skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If your rovers were small enough, you might be able to make a gun-launched or gun-assisted scheme work. If you could engineer your probe/launch vehicle to withstand 20 Gs, for example, a linear acceleration at that level would get you to Mach 1.2ish in 400 meters or so. You come out of the barrel cleanly in ramjet territory and, what's better past the point where your shock wave angles are highly dependent on Mach number. You could start out in subcritical mode for the engine and progress through critical and supercritical, buying hardware simplicity with some loss of efficiency. You might even be able to shed some of the diffuser cowling in stages at the lip for a Q&D variable geometry engine. By the tme you hit M = 5-7, you'd probably be out of the atmosphere and would have to switch to rocket mode anyhow. Your mass fraction for the booster stage would be pretty amazing because you'd shaved 2000-2500 m/s off your delta-V with the gun/air-breathing phase. (That matters a lot to the rocket equation. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to work out the actual benefit.)

The limiting factors here are obtaining a guidance and control system that is small enough to fit down your (admittedly large bore) low-pressure launch gun. Also, your gun would have to be pretty dang straight or your vehicle would have to be wrapped in a vibration-absorbing sabot.

The benefits are: 1) Once you have the gun, you can launch as many as you like; 2) Mass fraction as mentioned above; 3)The possibility of production-lining launch vehicle construction.

Not that I've given this any thought.

BTW, Bruckner et. al. at the University of Washington have been working on a ram accelerator, a type of launch gun, for years. The only thing slowing them is funding. They omit an airbreathing stage in favor of obtaining all the Delta-V in one shot, subjecting the payload to 700-1e3 Gs.
I apologize for coming across harshly. I also didn't mean any disrespect.
Don't people already use third party software to turn Gmail into a 'Gdrive'?
Writing Science: The Abstract is Poetry, the Paper is Prose
> No other good books on algorithms, but lots on patterns.

CLRS is on the list; 28.

And I, likewise, was unhappy with his exclusion of technology-specific texts. It seems as though he is asserting that generalizable ideas can only come from books that purport to be general.
Ask HN: How do you simulate a flash crowd traffic to test your site before launch?
Before launching an app and making a big splash, is there a way to test a site against a fake flash crowd to see how it'll hold up?

Can the people who have asked HN community to review their apps share what the typical number of hits you received?

What kind of precautions did you take for such an occasion?
Auckland City Wi-Fi goes live
That's not true. It's been a huge, mainstream story. Not to mention that people writing articles about Google should know.
Video Game Systems For The Elderly... Very easy to use, big buttons, simple setup, focuses on hand eye coordination, and elevates heart rates (not just chess, checkers, etc.)
It depends on the language, really. If you're using anything that truly depends on the command line (or if they want you to learn to compile from the command line) then it's pretty sad without installing Cygwin and rxvt. On the other hand, PLT Scheme has a great GUI environment. I'd imagine lots of JavaSchools also use Eclipse nowadays, too.
It especially makes sense since trailbehind is focused on hiking/camping/etc and there's a lot more outdoors near Tahoe than there is near SF.
YSlow only applies to browser rendering and sort of assumes you are able to get the page to the browser in the first place. Somehow I doubt client-side rendering is going to be the bottleneck. ;-)
Oh... and make my Iphone Battery last longer...
Yea, building a massive electromagnetic riffle along the slope of a mountain in a third world country to repeatedly launch vehicles into space has been on my todo list since i first read "the moon is a harsh mistress."
The country's new robots.txt file
Rails + Merb = Rails 3
Burning wood gives off harmful gases (other than CO and CO2 and H2O).

Never confuse "natural" with healthy. Arsenic (for example) is natural. So is smallpox.
Interesting idea, but wouldn't the weight of that much wire be more than the weight of a transmitter? Also, resistance in something that long would probably be an issue
assuming we take SpaceX on their word, that the "Falcon 1 is the world’s lowest cost per flight to orbit of a production rocket", and take the cost and payload weight right of the website, then for a 1010 kg payload at $9.1M, that works out to be roughly, $4095 / lb.

from: http://www.spacex.com/falcon1.php
That was painfully long to read and the title was ultimately unrelated to the text. This could have been written in 3 paragraphs: 1 - explain the cloud, 2 - beware, 3 - how to keep yourself safe.

I also think using the 'cloud' can actually make our data much safer. I mean my home PC is much more vulnerable than a monster data mainframe in googles basement. As long as your password is sufficiently complex, google Docs is more secure for a 'secret' document than my home PC is.
My favourites have mostly been mentioned - David Deutsch talking about the open-ended generation of knowledge, Dan Gilbert on perception and consciousness, Aubrey De Grey on reversing aging and his arguments for why it will be possible, Barry Schwartz's paradox of choice talk, Malcolm Gladwell.

And Burt Rutan on space exploration.
Obama's technology agenda
You can eat a bag of shit. A big bag of shit.
That can't be true, there are people(like me) who are willing to buy this even if its 10-20 times the price of plastic. For one it would be bio-degradable, and you wouldn't worry as much keeping this stuff around children because this is natural material.

Sure there are extremely poor people who might not be able to afford the extra money, but anybody concerned with the environment and their health would have sufficient reason to use this material. Another argument is that since plastic is so cheap, even if this liquid wood is many times the price of plastic it can still be affordable.
I can see it now - the iPhone injection! Inject your iPhone with the stuff, get 50% more battery.
It's not clear that "preventing bad buys" leads to lower music spending. How do they know that the money that I don't spend on {insert something} because I hear it and discover that I don't like it isn't money that I do spend on some other music? (I'm not saying that they can't know the answer. I'm asking whether they do know the answer.)

Preventing bad buys certainly leads to greater satisfaction with the music purchased. The happier that I am with a product, the more that I buy. Then again, I'm not Dutch.
Better portable power sources are always on the wish list. Many, many electrical gadgets could be shrunk even further if it wasn't for the bulkiness of batteries.
"I'm a long-time Linux user and use Ubuntu and only Ubuntu on my home computer. I feel like I need to say this so I don't get slapped for dissing the almighty Linux."

And, seriously, isn't that another facet of the same problem? "No, wait, seriously guys. Please let me say something critical about Linux, I'm one of you. Really!"
This was taken very early in the day, as witnessed by the sharp northwestern shadows and disorganization in the crowd. I'd guess it was around 7am based on when the sun came up today here.
NASA Centennial Challenges
Thanks - fixed. It now works with IE7. IE6 is a lost cause.
More accessible challenges can be found here, including a tether for a space elevator and an astronaut glove.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=442634
True, and covered in the first of the three paragraphs at that link:

"Pursuant to federal law, government-produced materials appearing on this site are not copyright protected. The United States Government may receive and hold copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise."

The news is that they're defaulting to Creative Commons for all "third-party content" on the site, including user submissions. That's the part that got me. Even if they're not producing it, they're trying to keep information open (as opposed to just requiring copyright assignment, for instance)
FYI, I have nothing to do with them, it just looked like an odd/interesting site.
It's really not just a blog. As people register, the school they wish to post under can be added to the site as a category if it is not already available.They can then post info geared toward that school and its students and it's students. Each category does have a blog format. If you read what the website is about under "About Us", it explains that.
A pilot's eye view of NY crash via flight simulator
I just Googled this. Looks awesome but no support for Mac :-(. Do you know one that is as good as DB Designer that runs on a Mac?
Beethoven was compensated during his time for composing Moonlight Sonata through patronage. Artists today do not have patrons anymore. Or you can consider the public at large the patrons of artists.
I've like never like and ok like heard of like Ira like Glass or ok and like like like before but if like that clip like ok is like anything to like go on like then like Gladwell certainly like doesn't like have like his mojo at like like all.

Which is nice.
Just throwing it out there, but what about the use of railgun or coilgun technology to accelerate the projectile?

EDIT - seems aaron above has already mentioned this while I was reading up on railguns... dammit :P
Since there isn't anything else positive on here right now..

It's a pretty good list, and I think he did a pretty decent job. Sure, everybody's list would be different, but there are some really good books on there that would serve people well to read them. It's interesting that Psychology of Computer Programming didn't make the list, as it frequently does.

It'd be nice to see another list without the exclusions though. K&R (C) and the Llama (Perl) book especially were very helpful to me. SICP made the list, and I kinda consider that a Scheme book.. I certainly learned plenty of programming/CS from other language-specific book. The 4.4 BSD book helped a lot of people too. Had I come up later, Accelerated C++ is a really nice book too.
I'm pretty sure he isn't using WordPress.
What do you use to cache right now (besides the built-in Smarty caching)?
yeah, it's only 30 minutes from Reno, which has most big city creature comforts. Amtrak goes straight through town too. Might be hard to find new hires here, but perfect for buckling down to get it off the ground.
yeah, expect particularly good maps of the Tahoe area!
Get people to stop using IE6 to visit sites, by any means necessary.

Bonus points if you can take out IE7 as well.
What, no love for me, just because I'm not a YC company? I was still in the FT article.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/04/23/business/smal...
or
http://www.fluther.com/404

Okay, now I'm embarrassed.
You can't broadcast from something that only weighs a pound or two.

The launch is by far the most expensive part, so going multiple trips isn't really an option.

The folks who won the Urban Grand Challenge have a great approach:
http://astrobotictechnology.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/AstroboticTechnology
Is there any reason you are still on a shared hosting account? I mean shared is great for b.s. or personal stuff...but I just don't see how anyone can justify using it for anything real when servers or VPS are dirt cheap.

I mean you are actually selling a product, you can't afford to have any down time.
Why not solar power chargers?
The Tom thing is a running gag. We <3 you too.
This is a great piece. Congrats! I couldn't help but laugh at the phone bill comment - I do the same. :)

Dan, would you mind sharing any tips/feedback how the piece came about? Did you pitch the FT?
That might technically relieve the "bulk" problem, but only by substituting a "surface area" problem in many cases.

Better solar cells are also on the eternal wish list, though. Not that they haven't been slowly improving, and not that they aren't already good enough for many things.
Yes, the launch is the real cost driver for space economics. Launch costs alone are in the neighborhood of $10,000/kg for large American providers and somewhat less in other providers/countries. I believe no one has come close to the $1,000/kg mark yet.

Because launch is so expensive, people then spend a lot more money making sure the payloads are ultra-reliable (launching a replacement is just too expensive). Because costs are so high, there isn't enough business to really get good economies of scale (yet...go SpaceX!) - so a lot of money goes into design and testing of new rockets that will only see 10-100 units built.

As for launch itself, fuel is pretty cheap - turbopumps are expensive. It is the high-precision machining of parts that ends up costing you. If you can reuse the hardware, then you get savings for future launches and everyone is happy.
Although I agree that you should backup the things you care about (mental note: add "download all my stuff in a zip file" feature to poetry web app tonight), I do often wonder whether my backup strategy, personal machine chance of survival, ability to not lose CDs, etc. provides more security for my stuff than... say... BigTable.

It's better to have them in both places than in just either, privacy concerns aside. But if I were my mom, I'd be way better off having them in at least some pieces of the cloud (the ones likely to survive, and to give you your stuff if they are about to not survive?) than on my machine.
Seems to be rather American-centric, and extremely topheavy with recent fads, which isn't surprising, given the ridiculous method used to compile it. No Dijkstra, no Wirth, no Hoare, no Brinch Hansen. No compilers, no Lisp (although SICP might qualify). Totally absurd.
Those stats are mixed. Paper, printing, and delivery are requirements exclusive to printed news. However, editorial and marketing are not. In any case, until an online resource can outcompete the printed edition of the Post, I'll continue to pay the $1-200/year to have it delivered to my door.
This might sound strange, but instead of radio broadcasts, what about the possibility of doing broadcasts with bursts of light utilising lasers?

I guess my thought is based off the old idea that you could intercept data off a modem by reading its LED at some considerable distance - and just upscaling it with more powerful tech.

http://applied-math.org/optical_tempest.pdf

I realise that it would be near impossible to have the Earth visually see the transmission on a consistent basis, so what about a satellite in earth's orbit that essentially matched the moon's orbit, creating some kind of relay station.
Ooops... my bad should have been

git remote rename origin github

Had branches on the mind and didn't catch it till just now and the edit window is closed.

For the most part you can tweak most of the configs via command-line: git branch, git remote, or git config. I switch between those and editing the .git/config directly depending on the scope of the changes.
We did not pitch him. A free lancer we were intro'd to was looking to talk to startups regarding the recession, and how we were coping.

He did an excellent job and was very thorough, but I had no idea it was going to land in the Financial Times until recently. I would have been happy with a mention on the back of a Count Chocula cereal box.

We'll talk to anyone.
He'll never out live this will he? :)
the breakdown of costs... my intuition is that the biggest number is from launch (especially fuel)

The fuel cost for any given launch is virtually zero. http://yarchive.net/space/rocket/fuels/fuel_costs.html
Good markup can't handle it all, text-only mode allows for stuff like having a transcript instead of a video with a link to a transcript. Text-only mode is even available on the new site:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/accessibility/

"In addition to the features that make the graphics version of the site more accessible, a text-only version provides added convenience for users."

I'm not sure how to access it though, maybe that feature hasn't launched yet.
use siege, http://www.joedog.org/index/siege-home
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_server_benchmarking
Sounds like the girl wasn't prepared for the course, I'm sure it could have been dealt with. My wifes college course demanded that every student have a working version of windows XP SP2 or SP3 (vista not allowed), Office 2003 (ironically all her computing books are 2007) and they were trying to get students to pay $2000 for a laptop through them, which the equivalent was about $500 in walmart although no one was forced to buy through them (however they are with their books).

I offered my laptop for my wife to borrow as it's XP SP2, Office 2007 and kicks the requirements ass three-fold. However, she never had to use it because they all get free access to the computer labs, which quite ironically all run Vista even though the requirements were for XP. She could essentially do every bit of work for the class at school, yet they're telling all the students they need a laptop.

If she does need a laptop in her second year then we'll probably get her an Acer Aspire One as they're like $350 from Costco and meet the colleges minimum specs. Plus I wouldn't have a problem using it if she ever needed a more powerful laptop.

I personally dislike Ubuntu, but I think the bigger deal here is that colleges set ridiculous requirements. I mean I don't use Ubuntu, I don't even want to touch the sucker, but even I know that if I was stuck I just need to download OpenOffice! I think a college, who have computer departments (and my wifes has free advice on fixing any computer problem from their computer department, or tax-free repairs) could figure this one out. Even Google Docs saves in Word documents!

On the case of the internet, that's Verizon's fault for not keeping up to date, but even then I installed my first internet connection at like 7 years old. I'm pretty sure I'd be able to dumbly stumble my way into setting up the internet on Ubuntu and I could have it done within a couple of minutes with a guide on how to do it or even the knowledge of where things are in Ubuntu.

Summary: Absolutely everyone in this case was retarded. The girl shouldn't have quit, should have returned the laptop or just dealt with it through OpenOffice and calling verizon to ask how to install it manually. Verizon should create a setup disk for Linux. Dell should be shipping its Ubuntu versions with OpenOffice. Linux users shouldn't freak out and give the media a free article.
I've been tempted to read one book on UML. But seven? Surely at least four or five of them are redundant?
Exactly my thoughts.

Whether it was done on purpose to try to diminish the magnitude of the event, or a stupid mistake from the publisher.

It was packed to the roof with more than a million souls.
what about a satellite in earth's orbit that essentially matched the moon's orbit

L1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point
Very true. However, burning wood is certainly less polluting than burning plastic.
Elephant 2000: A Programming Language for the year 2015 Based on Speech Acts
There are books on here that I think are worthwhile, that could be called classics, given the attention they've received. But not the whole list.

Generally, they are the ones that are specifically tied to the act of software development, of making things and getting good at doing that well, rather than the process and other roles surrounding it.

But then it seems that, given the definition from SWEBOK and others like http://c2.com/cgi-bin/wiki?SoftwareEngineer, software engineering is more about the process than the product. So this list may be correct, and the reason I don't hear about some of these titles so much is because I'm not as much a part of the process crowd.
Employing high-altitude balloons to cut down on launch costs is potential feasible

How would high-altitude balloons reduce launch costs?
All on one page: http://www.infoworld.com/archives/emailPrint.jsp?R=printThis...

They didn't talk about email as part of the cross-platform strategy. By asking iPhone users about the limitations around emailing photos, I was able to make OurDoings much more suited to them: http://ourdoings.com/ourdoings-startup/2009-01-19
Google AdWords - eleven herbs and spices revealed
It was so crowded that on WTOP by 7:30 they were suggesting that listeners stay home. There were already over 200k Metro rides by 7am which is absurd.
Lawyers doing something useful with their time, for a change.
Read this: http://ycombinator.com/munger.html

as well as the rest of the yc library (click on the library link at the bottom right of the front page).
Interesting, and I learned Microsoft has SkyDrive which I never knew about.

If I can find enough of these free services I can store more or upload the same stuff to each storage site and use them as a backup in case one of them accidentally loses my stuff.
I've been outed! And there goes my plan to covertly push my radical government transparency agenda. Damn you, ALee!

I've only been involved in this for a little under two years and it is amazing to see how quickly the government has become interested in open data. There is still a LONG way to go, but I think we are going to see some great things in the coming years.
Robotic suit helps paralyzed walk
I just assumed it was a 3 minute tape delay like a sporting event or award show, just in case Dick Cheney accidentally blurted out an obscenity near an open mic.
I find it interesting that ticketstumbler is theoretically a utility that allows the savings of time at the cost of money and the article focuses on the savings of money at the expense of time.
doesn't it also have to move?

and isn't the point to make some progress in spacefaring?
What if we rethought the design of the "rover" to make it smaller and the whole launch mass less? I don't think there's a requirement for a four or even three wheel rover. Instead, we could use a clear double inflatable ball with an instrument package and a motor inside. This allows for a < 10lb/5kg rover. We could pack dozens of these in several rockets to the moon. Redundancy would be in our favor. Kind of like moving from big-iron servers to farms.

This is my inspiration for the double inflatable ball: http://www.hammacher.com/publish/72182.asp
Congratulations on the FT mention! Can you shed some light on the 'calculations' that go into the decision to live outside the valley? While living outside the bay area does reduce expenses, what kinds of things do you give up on (e.g. easy access to X, Y, Z) and why are they less valuable than the immediate monetary benefits?
I would bet that if the US were invaded right at 12:01, Obama would be calling the shots, not Biden or Rice.

Letter of the law, meaning of the law, and all that.
it would be near impossible to have the Earth visually see the transmission on a consistent basis

How do you figure?
High altitude balloons are great fun. I am working on a rocket launch mechanism for one in my spare time. Costs are really low.

http://www.hobbyspace.com/NearSpace/index.html
many people think many things. im doing this 4 a science project and so far hot water freezes faser then cold water except on artical
I didn't take it too be nasty. Sometimes things that are challenging are the most satisfying. I certainly wouldn't want a dumbed-down version, even if enabled me to avoid the occasional frustration.
Actually, since over 50% of events don't sell out, you can often find below face value tickets on TicketStumbler. The ticketmaster fees are comparable to the ones charged by our ticket providers.

This is even more true now that we're in a recession. NBA tickets are at all time lows. Expect similar deals for baseball season.
Better Image Caching with CSS