs declare war on Justin.tv
2 page spread in todays News Of the World paper in the UK.
use Prism from mozilla - you can run multiple instances, each with a different gmail account.
Also: if anyone else runs into problems, let me know. No guarantees that I can fix anything, or even be able to answer your questions/talk about what triggered the account problems though.

And also: sorry. I know it sucks. People at Google know it sucks. I'm pretty sure people who are directly involved in this stuff are thinking about it.

PS: Oh god I hope I don't drown in email ;)
Using Dropbox to Track Bugs
Being a tiny startup looking for ways to save money, we discovered the best, cheapest bug tracking software out there. It's dropbox (or dropbugz). Simply make a folder called "bugs" in your dropbox and put a "done" directory in it.

-Each bug is a .txt file whose name is the description of the bug.

-Dropbox keeps track of who creates / edits files so if someone botches a description you can always figure out who wrote it up and when. (Unix does a decent job of this too.)

-You can assign bugs by putting "#fixer_name" at the top of the file and grepping for "#fixer_name" on the command line.

-When bugs are done you move them to the "done" folder. If you duplicate a title it overwrites, but dropbox has your back w/ revision edits.

-You can preform any sort of command line voodoo to slice and dice your bugs.

-You know when bugs are posted or fixed through the dropbox notifications.

-You never have to leave the command line and go to a web app to enter bugs. The result for us is that we enter more bugs.

-You can casually browse your bugs using the preview feature on mac:

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/147719/bugs.jpg

We didn't have the money for FogBugz and we were using BugZilla which is so miserable that we resorted to not using it. There are certainly features dropbugz lacks, but for basic bug tracking for a small team, it is awesome. And any feature you want to add is just a script and a chron job away. I've used a bunch of web-based bug trackers in the corporate and startup world and this is the only one I've ever liked.

I look forward to hearing HN's thoughts on extending this wonderful tool...

Big ups to

http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=martian

for coming up w/ the idea.
I have a second gmail account to which all my mail is forwarded. I've its password sealed in a safe, and never use it. I don't see the need to store the backups myself, google certainly has it covered. I mean, it's google... right?
thx, I was using that before.but it didnt work as well as I'd hoped so I gave up it. Hopefully they'll release better versions in future.

This Prism from Mozilla (as recommended by dmaclay) looks very promising for FF.
yeh man, I'll be sure to check that out. Thx!
You need both! You need ideas so as to use the connections, efforts, etc.
>This isn't quite like that, and the benefits are better than doing YC. ;-)

The revenue models are similar, however. ;P
Email sent. Thanks for any help you can give :)

Hopefuly there are some clever people working on it. The things I take issue with are:

1. No reason is given... (In my case I actually saw some password reset emails sent to my backup email. So I assume someone was trying to force access).

2. All logins are frozen - my own fault for using a single google login for lots of things - youtube,blogger,adsense,adwords,gmail etc - I'm locked out of them all, for the simple reason that google told me it'd be "easier" to use my existing google details to login.

3. No human support... Canned response emails with a line "We will investigate" 48 hours later just doesn't cut it.

Like I say, hopefully the top teams at google are looking at this one. It's really a way to kill paying customers. I'm seriously going to take this as a big lesson myself.
Seatwave - 33 MM. Really?

I love Yodlee, but 35 MM seems slightly ridiculous.
Not based on investment dollars.
Good idea, I prefer either Basecamp or Lighthouse though (both affordable).
Good idea, but have you looked in to lighthouse?
It sort of reminds me of the difference between Greyhound and Bolt Bus/Megabus
I know nothing about abuse protection, but I think they don't want to do this because it would reveal how the abuse detector worked.

Imagine if everytime you changed your website, you'd get an email from Google saying "I liked this change" or "I didn't like this change" (aside from being utterly creepy), it'd make reverse engineering the whole thing trivially easy.
And furthermore, you can set

bug=your/dropbugz/folder

in a .bashrc file ON dropbox. Have all your ~/.bashrc's on different machines source the one from dropbox and you're set. Now entering a bug is just:

echo "App crashes on launch" > $bug/epic_fail.txt
Right on, it looks really nice, but w/ dropbugz you never leave the command line. You never log in to a site or search a DB or tag things etc etc. It's just ls'ing grep'ing and vi'ing. I find it less tedious and thus I'm more prone to log bugs as I develop / test.

I say again though, I'm working w/ a small team of developers and my needs are modest. And if dropbugz fails me I'll check out lighthouse.
Ya, the command line is your friend.

We do something really similar using git. Our "done" directories are dated ("done-08-q4") and we also have "testing" and "delayed" directories. Issues are moved to the testing directory in the same commit as the code changes and then to the done directory with a release.
Has Twitter Saved Blogging? Not a Chance
Russian translation of this essay is <a href="http://k-vladimir.blogspot.com/2008/11/blog-post.html">here</a>.
Russian translation of "Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy"
Why not just set up a Trac?

You apparently knew how to do it with BugZilla, so why not Trac?
The best part of the article is that it bases its premise that the entire country's economy is going to fail on three interviews and a comic book.
Lame. This happened to me with my Yahoo mail account. Twice.

The first time was way back when Yahoo first launched mail. They actually lost EVERYBODY's accounts at one point early on, and you had to sign up again. That was acceptable back in 1996!

The second time was 3 years ago. Account gone. 1000s of important mails lost forever. Yahoo doesn't have any form of customer service, so weeks of emailing them did no good. Worse still, a couple years later when Yahoo bought Flickr, there went my Flickr account and all my photos.

I'm glad to see that Google employs real human beings that read their email and care about things like this!
Now that's a HUGE assumption : "since most hackers have MBPs".
You give me too much credit. I pay for secure offsite svn. They were providing us w/ bugzilla :)

I clearly didn't do much homework on this. But I stand by our solution even if it was made in ignorance. It is the only bug tracking tool mentioned (besides the guy using git, good idea btw) that doesn't interrupt the workflow.
SSDs are the future. This is where the next big computer upgrade is going to be. The result, I think is that when rotational parts get completely removed from computers, we will see desktop software programmed for instant reaction. Using SSDs, most programs could be rearranged in a way that almost every standard usage happens in less than 1 second.
Looks more likely to be someone trying to hack the account. I found 3 "password reset" emails for the account had been sent to my backup email.
I'm assuming the person probably tried 100 passwords or something, and google disabled the account.
sweet. goodbye fogbugz :)
Who do you use for svn? I'm really suprised anyone would offer bugzilla when trac has integrated support for svn.
I agree that the physical world will go through a revolution, but do you really think the changes will happen over the next ten years? I think maybe that's overestimating the impact in the short term. It's probably going to be a long time before you're going to be printing out the first usable objects (like the reprap's coat hangers, door handles and shoes) with minimal effort at, say, walmart quality and prices.
Vote4Me:  Rejected by the iPhone App Store
I would be much more intruiged in somebody writing a book explaining how he should actually be a plumber.

You'll never find a well-written book which honestly claims that its author should be a plumber. Why? For the same reason as you'll never find a well-written book which honestly claims that its author is illiterate: If you're able to write well, you're overqualified to be a plumber.
no offense to the good work at lighthouse, but I feel it would more useful to have lightweight bugtracking integrated into github. I'm sure people could come up with useful command line shortcuts to integrate bug reporting into github as has been reported here using dropbox.
Which port is better? A Qt/Gtk/Swing port or no port at all?

Every time I use Inkscape on Windows I'm happy about the Gtk toolkit, because there was no chance at all of the software being ported to Win32 otherwise.
"The Bell Curve," [...] argued not only that I.Q. was genetically determined but that it amounted to destiny, predicting your job performance, your financial prospects, even how likely you were to commit a crime or become an unwed mother.

Life sucks. Deal with it.

The fact is, Charles Murray is correct: IQ does predict your job performance, financial prospects, likelihood of criminality, and probability of becoming an unwed mother. It predicts these in the same sense as whether of not someone has the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes is a predictor of whether they will die of breast cancer -- there are lots of factors, including dumb luck, but it's one of the largest.

Can we do something about this? Absolutely: If someone carries the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes, we can recommend that they undergo routine breast cancer screening from an early age. If someone has a low IQ, we can pay special attention to them in school to make sure that they're not falling behind.

What we decide to do is a matter of public policy. Some states provide free breast cancer screening to everybody; others provide free breast cancer screening to anyone with a family history of the disease; others don't provide free breast cancer screening at all. Similarly, some states "stream" children into classes with other children with similar IQs; some states put everybody into the same class but perform testing so that teachers know which students are more likely to need help; and some states just throw all the children together without making any attempt to distinguish the high IQs from the low IQs.

Some people are born stupid. But pretending that we're all equal won't fix that. The first step towards dealing with it is to recognize that life sucks.
That argument only proves half of the statement; you can still not be sure that anyone wants to write a book about how they should be a plumber
Poetry of Chatting Around @ Meebo
Auto Reply: I am not in the office at the moment
As bad as the mid '70s? The commentators I'm reading are talking about the '30s.
this reminds me of a professor in probability who didn't have formal education

iirc, he was a 'magician' with cards or something ... who plays a lot with probability

he impressed a prof from ivy league uni, then got into grad school without having to do undergrad.

it happened around 1950, should be less possible now

actually around 2003 i had a friend doing master in EE, having background as chinese language teacher. An old chinese professor of her let her into the EE grad program :D she was really struggling :(
Bones: 4.08 - The Skull in the Sculpture
Here’s the latest batch of episodic photos for Bones episode 4.08, The Skull in the Sculpture. We have yet another week to wait before it airs
It's good to see that AOL are getting rightfully served. To quote one comment:

> Bit jealous, are we? It does seem seriously petty and small to go whining about stuff like this. Besides, none of the features you talk about are exclusive to you anyway.

Then again, I don't think anyone who would read a dev blog would be on AOL anyway.
Jim Hefferon's Linear Algebra: A free textbook with fascinating applications
What about a labourer arguing for the case that there should be an influx of labourers from Mexico? It's the same pattern everywhere. When people argue for high IQ being superior, they have high IQs. When they argue for immigration, it's because they are not affected, when they argue for more police on the streets, it's because they are not criminals.

I would be a lot more impressed by people who make arguments that are rationally correct, but that do not favour them.

It's like people who argue for Eugenics - their version of Eugenics never involves them or their friends/family being cut out from the genetic pool.
reitzensteinm,
Revolution may be too strong a word, but I think thinks significant change ala what we have seen with social media is completely realistic. One think to keep in mind is that this list jut covers 3D printing, Laser cutting, CNC milling, Print on Demand, and other technologies can also enable personal fabrication. Where I see the big impacts are:

Health - If printing bone or at least better implants becomes acceptable this will be huge for the rising senior population.

Entertainment - With the rise of virtual worlds and video games, 3D printouts of your characters could seriously disrupt the action figure/ doll product categories which are worth about $4B/year. This assumes quality continues to improve.
The alternative is Simon Peyton Jones style: Work on some 10-15 papers at the same time. Whenever some new knowledge is gained, try to apply it to all the papers. At some point one of your papers is publishable. It is basically running research as one big investment bank and spreading your portfolio out.
The Perfect Server - Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex (Ubuntu 8.10)
I think you are right jerf, 3D printing is an awesome technology,but it also is not the only awesome technology. print on demand, Laser cutting, cnc milling and embroidering all allow customers to manipulate different media. Hybridizing these tools will allow for greater choice more rapidly.
reitzensteinm,

What is your affiliation with Rocksolid? Are you a Flash developer?
Yes, having a full description of the process would have been interesting.
Dupe: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=350186
Your radical ideas about education have already occurred to Plato, Charles Murray.

Considering that 230 years ago, one-fifth of a nation consisting of 20% slaves, 50% indentured servants, and unschooled farmers for most of the rest, bought Common Sense, which isn't exactly beach reading, I'm not too impressed with his claim that 80% of people are inherently incapable of college-level work.
The funny thing is, that played absolutely no role in the rest of Futurama, at least as far as I can remember.
That's what we get for visiting wired.com, I guess.
DonorsChoose is who Google chose last year to give the gifts to AdWords advertisers. Neat idea.