skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think I understand what you're saying now. In vacuum, an object will radiate until it reaches absolute zero; in air, however, you're constantly being heated to the ambient temperature, meaning you can't radiate your way down until the air has lost its heat too.

The thing I think you're not taking into account is that this device has the effect of slightly increasing your black-body radiation. So you're at 1300K, radiating at 1300K, but we apply a little electricity and you start radiating a little more-- maybe you now look like you're at 1301K. Your heat hasn't actually increased, just apparent radiation, and as a consequence you cool down a little faster than your black-body profile would suggest.

So say you're at room temperature, radiating at room temperature, being warmed by the air, and not losing any heat. We apply current again, and you start radiating at a little over ambient temperature. The air is still warming you, but you're cooling a little faster than before, with the extra heat being deposited wherever the radiation is absorbed. To the air, you now feel cool.

Why should the absolute temperature of the ambient air have an effect on the process?
Frankly, not impressed at all.

I took the liberty to fix it for you; http://cl.ly/1d2T3S0B0G3F3j343q2g

The user just wants to see the comments and possibly add his own.

The user doesn't want to learn why there is a "Comments"- and a "Reactions"-tab and what the difference is. The user doesn't want to be bothered with yet another meaningless star-gauge. The user doesn't care about your "community".

None of that clutter provides any value. It's just noise.
There seems to be an implicit assumption in what you just said, that I strongly disagree with. You seem to be saying that startups are only capable of tackling "iPhone games" and "web apps that let you share photos of your cats". I see no reason whatsoever to believe that that is true.

Startups, especially the ones that manage to get VC funding, are not limited to the world of "a laptop, a cafe, a collaborator and a stack of "For Dummies" books."

Somebody in an earlier thread mentioned how "universities are the best source of scientific papers," etc. as part of his argument against Thiel's approach. But, while it's just one anecdote, I'm working on a startup (not funded by Thiel, or anyone but the founders) and we have subscriptions to a pile of relevant IEEE, ACM and AAAI journals that relate to the work we're doing, and that's not even considering how much research is available on the 'Net.

Personally I see no reason that startups can't (and shouldn't) be pushing the envelope technologically, with the caveat that certain fields would require huge capital investments for equipment and personnel, that might be beyond the reach of even deep pocketed investors. But not all fields fit that description.
Yeah, that's the one that seems to be a tabloid scare. All the stories are from a few days in August '09 and all cite a single Daily/Sunday Express article (apart from the Wired one, which has some later corrections). And the Daily Express... isn't the most reliable of news sources. They've got a reputation for scare stories and, weirdly, conspiracy theories about Princess Diana. Russell Howard sums them up quite well - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq5_joo5l5I.
I'm using both Sinatra and Rails, but I would not advise someone to switch to Sinatra because Rails has more "fixed vulnerabilities".

Around me there are many times more Rails apps than Sinatra apps. I do believe that the increased exposure of Rails makes it more likely to detect vulnerabilities over there.
Thanks alot for that link, it lead me to this very interesting talk by Brent Victor, as kind of a counter argument to that principle: http://vimeo.com/36579366. And holy shit does he have a point. Many of today's programmers seem to be trapped in the thinking that the unix and vim principles are the holy grail, forever to be pursued, never to be changed. Isn't it time we stand up and reassess the tools we have? And I'm not just talking about the teleprompt generation tools like unix and vim, but also today's IDEs that have basically evolved as extensions to those tools.

I also recommend the following talk about "subtext": http://www.subtextual.org/subtext2.html.
How to build a spar for a human-powered helicopter
This is already a PR nightmare for Prentke Romich and Semantic Compaction. They've shown that they don't care about public opinion (or at least broader public opinion). They have a duopoly on their (very niche) market and are going to do whatever it takes to defend it. It's absolutely possible that their next legal move will be to ask Apple to proactively remove the app from iPads and to file for an injunction if Apple does not do so voluntarily.
It would be nice if disqus would detect these things and send a static HTML thing with "allow us in noscript to join the discussion!" and maybe a static view of the thread so far.
I don't think it's really been a "them" for a while now; Xanadu as a funded project with employees wound down around 1993-94, and since then it's just been Ted Nelson occasionally sketching out designs.
Behavioral Targeting for better UX and increased conversions
The answer is both obvious and depressing: greed. USA basically controls the Internet right now. We need to build the next internet that cannot be co-opted, censored, disabled, or monitored.
Nothing for twitter.

Nothing for facebook.

Nothing for ebay.

Nothing for nbc.
iTunes apps are manually approved by apple. I don't think that's a reasonable security measure for the web.
This is a wonderful comment. However, what psychologists know as g is the result of over-interpretation of a descriptive method known as factor analysis (which is very similar to principal components analysis).

http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/reviews/flynn-beyond/
Major thanks to Cosmo Shalizi who opened my eyes to these issues.

Also, the SAT grew from IQ tests, so it really isn't surprising that the two measures are correlated, given that the questions for SAT were probably kept on the test because they correlated with IQ tests.

That being said, the work of Kahneman (And the new paper which I should probably read instead of commenting on HN) is pretty rock solid as far as it goes. It is worth noting that there is a converse position in this field, that of Gerd Gigerenzer who argues that these heuristics exist because they are useful, and only go wrong in artificial situations.
www.cogsci.msu.edu/DSS/2007-2008/Todd/environments_that_make_us_smart.pdf

Personally, I incline far more towards the views of Gigerenzer than those of Kahneman, especially given that Gierenzer and colleagues attempt to model the mind given their theories computationally, which is something that psychology could do with more of.

Full disclosure: I'm a psychologist who's very frustrated with the lack of statistical sophistication and interpretation in my field.
You mean, worse?
It should be possible to dramatically lower the cost of protein produced this way.

It is just so much more efficient to grow corn, soy and pea protein and then consume it directly, rather than feeding it to cattle first, to harvest a fraction of the input protein as meat.

This stuff could win on cost alone.
You're looking for ctags or cscope, the first of which is mentioned in the blog. As for code analysis and warnings, surely that's a property of the compiler being used?
Very interesting... Only a few short years ago this entire article would have been science fiction.

From the article: "The platinum acts as a catalyst, stripping electrons from glucose molecules, similar to how aerobic animal cells (such as our own) strip electrons from glucose with enzymes and oxygen."

I wonder, and am curious to learn more about, how much of this process is really understood by modern science.
Fortunately, modern technology makes it very easy to get adequate B12 without consuming any animal products.
This is great (I'm a big proponent of synthetic meat, which is similar, and the potential of engineered foods in general) but I'm not so sure Biz is the best judge of what real meat tastes and feels like if he has been a long time vegan.

Also it will be extremely difficult to get Americans to switch to fake meat, no matter how cheap/tasty/nutritious it is. We are a pretty superstitious culture.
Verhuis: zelf verhuizen doet besparen
The problem is one of erosion. Your privacy is slowly eroded while the government's privacy remains strong. There's always a reason to collect more data on people, citing the usual tired arguments (kiddie porn, terrorism, drugs) to further those goals. This is very much a power game, and if you're not willing to fight to maintain your power, you will lose it.

Then comes the problem of how this information is being used against you. Since you're now more of an open book, and the government is opaque-as-usual, you can't know how they're using your information in many cases, or even how it's affecting your life. Sure, you can send FOIA requests, but then you need to know WHAT to ask for, and even that kind of information is a jealously kept secret, and such requests can be vetoed on "security" grounds. You simply cannot know EVERYTHING that they're doing, but they sure as hell want to know everything that YOU'RE doing.

It's like poker, except you have to show all your cards and you're not allowed to see theirs.
(2) An opposing but also convincing idea is that it is better to focus your efforts in one area to avoid spreading yourself too thin. Such focus allows you to gain "comparative advantage" and to easily do things that are difficult for people who don't have your deep experience. In other words, it is better to spend your efforts trying to become the world's greatest Python hacker than to jump on the bandwagon of every new programming language that comes out and ending up as a "Jack of all trades, master of none."

My conclusion: I do think it is worthwhile to challenge yourself not to just stick to what you already know (which in my personal experience is VERY easy to do especially if you find that you're very productive using what you know). But you also have to be selective. Life is too short to try to be a master of everything. And there is great value in gaining a very deep expertise in a particular topic or technique.

I've come to the conclusion that, if possible, it's best to be a "jack of all trades, master of one". It may take longer, or you may never truly attain mastery, but being flexible and not just willing, but eager to push yourself to learn new and different things is always a good thing. If nothing else, find something you enjoy enough to get enough skill in to pay the bills and then play with other things in your spare time.

This is particularly interesting to me, because while I find I could become obsessed with something enough to attain deep mastery, I find there are so many awesome things to learn and play with that I don't want to miss out on them. This could explain why I didn't go to grad school (and go on to become a professor, a once dream of mine) and haven't founded my own startup, but instead prefer to languish at a 7-4 day job with the government and sample everything from robotics to music to cooking to search and rescue in my spare time. To be sure, I still push myself at the job (it's funny you specifically mention C++ and Python: I'm finishing up Coplien's Advanced C++ while delving back into Python for the robotics as well as smartphone/tablet programming, and Go has also piqued my interest). The one limiting factor to try and keep me focused is that I try to keep my learning to tools that are open source, so as not to suffer from lockin and platform obsolescence. Plus there's the technical superiority of open source software in general.
Why the Smartest People in the Valley Were All Dead Wrong about Widgets
This is a pretty big change in policy. Does anyone have any ideas on why they would shift policy this much?
My only guesses would be the following in order of likelihood:

1) Expected court rulings
2) Cost of compliance with no real legal obligation to do so
3) Leadership change to someone that is against this kind of copyright enforcement
Yup. I hate this idea. If anything, we need /fewer/ gTLDs. No one uses .mobi, .travel, .museum, etc. If you're serious, you still get a .com.

"movies.youtube" sounds like nothing I'd care to visit.
Haha that is awesome. That is def. not me. I think my husband made a mistake when updating the blog a few days ago. Fixed now! Good eye. Thanks!
Statistical Graphics, ClojureScript etc
For Cisco’s SDN strategy look North
The Mathematics of Biorhythms, by Cleve Moler, inventor of MATLAB
Clickable: http://palet.ly
What was surprising was how much faster the Java implementation was than Go. I expected it to be competitive but I didn't expect it to perform much better.
It's actually $185,000

http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/customer-service/faq...

"The evaluation fee is US$185,000. Applicants will be required to pay a US$5,000 deposit fee per requested application slot when registering. The deposit will be credited against the evaluation fee. Other fees may apply depending on the specific application path. "
Algarvissimo Deutsch
This is a terrible idea. Do you cachebust your CSS?
Huh? I've been a vegetarian for 16 years, and a vegan for one year, and I'm quite adjusted. I don't remember any generations passing in that time, but I might not have been paying attention.
Nice post on a topic I'm always interested in. Clicking through multiple pages with ads around is a pain though. I would suggest the author to publish it as an ebook in pdf. I would definitely buy a copy if it's in $5-15 range.
It's nice to see that the australian cancer research society thought their $100k would be better spent on domain speculation than actually funding cancer research.
FYI you can get Rails security alerts directly to your inbox via http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-security
It is not just silly, it's the most stupid suggestion of the year.
If you are happy to use half-working, half-baked products, feel free. I will choose those, where software is finely tuned to the hardware and this combination makes pleasurable experience.

"If you are serious about software you should make your own hardware" © Alan Kay.
Respectfully, I met these people at their final event a month ago.

Taylor Wilson specifically is one of the most amazingly intelligent people I've met of any age. Yes, building a Farnsworth–Hirsch fusor is not amazing for a grad student or well resourced adult. Doing it successfully is still a great project for an individual, and his knowledge of nuclear engineering in general was at least at the same level as nuclear engineering grad students I've talked with.

Anyone can sound trivial in a 1 sentence mass market summary. "Invented a shopping cart, sold it to Yahoo, invests small amounts of money (less than a decent car) several in startups per year" "wrote bingo software for teachers, has a blog" "developed a website to share photos" "with a cofounder, developed a website to help people find things on the Internet".
It's great when people try new things, and honestly rewarding creators for the work they've created is a great thing. Here's the problem, outside of the sphere of influence people don't know about the service, and that's always going to be a problem.

Also a problem? People not caring enough to sign up, if your minimum is $50 and the average site makes is $3.50, why's anyone going to take the time to get that money?

Also a problem? A lot of readers like writers who don't like in the U.S., and a lot of the time that $3.50 then gets currency exchanged down to even less.

I'm glad they've held their hands and said 'we made a mistake', but it was essentially not the greatest idea in the world to start with. You have to run through all the weird edge cases before you even get started.
Why horizontal layout only, I never use that orientation.

The scrolling is a deal breaker for me, no smooth scroll, it's all flicker/jerky. iPad 3. I'm assuming it's just a wrapper around the web view. The buttons to like and comment are too small to hit with any accuracy.

It's still better than the iPhone only app that I have to 2x.
do you have any studies to show how targeting helps in increasing conversions?
But, it isn't actually meat...

It is full of phytoestrogen-supplying soy, industrially-processed plant fillers from peas and barley, and other chemicals like titanium dioxide.

I would rather eat a steak with a bowl of pea-barley porridge on the side.
"I'm no expert, but wikipedia says we probably shouldn't be eating that. What am I missing?"

I think you answered your own question there.

Oh by the way you've already put TiO2 several times in your mouth
As a long-time vegetarian, I'm really excited about this. I just hope they're able to get distribution here in Austin soon, although with the Whole Foods group HQed here, I expect that won't take too long.
Washing machine is general enough for its tasks too. A washing machine can wash nearly all kind of clothes. A refrigerator can preserve anything that needs freezing. The defining characteristics of those machines is companies telling me not to worry anything beyond the knobs and dials. And I don't want to worry anything beyond the knobs and dials.

But no way in the world would I like to throwaway a washing machine if something small went wrong inside it. That's where the tinkering part comes to play. I don't mind the knobs and dials, but claiming that not having user serviceable parts is not a requisite of usability gets really very difficult to believe in.
...probably a lot that are written by those who do not care enough to read RFCs. I was recently asked on an interview to write regex that grabs "valid" e-mail addresses. I asked if I could review the RFC so I could write useful regex. I was denied, and I ended up totally uninterested in this trendy company with amateurish standards.
It is, at best, equivalent to a salary anyone bright enough to graduate with a college degree could make straight out of high school. Perhaps often less, as the expenses of running a business can start to pile up even more quickly than that. The money alone isn't going to promote sway any more than the compensation out of any job would.

What it does gain someone, however, is the ability to work on their own ideas full time. Given that you are reading HN, I'm sure you can see how that can be appealing. If they have something amazing that they are ready to run with at that age, going to college at that juncture would have probably been a poor idea anyway.

College is not about finding a job or making money, so anyone who is interested in what college really has to offer is not going to find this offer by Thiel particularity appealing to begin with. Their sights are set on something much different.
Anyone else read this title and think "Finally they've figured a way to let us have hard drives connected to our brains" or was it just me?:-D The technology is certainly interesting...
OK, I think I see what you're getting at. But we could devise a AltDragonBox game with a completely different set of arbitrary rules. (Possibly even rules that are inconsistent.) And as far as game play goes, AltDragonBox would work just as well. But there's a reason that the rules of algebra are what they are. And if you can't distinguish between DragonBox and AltDragonBox, I don't think you're learning what you need to learn.

Here's another way to look at it: we all know people who could ace their high school math tests because they had memorized the rules of manipulation but weren't good at math--as evidenced by their poor performance in college and failure to succeed in future STEM classes. If "the symbols and their manipulations are what you're studying" (which, I agree, there is some truth to), then what is it exactly that these people were lacking?
>Despite what is reported every so often, you cannot patent abstract concepts: only specific ways to execute upon those concepts.

That was true only up until software patents were approved. In software, there is no hard and fast line between concept and execution. Without a physical product, the concept is the execution.
From what I've seen, their raw input (applicants) is only slightly more female. They do seem to be trying to expand their reach (the first batch had a LOT Of ivy+mit+stanford+caltech applicants).
Nintendo expects gamers to supply a hard drive for the Wii U
hmmm, so nobody should be allowed to record video in public? I mean, what if I'm recording my friend's party in the park and you trip in the background. Am I allowed to upload the video? Do I have to edit you out first? What if I upload the video figuring you're anonymous in it, but then a friend of a friend recognizes you and edits out just the highlights? This argument can be carried to extremes; I just prefer to draw the line at public spaces are public, which even if it's not the best demarcation, is at least fairly black and white.

Regardless of that, I was talking about monitoring, not broadcasting. If the police cameras record what happens on every street corner and the video is archived for potential review, I think that's quite different than live streaming to the internet. Almost all of these arguments hinge on the police watching something, and then doing something unpleasant. Maybe the doing is inevitable, but I don't think that's a foregone conclusion, so therefore I also don't think such what if scenarios are slam dunk indictments of monitoring itself.
The World's Drunkest Programmer... In your office?
We also have these Police CCTV vans: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2711/4520733969_f3cf546624.jp...
Amazon, Google lead rush for new Web real estate
The Power of Personal Organization Tools
It is a real shame there isn't an association of independant app developers that applied for the .app TLD. I am dubious about Amazon or Google owning it, as they may restrict it only to apps that are in their respective stores.
I've tried it - it's not like meat but it's better than textured vegetable protein by a long shot.

The weirdest thing about it is that some people are seriously allergic to it so it's got a heck of a warning label.
"now that all are squatted."

I find lots of fine domain names for TLDs that aren't .com
I would argue that very few of today's programmers really follow the Unix philosophy, but those I know who do would likely agree that our tools should be reassessed. But you seem to be conflating the idea of reassessing our tools and reassessing our principles. In my opinion the core principles [1] are eternal, however transient the programs themselves.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy