skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Iain M Banks most recent Culture novel, Surface Detail, dealt with the idea of Digital Heavens, and of course Digital Hell's. They are run by religious high technology civilizations.

A virtual hell is a nasty place where sinners are copied into post death, for eternity. Sometimes young sinners are given day trips there to straighten them out, before death.

He talk a little about it in this wired interview: http://www.wired.com/underwire/2010/10/iain-banks/all/1
Soap films approximate minimum spanning trees. See: http://csunplugged.org/sites/default/files/activity_pdfs_ful... (see page 7 [aka, page 157]).

Actually, these films approximate Steiner Trees; which is harder (NP-complete): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steiner_tree_problem

EDIT: replaced 'find' and 'solve' with 'approximate.'
EDIT: added '(NP-complete)'.
Pirate Bay Founder Takes Case To European Court
this goes back to the ages old problem of, "In Star Trek, the transporter killed you every time" We have this almost social idea of Body Continuity. As long as there is the same body the entire time you are still you and still "alive". A scarier truth is that all it takes is a decent change to how you brain is structured (bullet, railroad spike, fork through the skull) and you can very suddenly for all intents and purposes be a different person, with the same or similar memories but essentially different patterns of behavior. Metamorphosis may not save you, it might kill the person you were just as if you made a copy and burned the original. Further down the rabbit hole, just how different is your brain now from and instant ago, and your brain versus your brain with the addition of a few ball bearings or other random matter. The person you were an instant ago is just as dead as the original who gets destroyed and you are the copy.
Not 50 years from now. We're already there:
CIA wants to spy on you through your appliances [1]

[1] https://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/cia-wants-spy-yo...
This is a bit off-topic but I would encourage everyone to read Strangers for Dinner's privacy policy[1]. It is a fantastic example of being fully transparent about what they are collecting and why, and doing it with plain language. I like this example so much not only because of the execution but also because they are collecting some very sensitive information (gender, political preferences, etc.) and not hiding the fact.

The only nit I would make to improve it is to not bury the privacy policy link in the footer but say something like "We collect some sensitive data, please read our privacy policy for details." To make sure people see it up front.

Don't underestimate the power of building trust with new users.

[1] http://strangersfordinner.com/privacy
We got a takedown notice from LifeShield for our positive review
Thanks.

Tons of screenshots added
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Stop Wordpress Compressing JPEG Images
>Londoners hope the world will enjoy the games.

As a Londoner, I hope the games suck and they never come back.
Can't speak for the parent but I think I understand where he's coming from. For me, it was reading the section on procrastination (which requires reading the preceding sections on dysfunctional thought patterns) in David Burns' "Feeling Good" that did the job.

Once you see all the possible reasons people procrastinate listed in front of you, and a plan of action for each scenario, it's pretty difficult to procrastinate because every time you find yourself in a potential procrastination scenario your brain goes "oh hang on, I know what I'm doing, it's X from Feeling Good". At that point you can execute the anti-procrastination plan, or, as in my present case, I don't even bother any more because I've done it enough to know I'll invariably end up getting to work and so I just go right ahead and do it.

The key thing here is you need to (a) be committed to change and (b) you need to study the book and do the exercises. Refreshing my procrastination pattern matching memory from time to time by rereading the section is critical. Many people aren't ready to stop procrastinating because they're not ready to take action. But just like debugging code, you just have to follow the chain of dependencies until you deal with successive root causes. Prochaska's "Changing for Good" put me on the path of awareness in this regard. Once you know what your brain is doing it's pretty difficult not to make progress.
In the introduction part of the video, I expected to be shown how to add and manipulate data. We also don't know if you can pull real-time statistics or is this going to be just a pretty front end for CSV/Excel sheets.

Your point about Powerpoint is spot on. And the bonus there is you can directly cut-paste graphs from Excel into it with the least amount of hassle.
Then there would seem to be an opportunity there to automate some of that work. Imagine an algorithm that could give an estimate of the impact factor of an open source project (sort of like the impact factor of an academic journal) and of a particular developer's contributions. You'd end up with a score kind of like karma at HN or reddit, which could be used by lazy HR departments to make the first cut. It could probably be gamed, but somebody's going to scrutinize you more closely for the second cut so gaming it might not be advantageous.
>Preston Gralla

Not this guy again.
Not grandparent post.

I think that one of the differences is that, in 1954, computer programs were single entities written by one person or by a team working closely together. So the "between two pieces of working code" bugs-- which tend to be the nastiest kind in modern development-- weren't really seen yet. Million-line codebases weren't even on the table as a reasonable concept, and the idea of a program depending on 120 other libraries or frameworks was unimaginable.
Welcome to Facade
Facade reinvents the way you manage your different social circles, without creating more accounts/usernames/passwords. All 4 of your major social networks in one app. Download from http://www.facadesocial.com
Good point. Here's the Census' 08 data:

"In 2008, college enrollment was at an all-time high with 18.6 million students enrolled, up 22 percent from 15.3 million in 2000."

http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/p20-564.pdf
Hi, Flat for rent/Flat for share is indeed just the category name, info of houses are included in the database too. I reckon this is too misleading, and should be changed soon.
Just a bit more expressive, actually. Make classes first-class entities, and make them callable, and you can easily do what Python does, but in a statically-typed manner.
I have only been with them a month but I use FastServ. If you search on WebHostingTalk they have offers available and the guy seems pretty knowledgable. I am hoping they don't let me down. Another option is the famous ServerBeach who Youtube used to use as their CDN. Would love to know others.

Ping times are on average 2.75ms.
> A factory method _still_ needs a class instance

Uh no it does not, it just needs a class. Unless what you mean by "a class instance" is "a class object". A factory method is a classmethod, not an instancemethod.

A factory method and a "factory constructor" need exactly the same thing: the class object.

> In dart, there is real decoupling going on.

In dart, there's mostly a bloody mess of 4 different constructors when all you need is a constructor and an initializer, as done in e.g. Ruby or Python. And these can be "regular" methods (respectively on the class and on the instance).

Conversely, you can also have an "overridden" constructor as in Javascript: an instance is built, the constructor function is called using the instance as its context, and if the constructor returns something that something is returned by `new` in stead of the original object.
Bomb-proof data centre has 12-tonne door added to 2m thick granite walls
The "copy" becomes the "real" you because it has extended life. Both you and the "copy" consider yourselves to be the "real one" (or maybe you accept the coexistence), but you are going to die and the copies will live forever.

You think: "That copy isn't me, ericb!" * dies *

Copy thinks: "Great! I, ericb, just got a new lease on life!"
My naive guess is hill climbing based on chemical gradients. I have a strong hunch that large networks settle at local optimums.
Sorry. HN crashed the VPS. Trying to call the VPS hosting solution to get the server rebooted. This is the full text:

Our Privacy Policy

Your privacy is of utmost importance to us, and we would like to inform you about our policy for protecting your privacy online. As a business, we DO collect information from you, and we do it in two ways: Information we get from your usage of the system (see Google Analytics) and information you give us (see Facebook)

Google Analytics

We collect data using Google Analytics. We use it to analyze how users use this site, and make decisions to improve the website. Google Analytics uses 'cookies', which are not food, unfortunately. Cookies are text files placed on your computer to collect standard information about users in an anonymous form. The information collected from site will then be transmitted to Google, which then compiles statistical reports based on user activity for Strangers for Dinner

We will never share this data with any third party. Google does not associate your information with any other data held by Google. Neither will we nor Google link or seek to link the collected anonymized information with the identity of the user. More information about Google's stance on privacy can be found here.

Facebook

We use Facebook to authenticate users. Asides from authentication, we also request some specific information about users. They are: Name, Age, Sex, Location, Political view, Religious View, Relationship Status, and Interests. As part of the terms of use, we require these basic information from users as those data are required for security purposes. These data are pulled from Facebook to reduce the need for users to fill in forms.

We will never share any of these information to any third party except for law enforcement, should the need arise. Your data is safe with us.

A Note on Personally Identifiable Information

We realize that we are storing personally identifiable information by virtue of you providing us those data. We work hard to protect them. Nobody has, and will have access to your name or your relationship status, even as part of the matching processes. In the place for names and personally identifiable information, we require nicknames, which serves a dual purpose of preventing personally identifiable information from being shared, as well as a barrier to lower discrimination. However, these data may be used for analytical purposes to improve performance of the site.

Last Modified: 30th April 2012
Updated, thanks :).
The london congestion charging cameras are all necessarily linked, these are the only ones that they would need.

On major roadside and traffic hotspots we also have cameras to help with accidents & traffic management. I have no idea if these are blinked with london congestion charging cameras.
Unless you accept dualism (that there is some 'you' separate from the wetware in your head) you are always going to have this problem. A copy of 'you' would only sync with 'you' for an infinitesimal amount of time before you both diverged. The two 'yous' both have valid claim to everything before the Split but afterwards you are effectively two different people.
Mobiscroll - Wheel Scroll Date Time Picker for Touch Devices
I understand that, but I meant it more in a philosophical way. The backdoor is not a bug (it's hard for me to imagine that the backdoor was included by accident), so you can't fix it. You can only remove it.

Also, it's not a vulnerability either (from ZTE's point of view). It's a feature.
Also featured in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAyDi1aa40E
On the other hand, emulating a machine of this complexity was beyond imagination when gameboy came out. On the other hand, Virtualbox can emulate much more complicate machines. On the other hand, this one lives entirely and safely inside your browser.
Facebook has almost made everyone have a presence online. Google Glass will make sure we're always online.
So true, without data binding it is just a graphic editor or a mockup creator. Here is a new webbased dashboard/infographic app coming in few days http://www.infocaptor.com/help/infocaptor_enterprise.htm

It has the canvas drag drop and integrates with google spreadsheet or your database to build infographics style dashboards. Infographics without data is a static image, data adds life to it.
What I mean is that, "venting" the traditional process of "releasing" emotions, rather than releasing the gas in a balloon, is actually just pedalling the bicycle, adding more energy to it.
I honestly can't stand the popularity of info-graphics. In UX terms, most of them are just "painting the corpse" - pretty portrayals of fairly meaningless numbers. It's rare to have any kind of context to them (comparisons, time histories, etc), the information per pixel is often infinitesimal.

Still, they are popular for a reason - people know numbers are important, but will only look at them if they are nice and colorful. I guess I really just wish more people would look at tables, or simple line graphs; or read articles with a few numbers in them.
How do you know that it's the same "you" that wakes up every morning that went to sleep the night before?
OTOH, few months seems to me a good balance to recur on good posts without being too frequent.
I am not surprised that the most hard working populations are the most unproductive. The mythical man-hour doesn't just apply to software.
That's actually a very good question.

Your average lawyer/doctor/accountant ends up in a very predictable career, just like your average engineer.

People who end up in politics tend to have a degree in law or finance and debating as a hobby. For jobs in politics, that's the kind of folk they look for, not just the "I have the right degree so hire me" types. Look at doctors who work in non-profits abroad: you'll find people with a very active engagement in social groups in their youth (I know a few in that profession) .
In "Altered Carbon", a character that has lived for hundreds of years destroys an instance of his self in order to prevent the upload of a mind virus into a backup copy of his self. In doing so, he loses a few days of experience.

Is that situation utterly contrived because he destroyed his mind, or are you insisting on a limited definition of self?

(Let's set aside the part where there is mind replicating technology but no snapshots or version control)
I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, it seems like a pretty cool way of building these things. On the other hand, I feel as though putting tools like this in everybody's hands just leads to shitty visualisations.

Data visualisation is a bit of a science, and using it incorrectly can be hugely misleading. This is like saying "here, you can create professional-looking presentations with this new product called PowerPoint."

I don't want to put down the work that's gone into this app, because it looks great. I'm just annoyed with the number of shitty infographics that get churned out by people with no data visualisation experience.
OTOH I rather have a flexible work schedule than a strict-but-short one ("you always have to get here at 8 and leave at 4").
It's not very hard to do direct manipulation in the repl with Python & Django, I do it all the time when debugging.

I'm not sure how hard it is with Ruby & Rails.
The Android Income Statement
I revised my rule-of-thumb after seeing the costs for the NHS IT systems [1]. The Olympics going so far over budget really didn't surprise me.

> Originally expected to cost £2.3 billion (bn) over three years, in June 2006 the total cost was estimated by the National Audit Office to be £12.4bn over 10 years ... Officials involved in the programme have been quoted in the media estimating the final cost to be as high as £20bn, indicating a cost overrun of 440% to 770%.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NHS_Connecting_for_Health#Costs
Vendor Prefixes: A Force For Good or Evil?
If you’re a web developer working with CSS3 in modern browsers, it’s more than likely that you’ve come across these things called vendor prefixes.
Best Ways to Motivate your employees -
I am doing this too in Brazil... we are going to launch soon, but or idea is a bit different.
This was actually a usability thing. We've started with 5,10,20,30,50 kilometres, and it turned out our initial beta bunch would typically select 10km as the distance they're willing to travel, so we've rearranged it.
Hope you all the best :)
Hah. It creates services for consumers. It then monetizes those services by selling access to ad networks it's true. My point being that if it sold directly in a B2B environment its customer base would abandon them for competitors due to instability. However, consumers don't change their behavior based on the same types of concerns.
Young people dying is sad, but it's also uncommon in the west. My grandfather died at 85. At that age, death can be in the form of almost anything. Complications from fevers, urine infections, the onset of age related diseases. It's amazing just how quickly someone that age can go from a physically and mentally alert person to death.

The root cause of all that is ageing. Your grandfather is certainly the exception. Ageing weakens the immune system, it leads to cell death, it increases the likelihood of cancer, it increases the likelihood of alzheimers, it leads to brittle bones and muscle wastage.

Chronic diseases like cancer and heart disease are caused by ageing. Yes, sometimes young people suffer from these, but they're exceedingly rare. If you consider it a goal to increase the lifespan of your population as a whole, you change that by targeting the things that affect everyone. 0.6% of all cancers are diagnosed in the 15-24 age group. If that rate was kept up for life to 100, cancer rates would be 6% of what they are now. 55% of people in the same age group are killed in car crashes or by guns (in the US). If you want to save lives, that's where you focus.
I'm missing something: why is Armin mentioning that "slides are useless without the talk" if the link is to a text with no reference of a talk?
This was my favorite subject for a while and I arrived to a similar idea of transformation, except without nanobots: the computer becomes a continuation of your brain and then your biological brain is gradually killed cell-by-cell.

However, the idea that you still get to die after backup is based on an assumptions that I don't find neither obvious nor true: that the stream of consciousness is fully continuous and never stops. I've recently seen a documentary about a guy who was declared brain dead and yet recovered into being himself again. So it might still be possible to "upload" a dead brain in which case your experience is that of a resurrection which doesn't sound so bad.
Securing Your Company Against BYOD-Created Threats
Only for sufficiently small definitions of "solve": http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0502072v2

Definitions which turn out to be very small indeed.
You have to make the distinction between absolute time and relative time. You use relative time for appointments/calendars and any other kind of "people oriented" time. Absolute time is everything else.

Relative time is a sticky mess. I think The Doctor referred to it as wibbly wobby timey wimey stuff -- and it really is. Just store this crap as a string along with the user's location. Don't bother storing the timezone, because DST changes every other day and some retard or another is always adding/removing timezones. When it comes to appointments and the like, you only ever have to bother with conversions when sharing it with users in a different location/timezone. That's when you perform the relevant magic. Not before. Not ever.

When it comes to absolute time, things are lot easier. Use UTC. Always. No exceptions. 'nuff said.
Big no-no: At login, you just sent me my password in clear text via email. You should never, ever be able to retrieve my clear text password, even just in order to send it to me.

http://codahale.com/how-to-safely-store-a-password/
Well undergraduate programs are a thought in that they are needed to produce candidates for the graduate programs that provide value.

And from what I can see most of the budget comes from and is devoted to college football.
Yes. That's the basic idea that lead me to the above post, but from what I hear (no benchmarks or test though) the dropbox cli is too expensive on the resources.

And even if that's a non-issue, what I'm talking about is a bit more robust solution - providing the user with some basic tools (like doing markdown/haml pages) right off the bat without any additional hacking.

On top of that, installing dropbox-cli as simple as it might be, is not simple enough and requires access to the shell (that not everyone might have), running a daemon, and it's not super secure (you need to store your root password, no?). My idea is that whenever you install a drophost, you get a new folder in your dropbox with the name of your host (i.e. /dropbox/drophost/mydomain.com/) which is simple to navigate and maintain multiple sites.
I bet they use a grace period, like Varnish does. The grace period would let the cache serve stale data for a few seconds or more while the if-modified-since call is made, and if necessary, the cache refreshed.
http://www.gimp.org/
Would love to check it, but:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/tornado/web.py", line 988, in _execute
getattr(self, self.request.method.lower())(args, kwargs)
File "/home/webadmin/lunchspire/handlers/lunchhandler.py", line 23, in get
File "/home/webadmin/lunchspire/handlers/__init__.py", line 24, in render
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/tornado/web.py", line 474, in render
html = self.render_string(template_name, *kwargs)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/tornado/web.py", line 573, in render_string
t = loader.load(template_name)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/tornado/template.py", line 323, in load
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/tornado/template.py", line 353, in _create_template
IOError: [Errno 24] Too many open files: '/home/webadmin/lunchspire/templates/lunch_list.html'
As this pops up everywhere, could you please cite a source from e.g. a ECB protocol or otherwise how Germany "controls the rates" or "enforces shockingly low borrowing rates" in violation of the ECB charta?

The ECB back then set rates in accordance with inflation, e.g. to keep it low. That's the charta of the ECB. When a high inflation country joins a construct that has a goal of keeping inflation low, then yes you have a problem if you do not change. But I'm not sure Greece e.g. was forced to join a low inflation construct.

From the ECB homepage:

"The ECB is the central bank for Europe's single currency, the euro. The ECB’s main task is to maintain the euro's purchasing power and thus price stability in the euro area."

(Beside the obvious fact that "shockingly low borrowing rates" would lead to high inflation, which could then not lead to "countries used to high inflation rates that collectively shot themselves in the foot.")

(PS: I'm biased as I'm German)
To be quite honest it was probably mostly because he did it in six hours and adding a few lines to validate against facebook/twitter was quicker than setting up a whole account stack.