skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Now I could be wrong on this, but I believe that's at the EXTREME end of things, I would say with the way DNS is updated now it usually takes under an hour at most. At least that's my personal experience.
btw: you could use Geo IP to set a rough default for that
Weird. This market is really flooded... but I guess that means there's a lot of people out there who want it :)

Good luck!
I think this is a good idea if it takes off. Being able to add billgates.tel to your various e-mail accounts and having your e-mail programs update your contacts daily and before you send an e-mail to that person would be incredibly helpful.

I just got my first smart phone yesterday and am having trouble trying to think of the best place to keep a 'master' copy of my contact records. This could easily solve that problem.
on a slightly related note: If you really want a free iphone steve.jobs is not registered :-)
That's only partially correct. While you can derive Benford's law as a consequence of Zipf's law, there are many datasets where Benford's law applies but Zipf's law doesn't, such as the values of physical constants.

Much better (IMO) generic explanations for Benford's law are scale invariance and mixtures of probability distributions, which are discussed in the Wikipedia article. Unlike proofs of Zipf's law, they make no assumptions about the relationships between the entities.
he doesn't...

and i have a trained ear for picking out lithpers
Is the motor the main weight?

I was under the impression that modern electric motors weigh less per foot/pound of torque than ever before and that most of the weight of an electric vehicle is in the battery pack.

//me wants a all electric version of the dymaxion car
That's not true at all. They were standing out from the crowd going back into the late 90s. http://www.37signals.com/manifesto.html They did client work, wrote books on web design, and did other stuff for years before becoming a product company with Basecamp, Rails, and everything else.
You're right; my mistake -- I glossed over the post and missed the "relative."
Here is the Michelin page for the Active Wheel:
http://www.michelin.co.uk/michelinuk/AfficheServlet?Rubrique...

But for much more detail check out the press release (pdf):
http://servicesv2.webmichelin.com/frontnews/servlet/GetEleme...
So true about those other sites. I'm so happy to have found HN, and I no longer even remember how it happened.
Thanks for clarifying :-)

But under an hour still kills the concept of location based services.
Interesting, I was just looking for info on how Digg was doing financially. I'll be eager to see if it sinks or swims.

I think with the economy heading where it is, Digg is in for a rough time.
I doubt Mathematica lets you do anything that competing products like Matlab's image processing toolkit don't do, it just greatly enhances the level of activity associated with image processing.
Android Developers Blog: Touch Mode
Sort of. Depending on where this is actually stored it can be instantaneous -- at work we have a pair of servers that serve DNS via MySQL replication, and time from putting data into the master and seeing it in DNS is well under one second.

If they're suggesting you update the .tel TLD servers with your information, the sky's the proverbial limit, but it would be possible for them to keep it pretty tight.

The real problem with this is that there's no notion of ACLs or multiple viewports in DNS -- I reeeeeeeeeeeeeeally don't want any spammer who can find me@iigs.tel to be able to spam me with data from GPS me.iigs.tel records.
Half-done, at best. Just getting a title is not much use: RSS feeds are supposed to save you time, and give you all the content where you want it (ie in your reader) not just give you a bunch of links that are no different than the HN "new" page.

Or is there a third-party technology that I'm missing that will solve that flaw?
"There is one company that makes buses with wheel motors which quadruple the fuel efficiency of the current best diesel bus"

Given that buses are surpassed only by garbage trucks in the number of stop and starts they make in a given distance I suspect this has much more to do with scavenging energy during braking than it does with the fact the motors are in the wheels.
LeTourneau (a personal hero of mine) powered his giant square-wire-wound electric motors with even more powerful diesel engine/generator sets. His machines were diesel powered with electric transmissions.

The article misses the "elephant in the room" point that the electric motors are the easy part. They always have been. It doesn't much matter if you cram the electric motor into the wheel or under the hood. Getting a power supply with enough power density and a short enough charge cycle that its actually feasible for daily use is the silver pearl.
It was the first. I missed the original part where the commenter you were replying to was assuming your site has a login and people use the same password there that they do with their email or bank accounts.

Wouldn't it be much easier to simply suggest people have different passwords for their banks, rather than having devices for each one? The SMS thing is cool though, PayPal does that now I think.
A Dozen Dirty Teaming Lessons Culled From The Dirty Dozen 
Sorry for the repost - the other link started in the middle of the article
# cat /usr/share/dict/words | grep -i tel$ | wc -l

95

hotel, motel, cartel, hostel are the ones that most people would recognize. The rest are pretty weak.
You could do every 5 minutes - but that would still be impossible on the iPhone, where your phone would have to remain unlocked (i.e. screen on) and your app open the entire time to do so. That is perhaps a bigger battery hog than the GPS receiver itself.

Also bear in mind that position acquisition is far from instantaneous, and has a high fixed cost. 5 minutes is probably ok, but keep in mind that your receiver is puttering away for a good minute before your scheduled check-in, just so your GPS can reacquire its position.

This would work if the software was integrated into a GPS unit, but not a cell phone. Taxi drivers in particular always have their GPS units chained to a car charger source, and this eliminates your power issue. Further, a GPS unit doesn't need to be hacked to support background applications :)

I think you misunderstand the intent of the idea - which is to use other people stuck in traffic jams to warn others who are approaching to divert. This absolutely requires a GPS unit of some sort. The data in this model is emergent, as opposed to human processed (e.g. a driver calling in an accident at an intersection).
This is incredibly stupid. I can add any record I like to my DNS. If things start querying DNS for those records, fine. But... what is .tel bringing to the party? My DNS server which happens to be at a .org can serve any records it likes!

As CompanyX, why would I want to buy companyx.tel, instead of just sticking those records on my existing companyx.com?
Second Life had banking scams as well.
The LeTouneau stuff is very interesting.

Your concerns over the ride quality for the wheel are addressed in the press release for the product from Michelin (I linked to it in another comment). The wheel will actually contain an active electrically driven suspension system. Michelin claims an extremely fast response time - just 3/1000ths of a second and all pitching and rolling motions are automatically corrected. I also believe that the idea that the wheel will not be able to accelerate as quickly to be unfounded. The same amount of weight it being rotated, as only the tire, which is roughly the same as any normal tire, is actually spinning.

These pictures give a far better idea of how the wheel is constructed:

Front - http://servicesv2.webmichelin.com/frontnews/servlet/GetEleme...

Back - http://servicesv2.webmichelin.com/frontnews/servlet/GetEleme...

I'm sure there are going to be plenty of complications with the design but it is really good to see large companies taking some initiative for innovation. They have already produced two concept cars with these wheels.
Memeorandum runs rings around Google News
Getting cron right can be trickier than it looks. Even if you test your script with the right uid, are you sure cron is running with the same environment variables as the shell? I've been bitten several times by cron skipping my shell profile.

I just wish my cron scripts had the same earning potential :)
Email has it's share of problems, but it is a necessary tool. Businesses are utilizing Twitter and other media more and more, my office has only two people I can think of who aren't on twitter. It is used for inter-office communication etc.

However, email is the incumbent technology so it takes a major paradigm shift to unseat it. Something I haven't seen any new technology come close to.
Translation: Apples vs. Oranges. Fight!

foulmouthboy is right: There may be some overlap between these two communication mediums but they have two different purposes.
And going the opposite direction:
The #1 most atheist country in the world - Sweden - is the 4th least corrupt.

Nope, I don't think its religion...

Sources:

http://www.adherents.com/largecom/com_atheist.html

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781359.html
You can set the TTL (time to live) of a zone to whatever value you like including zero to force every lookup to go to the authoritative servers (do not do this, it will make your site slow for users and your network administrators grouchy). Most dynamic dns providers have a default of 60 seconds.

From the article it's hard to tell exactly what they are talking about, but it sounds like any of a number of schemes for abusing DNS as a federated database.
Strive valiantly
Debugging inside the Scala Eclipse Interpreter
Y Combinator Hatches Brilliant Entrepreneurs
for osx, jollyfastvnc is the only game in town

http://www.jinx.de/JollysFastVNC.html
My experience is that extensive procedure comes because the small company start up approach doesn't scale to large companies. Every one I have worked at that has transitioned from from 10s to 1000s of people was failing because it tried to continue as if it was 10 wizards at it. The wizardy actually hindered others because it was opaque to them.

Interestingly the biggest company I worked for actually ran the best because perhaps its roots being 80+ years before any of the others would allow the significant difference to be tracked.
High school teacher finances school supplies by selling ads on tests
"Selling self-help books"

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=383000
G1: T-Mobile G1 Net Access Can't Be Turned Off, Results in Huge Roaming Costs
Thanks for the advice. You are right. It's hard to gear the site toward my 2 markets. Really I have 2: Joe small business and Web designer/developers. I am going to allow for custom branding in the future for designer/developers.
Location-based advertising: Place trumps traditional targeting
Can you provide evidence in support of that claim?

A test for culture/genetics might be found in immigrants. Particularly those that do not immigrate to big expat communities. Even those might be interesting to look at. I think you'll find that people bend quite a distance to what their environment is. I dare say American expats participate in corrupt practices.

My own take on this is that corruption can hit a point where it is the system of government. It's not that dirty cops are cops that started taking bribes & then got used to it. They take the job in the first place in order to accept bribes. If you take away corruption, you take away the police.

Same goes for many other elements.
Maybe e-mail clients should have a button "post to blog" for instances where people want to share their emails immediately to others.
I Told You You Were Doin It Wrong
According to this recent article, digg traffic has flattened:

http://venturebeat.com/2008/11/06/why-hasnt-digg-made-any-pr...
196 words found in http://www.instantwordsearch.com/ for tel occurring anywhere in the word.
Hmm, I'm gonna make one of those positive digg comments I'm so well known for (not). There is a potential for a shakeout, they have lots of money to weather the storm, an established brand, traffic, revenue - it may happen.
Use a Send button. http://posterous.com/
I see at least two people didn't understand my comment. The point of the post was that you can make money by finding some useful open source software and making it into a service. But Linux is already available as a service; that's why I said try again.
Because it is the premiere environment for manipulating images. But I think he used pictures because that allows us to have an intuition for the kinds of analysis that he's doing, not because he's setting Mathematica up as competition to Photoshop.

As someone else pointed out, these sort of techniques could be useful for the kinds of matrix manipulations and image analysis that scientists and engineers do. Personally, I'm impressed that Mathematica appears to handle images the same as matrices. That's powerful, and of interest to hackers.
No the fact that they are being parodied is an effect of their increased profile.
PHP Programmer/Developer for Web-based Application (Medical) (Castro Valley, CA)
About our company: We are an aggressive start-up (profitable since inception) going on 3 years located in Castro Valley, CA. We have a stealth stage web-based application to help people like yourself get medications from your doctor's office instead of having a prescription filled at a Pharmacy. We have a working prototype currently in use by multiple clients. It's time to bring the programming and development in-house with brilliant, creative, and driven individuals.

Subject: (PHP Developer) Programmer/Developer for Web-based Application of Medical Company in Castro Valley, CA.

You would be expected to help plan, research, develop logic, code, document, test, and deploy several Web projects with conceptual assistance. You should know how to build a professional and technically streamline website, as well as modify and build on existing code.

Applicant must have:

Minimum 3 years of heavy hands-on experience in web-based software development projects.

Extensive knowledge of PHP 5, ASP, VB, SQL, DLL, HTML, JavaScript, IIS, MySQL queries, schemas, and best practices. MS Access, ODBC relational database management.

Experience with AJAX and JQuery.

Good communications skills and fluency in English.

Strong understanding of system development life cycle and solid experience of building GUI based on the client's requirements.

Ability to function effectively with a team and independently; demonstrated creative skills a definite plus. Require multi-tasking.

Applicant must be U.S. citizen or a legal permanent resident (green card), please no H1 visa holders.

Strongly Recommended:

In depth knowledge and experience with at least one of the following: PHP, CSS Zend Studio (Eclipse) experience

Working knowledge of PHPUnit and Phing (or Ant)

MySQL 5 (stored procedures, views, triggers)

Extra Credit:

Flash

Flex

A clinical/medical informatics background well versed in the work flow of medical clinics.

Professional Qualifications:

Successful candidate should have 2-3 years hands on experience for the position

A minimum of BS in Computer Science or equivalent

Excellent communication and presentation skills

Excellent interpersonal and teamwork skills

Compensation and Benefits:

A great culture with continuous learning and opportunities for career advancement

Compensation: Commensurate with experience

Paid holidays and vacation after 90 days

Medical Insurance/Dental/Vision after 90 days

This is not a web or telecommute position.

Location: On-site work required (Office across from Castro Valley BART Station).

East Bay San Francisco, Castro Valley, CA

Principals only. Recruiters, please don't contact this job poster.

Please, no phone calls about this job.

Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.

Location: Castro Valley, CA
it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
Compensation: Submit Requirements: Commensurate with experience
Please submit c.v. or resume along with compensation requirements to admin@physiciansrxnetwork.com
Mailing lists are there for a reason.
Pandora: 2,000,000 Pandora iPhone users
Soshiku is having a Winter Raffle
Hi everyone. I asked you guys to review Soshiku when it launched (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=315281) and I'd like to thank you guys for all the positive reviews. Thanks to Hacker News and popular blogs such as Mashable and Lifehacker (and not to mention word-of-mouth), it has been gaining in popularity every single day. It isn't over yet; I have some big plans for the near future. I thought you'd like to know about our Winter Raffle, which will help raise funds and in turn, give out some cool prizes. Thanks everyone!
Metal prices fall further than during Great Depression
Two concept cars with this technology:

Eco-commuter Heuliez Will
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/11/active-wheel-afforda...

Performance roadster Venturi Volage
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2008/10/02/paris-2008-venturi-v...
Username cannot be less than 6 characters

Why?
Disappointment in the Future
Ning: The End of the Red Light District
Great idea but DNS is not exactly the most secure of protocols. Also, the current domains can already do this through arbitrary records (as has been mentioned already).
Should Apple make more iPhone games?
I find http://givemesomethingtoread.com/ good for finding long form content. It's become my preferred source for tasty brain food over HN.
Adium and Pidgin use the same underlying library (libpurple), and the lead developer for Pidgin is an engineer at Google.
> If you think that Africans have a genetic or cultural disposition towards corruption, then that is your opinion, and I'm not going to try to change it. I disagree completely

What else do you call it when a large proportion of a society broadly engage in and accept a practice?

I think it's fine if you don't like calling it a "cultural disposition", but you have to call it something. For some reason this practice is entrenched there (or do you disagree with even that?) and it's a major obstacle to progress in eliminating poverty. If we can't even refer to it using some terms to describe it, how can we deal with it?
Holiday Gifts that Help You Take Care of Young Children - Associated Content
Under an hour still works for 'who is in London for dinner tonight'.
10 People to Follow On FriendFeed for the Month of December
My favourite bit:

"It was felt that we should make every attempt to keep up with television since that would be a good thing if it broke in the near future…."
Is advertising based on pageviews?
Developing Linkbait For a Non-Technical Audience
What Units to Test?
It's not that I don't admire the creativity, but couldn't this easily spire out of control? In fact, wasn't this one of the seven signs of the apocalypse?
Sure. Pageviews/1000 x cost per thousand impressions = Payout.

Sure there's cost per click ads, affiliate links etc, but display ads are still a big force out there and as long as that's true, then Digg's powerful.

Huffington Post does monster numbers. They're also on the front page of Digg all the time for rewriting other people's reporting. Digg drives a lot of traffic their way, but how many of those people stick around and engage?
Digg's a legitimate brand, courted by all the established media entities.

8 months ago, the Tribune company assembled a strike force tasked with figuring out a way to game digg to get their content out there. How many other startups are changing how people in other businesses hire and operate like that?

They may not have figured out how to be self-sustaining, but there's enough people with cash trying to get in with them that they'll find something eventually.
It'll eventually happen to HN like it has with every other social news site out there.
I think you might tie that to pg's last essay. Child labour laws exist because of some of the disaster of child labour based institutions. (ie similar to a disaster of a vendor going bankrupt). This obviously has a cost. The immediate cost is the loss of this child labour itself. I suppose the hope is that the reinvestment of that time in education would yield a long term gain (but note that investment does not take place in a 'free market').

Rigidly enforcing the laws would also kill off some end cases that clearly do more good then harm. Lawn mowing 14 yr olds, paid household chores, working for parents at family businesses, etc. So the laws are enforced more loosely.
I wish I had downmod right now. Go back to reddit you comment troll.
i don't think so. those other sites are motivated by maximum users and pageviews. the management around these parts are motivated by quality and high signal-to-noise, and actively discourage trolls and discord.
Working for family businesses is explicitly exempted in the states I'm aware of. A friend of mine made good money working for his parents' bait and tackle shop. It was tax-exempt, too!
I respectfully disagree. It's a free country.
I run my own SVN server on my personal website, and I use S3SYNC to back it up to amazon s3. the amazon backups costs me 10c a month, its great.

I've recently started using mercurial and git to get into the dvcs community, and mercurial is a good bet if you want eclipse integration. svn does this very well too.
I live in Cameroon for three years as a child around the ages of five. In a town smaller than Douala. I was small, but I don't remember it being bad.

There was a country resort down the street which I used to bike to and go swimming in their gigantic swimming pool. I was allowed to bike everywhere in the city by myself.

The food was insanely fresh having been killed and cooked hours before you ate it.

We always had water, and called home long distance pretty regularly. When my brother broke his arm, he had a local doctor in the hospital put a cast on it, and then saw it off.

I may have been too small to experience the corruption first hand, but everything seemed fine to me.
When was that.

edit: what year?
> His machines were diesel powered with electric transmissions.

Large mining machinery (Haulpaks) are the same - electric with a diesel power plant.

I don't believe the wheel weight is a big issue in these cases - particularly for the AC systems, which are somewhat simpler and more robust (in terms of the wheel motor, the actual control system is much more complex).

The reason they use an electric system for Haulpaks is varied - but basically it's due to the fact that a mechanical drive system is almost infeasible at that size/load/torque. An electric transmission system is easier to control and more robust.

Also, electric lets you control the torque much better, particularly in the AC case where they can adjust phase/freq/etc to keep it controlled.
What if GMail shut down too?
How does the recent demise of pownce impact its users and who really owns your data?