skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Nice! One of the biggest issues I have with jQuery is the fact that animations are just JS and not CSS with JS fallbacks. I suppose that's a deliberate design choice, but still.
heh, in brazil they just finished a mandatory replacement of all the plugs.

previously we had a plug with a flat face like the US, but the connectors were like "d b" meaning a US flat in the middle with round ones right out. using the same metal connector for both formats in the middle. clever, cheap, worked with everything. (US, Japan, Swiz, ...all except UK and australia as far as I know)

now, they have mandatory round plugs only, slightly larger so they can't fit the old ones by one or half milimiter, and a recessed insert like the new Switzerland type J, and an optional ground.

It serve the purpose of solving NONE of the mentioned issues in the article, but help lots of people that manufacture the new plugs.
formatted:

https://github.com/rails/rails/blob/master/guides/source/4_0...
> Here in Italy there are at least three kinds that are fairly common.

Well, one of them is the Europlug (the "small" 2-pin variant) and that works everywhere in EU except UK.

The problem is that the two grounded versions are peculiar to Italy and not the standard ISO ones. Italy lost its chance to switch to the ISO sockets (compatible with the Europlug) sometimes in the 90s, when the EU forced the adoption of 230V (+-10V) from the previous 220V. The legislator failed to force the use of the ISO grounded plug and now it is not uncommon to see in Italy sockets that are compatible with Europlug, the 2 Italian grounded kinds of plugs, Schuko and type C. It is obvious that these sockets are both clumsy and expensive.
Last time i checked the middle plug was optional, so no, not polarized.

granted, the last time i looked at the paper was 2,5 years ago and there was still a lot of allowances for transition.

And i'm certain the Nokia adapters sold via local phone operators only have two plugs.
Apropos of the upcoming Venus transit of the sun?
Perhaps they want to port to platforms like the new chromebox (or a future variant).

I think we are about to see a divergence in desktop/HTPC/semi-mobile platforms.

For example, ChromeBook/Box , Raspberry Pi , Android , Ubuntu Devices and I'm sure many others as time goes on.

it seems reasonable that people will want to run games on these platforms beyond what is currently possible just with JS/webGL.

Now think about it, what do all of these plaftorms have in common?

Another point to bear in mind , is that one of the significant advantages Steam has over OS specific marketplaces is that it allows you to sync the same games over different devices.

For example it would be nice to be able to buy a game for your Windows PC and then be able to also run it on your HTPC or Tablet device which may well be running non Windows OS.
Odds are it looks like it'll be either a spool of printing cable (PLA, ABS, Nylon, etc.) that you'll print with, or it'll be like you buy motor oil (UV Reactive polymers). These are FDM (reprap and the like) and SLA [1] techniques for 3D printing. So far the SLS (using a powder or sand) seems to be stuck in the very high commercial range though it can be the most useful, it requires far less fiddling with to get things to print out regardless of their shape like a reprap does, and can get very good material reuse like SLA does since unused material is just kept in the same state. It can also do one of the more fun things, combine SLS and an inkjet printer and you can color the object you're printing just like a normal printer [2].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereolithography
[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UP25fKsN0Io
Does the placebo group get the option of getting the med at the time of termination, or do they have to wait for approval along with everyone else? What about the group already getting the med? Do they stay in?
I run an online and print magazine which features only original content.

I don't really have a secret to getting materials for free, I just don't bring up payment at all I guess :p And on the rare occasion that they do want to get paid I just complain of being broke (which is true).

I think that paradoxically being a cheapskate can actually work in your favor. People getting fired up with idealism, and all that :)
Everything mentioned is MIT-licensed, and like many OSS authors, we would love any ideas or code in there to be widely used in virtually any capacity.

Also, if you're in or near SF, I'd be happy to get coffee sometime.
There's a lot to be said about companies with great visions, good execution, and practical business models, but still have trouble getting funding. While it's true that customers are the best way to fund a company, and why look to external capital if you can get that, it's also true that funding helps you make investments in talent, resources, and reach that could help you reach goals faster or "bigger".

Companies like these have a heck of a time raising capital from the "traditional" funding available for startups - angels and VCs. I can speak to that first hand. It's so infuriating to see companies that haven't yet proven themselves to be businesses raising hordes of capital and getting loads of attention while the more "boring" ones have to bootstrap and scrape their way. Much of this is because the boring types are not in markets where there is significant froth. Perhaps this makes traditional VCs uninterested because of the low multiples. Or perhaps it's because the perception is that if you have a rational business model, then you should just execute on it - why need capital at all?

While I can see plenty of practical reasons why VC and angel investors are reluctant to invest in boring businesses that can bootstrap, sometimes it takes a long time for companies to bootstrap to a point where the founders can pay themselves, let alone scale. Many times external investment is used not just to add new people and resources, but also pay the founders. While being hungry is good from an entrepreneurial perspective, starving for too long can make people desperate and chase cash at the expense of the company vision.

I say all this because it's troublesome that companies have to resort to karaoke as a way to fund basic operational expenses. That is, unless the startup founders truly like it and it's a corporate culture sort of thing, in which case, more power to you! But often times it's not out of pleasure, but rather, necessity. I keep thinking about the AirBnB fellow who had to sell cereal to keep the company afloat. And only once he "de-risked" his company substantially, he was able to seek funding, now at a healthy valuation.

What are the funding options for those of us with boring businesses that nonetheless want to scale to significant size? Is it all bootstrap, karaoke, and cereal (and maybe Kickstarter, altho it seems they reject these sorts of businesses as well), or is there another good option?
The ring main makes wifi much more difficult, and encircles the building with a strong (and varying) magnetic field causing problems for many devices.

It induces current in all metal near it, which causes sensitive devices to fail.

And it was only economical when you assumed a small number of high current devices. But these days when every outlet has something plugged into it the benefits are nill (since you have to have enough capacity for all the outlets, not just a small number of them).
have you ever seen a building construction? it's pretty much 'manual 3d printing'

they form some crude walls with cheap wood, and pour lots and lots of concrete, and the bigger challenge for bigger building is that you have to pour one level at a time in one shot. and if you pour too much it gets too hot while it dries and the concrete gets flaky.
I poured through the FBVector code because of your comment. It has some really interesting tricks. In a normal array allocation, it always goes for the next-largest-size in the jemalloc memory hierarchy. That is, it goes for multiples of 64 bytes, 256 bytes, 4 KB, or 4 MB. This makes the array cache-efficient.

The push_back() semantics features the standard array doubling technique, but only up to 4 KB; jemalloc can't grow in-place anything smaller than this, so a copy is required. Beyond that cut-off, push_back() will instead grow by 1.5 times the capacity to prevent too much "slack" memory from accumulating.
The problem of Valve is their usage of DRM. I won't use them just because of that, whether they release Linux client or not. I.e. it's better to run a non DRM-ed Windows game (let's say from GOG) on Linux using Wine, rather than native one from Valve but with DRM.

But their entering to the Linux scene in general is good, since it might encourage others to do it as well, and eventually non DRMed distributors like GOG will push for more Linux games too.
Officially the purpose of the TSA is to deter terrorism, but it's looking more and more like it's just there to intimidate travelers in the US. It's obviously not working for it's intended purpose, so why do they insist on keeping the TSA?
I'd love to help, but I'm a UI/front-end woman, so I guess I don't qualify.
There's a lot regarding Pinterest's growth on Quora. For starters, see

"Which viral concepts is Pinterest getting right that may be enabling their staggering growth?" http://www.quora.com/Pinterest/Which-viral-concepts-is-Pinte...

and "Why did it take so long for Pinterest to go viral?" http://www.quora.com/Pinterest/Why-did-it-take-so-long-for-P...
That's true, and in those cases, a more generic "we had other qualified candidates" letter/email would be fine. but all too often corporate america just ignores people altogether - won't return emails/phone calls, and basically leaves the person out to dry. Working via a recruiter, you at least have a person at the agency who might be sympathetic.

Companies don't seem to realize that treating applicants bad is just as detrimental in many cases as poor customer service. I've had bad experiences with job application processes, and I've told many people chapter and verse about the companies involved. If they can't even treat people well who want to work there, how will they treat customers after the money is received?
Client-side UA sniffing in 2012?

Ugh.

Flagging a browser because "something doesn't work" is just lazy.
The other way around. Plugs always fall out of ground up receptacles to the point that I will rewire them if I have any in my house.

They hold nicely in ground down receptacles though.

The insertion force of the one ground pin is lower than the two live ones. So when force is allied downward the plug pivots out of the receptacle.

In a ground down orientation the plug will pivot into the wall. Since the ground pin moves easier than the other two, it moves into the wall instead of out.
They are scared nitwits, but only because they don't demand that the government's unprecedented expansion of surveillance be stopped and reversed. The TSA is, for the most part, despised by anyone travelling. On top of making you show up hours earlier than you would have, they grope you. No one demands that.
Without file formats it's a non-starter (unless, for me, they are all x264).
The term "Cloud" can meet a number of different functional definitions. In this article's case, this was a PAAS model where you upload your code, choose the supporting services, and expect a given service level in return. For some, this works great, for others - well, see the OP blog post.

In my organization's case, we run all of our infrastructure "in the cloud" - mostly AWS. But, we view AWS as an infrastructure cloud provider meaning we choose the hardware available, develop and run our own stack, and go from there. We also have infrastructure with ServerBeach and 100TB.com - and, yes, we consider that "cloud" as well. Just because your code doesn't run well on a PAAS cloud provider doesn't mean that my code won't prosper on a "cloud" infrastructure provider.

Here is the deal: if you've never seen, in person, the server that you are paying for - you are in the "the cloud." And that is going to be most of us out there. And for those of you that "own" your own boxes, that still doesn't mean you aren't "in the cloud" - because you probably setup your own internal cloud at that point.

Edit: SAAS to PAAS
Might I suggest "CoffeeScript II: Electric Boogaloo"?
But How Will They Make Money?
Your comments. Let me hear them.
They're not stupid. They're either too scared to stand up to government intruding on civil rights, or they've been misled with false promises (which is a consequence of the schooling system).
Your reply is hilariously naive and insane. Have you even looked at it? It's Stanford professors, who also teach Stanford versions of the same courses.

Andrew Ng, director of Stanford's Artificial Intelligence lab, also the associate professor teaching "CS229: Machine Learning" and "CS221: AI" himself teaches the Coursera Machine Learning class.

Alex Aiken[1] teaches compilers. Tim Roughgarden[2][3] teaches the algorithms class.

And you are going to say they have poor taste and are just licensing content that they don't understand?

Java being one of Google's 3 official languages must be a red flag of their poor understanding and taste too I suppose :)

[1] http://theory.stanford.edu/~aiken/

[2] http://awards.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=4934147&srt=all...

[3] http://soe.stanford.edu/research/surreal.htm
And here is the blog post by Ned Batchelder explaining how he wrote Lifeboat for Tabblo (the startup in question).

http://nedbatchelder.com/blog/201201/goodbye_tabblo.html
Yea, stop acting like you have a high stress job and large uncertainty about if you will be successful. Ignore the fact that most startups fail.
Steam performance seems to very inconsistent.

It often runs like a dog on my Core2Quad but is usually butter smooth on my P4 laptop.
Great article. I really enjoyed how they solved a problem that came up during brainstorming. I think that the easiest way to find a problem to solve is to be picky with reality. Question everything you or someone you're with is going through, that either takes a little more time, or a little more effort than you think. And you might not think it would unless you question reality more.

Congrats to the team for going into this competition with the edge case mentality. I didn't see any details of their work in the posting, but it be interesting if we could all discuss physical locks with virtual keys some more.

Cheers
Quantum computers will be capable of simulating particle collisions
If anyone else is wondering what the second one was, "It is considered to have begun with Bessemer steel in the 1860s and culminated in mass production and the production line." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Industrial_Revolution
I agree. People put stress onto themselves, and my first failure was because I didn't prepare enough financially so I'd like to add to your point and say any financial uncertainty is because you didn't prepare for it.

"It's better to be prepared and not have an opportunity than to be given one and not be prepared." - My grandfather
I think CNC milling was already the third industrial revolution. 3D printing has some interesting applications, but the generic use case of "I want to play with this widget I drew with my CAD program" has been solved for decades.

http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/guerrilla_cnc1.shtml
That only solves part of the problem. It's still a big pain to have different syntax dialects and different tools that have to be used for different projects that are ostensibly written with the same language, even if they are compatible after you compile them to JS.
Previous threads:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3003574

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7354
Hmm... My point is that there's a notion of startup CEOs and founders as martyrs. I want to take responsibility for my life, and build it the way I want it. I'm not a victim of my startup.
I can't wait until 3D printers can print 3D printers.
I've been a startup CEO full time for oh, about 2 months now. It has been the most phenomenal, educational experience of my life. I wouldn't trade it for anything. I skimmed the quora post, and boy... that guy's life sounds horrible.

I sleep well most nights, but I stress on others. The pressure is on since we've taken money and don't yet earn enough to curb the burn. I also have this belief (crazy?) that we're doing something awesome, and have the background to accomplish it. I've always felt that I (+ my cofounder) have the agency to be in control of our destiny. I've never been more responsible for the outcome of things than I am today.

I'm guessing that the people who don't sleep well are (too far) out of their depth and the weight of their impending doom unless they figure it out is crushing.

As the CEO, I've taken on the bulk of the shit work - like administrative stuff - getting a lawyer, accountant, bookkeeper, bank account (the list goes on). I spend less time than I'd like on the product. Maybe 10-15 hours a week in the code / learning. A lot of time emailing, organizing meetings and phone calls. Overall though, it's fun and rewarding work.

We are building something that doesn't exist in the world and providing it to other people in exchange for money. How cool is that!
Ask HN: Is it a good idea to comment on US political issues?
I am not a resident of US but I have been planning to move to US for work in some time. My political views on some of the international issues don't align with US.

For example on http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4052719 I wanted to comment something that could be marked as anti-US foreign policy. Now I don't have any strict reservations about the intentions of US government; on the other hand it doesn't often mingle well with benefit and security of the country that I belong from. I wrote this huge comment explaining my views and in parts taking a Anti-US policy stand and just before I post it, I realize something of this sort can be marked against me. From what I have known US authorities do a solid background check - and if they have a way to weed you out of the process, they will be very happy to do it.

Are my fears justified? Should a foreign national who wants to enter US as a tourist or as an employee of an US firm take a public stand against US? Does it compromise he/her chances of getting a VISA?

PS: Just to make it clear, even if it does comprise the chances, I see why that stand would be taken. And if I were running a country and had to choose between two candidates: one who absolutely loves my country and the other that doesn't do it with that much completeness - I would have had made such a filtering process. But I want to know if that is the case with US.

Thanks!
IIRC they actually went to valve's office and showed screenshots of source engined games running under Ubuntu natively.

I wouldn't be surprised if they have it "90%" ready-to-go and just need some serious domains experts to do the last 90%. Not to mention for bugfixing , updates down the line as well as maybe porting some of their new tech (HL3 engine?) to Linux.
I personally think that it's good for people to warn others about hardships, which the Quora answer could have been.

But I also think that complaining about something completely in your control, or something you started is silly. If you're the CEO and you don't like your schedule or your daily routine, then change it.

I may not have created anything of importance yet, but my goal is to do something on the side and part time while working, have fun with it, and stay true to to the fun point the entire time. When something you put on yourself stops being fun, you need to start asking questions.

Cheers
Sorry, but that's not true. For your solder joint to fail it would have to be hot enough to cause a fire.

Pressure type connectors are simply cheaper and easier, and were not initially allowed because soldered connections are better.

http://www.justanswer.com/electrical/18vcb-not-allowed-solde...

Soldered (sweated) fittings are not allowed on gas lines for this reason though: If there was a fire you don't want the gas lines to leak after the solder melts.
That sounds like a really interesting assignment!

It makes me wonder how much effort is generally spent on developing accessible applications. I should really look into whether or not any best practice documents exist for accessibility.
The story of how Groupon brushed off Google
I Never Really Delivered On Time, Now I Can Brag About It
You made me somewhat rethink my goals of fun being my top priority for projects. Now I have no idea as to whether I would continue working on something if it got big and i had to worry about legal and administrative issues.

I'm sure every experience starts different, but I would trade this off as soon as possible if I had to. Work on the stuff you want to work on! I hope you can soon!

Cheers
Mutually Assured Cyberdestruction?
From my experience, this notion of martyrdom is only common among startup CEOs at companies that haven't yet gain traction or found their own success. Self-validation is easy to come by when your company is a success. When things aren't going well, it's much easier to justify if you can convince yourself (and others) that you're working on it as hard as you can.

The idea is that more work now == more success later. The martyr CEO who sacrifices every weekend and never sleeps a full eight hours is the extreme example of putting in more work. And until the company actually achieves success, the long hours of work are all the CEO really has to show other people (and themselves) that their company is worthwhile.
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/579/why-are-there-h...
Lazy, sure, but not always a worse experience for the end user.

Testing w/ Modernizr _will_ use client resources, and sometimes it's faster, cheaper, and less costly to make assumptions than run those tests.

Terrible case in point: "position:fixed". It's not supported in older iOS and IE6, and CSS fallbacks don't work. Testing for it w/ JS is too costly to be worth it, so UA checking is a better compromise. (That is, if it's mandatory to degrade well...)
Really like. May help explain how some submissions trend better than others. Think that similar submissions should be aggregated rather than duplicated.

One interesting use for the data may be trending user stats - showing karma points from submissions and comments by day or week.
The drug company always continues to provide the drug to those people already getting it, at least in every trial I've ever seen.

The placebo group... it depends on the trial. There are some trials where crossover to the active treatment is not permitted, and patients may die without getting it. The problem is that if you allow crossover, usually that means that the trial will not show a difference in overall survival, paradoxically because the treatment works really well. Regulatory bodies such as the FDA demand positive survival data in some cancers before they will approve a treatment. So it can be a difficult ethical issue, because although it sounds terrible to deprive the placebo group of treatment, if you don't prove it works then it won't get approved and nobody will get it outside of the trial.

The investigators didn't say whether they allowed crossover in this trial. It probably doesn't matter too much, because abiraterone is already approved and available at the moment for use after patients have had chemotherapy with docetaxel. So for example, patients that progressed on this trial could go on to receive docetaxel which might control their disease for a while, and then after that they could access abiraterone, so they wouldn't necessarily miss out. Is it better to have abiraterone and then docetaxel, or to have docetaxel and then abiraterone? That's an open question, which may never get tested in a clinical trial. Generally the order doesn't matter as much as being exposed to all the agents that are active. In an elderly patient who is a bit frail, I think most patients and doctors would prefer to use abiraterone up front rather than chemo, which has more side effects.