skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"Research has found that there is a connection between wealth and happiness, but only upto a limit. The beneficial effects of wealth taper off almost entirely once a comfortable living standard is reached". But which study?

I've heard that thrown around a lot, and probably with citation a few times. But I don't see a linked study here, and I recently read (or heard, maybe on Radiolab?) that further studies have contradicted that. And in fact various happiness metrics increase pretty much linearly with wealth. And they came at it from another angle, saying that the biggest jump after basic security comes when you have somewhat more than others around you. That is, are you richer than your neighbor? Does he covet your ox?
There's also a deeper trend from more rules to less. In the mid 20th century much of the economy had the shape it did as a result of negotiations between powerful groups. Now things are more fluid. Which on the whole is good, because the old arrangements often embodied technical limitations that have now disappeared.
On the contrary, PA is one of the few sites that maintains an ad quality that means I actually do click on a large percentage of the ads there.
Anyone that is thinking about using Dwolla needs to read about this incident and understand what happened. Dwolla was completely unable to understand or handle the fraud. In addition, they are in total denial that the only reason anyone cares about them is because MtGox (a bitcoin exchange) uses them and brings lots of volume to their platform.

I run Bitfloor and was hit with similar fraud as Tradehill (on a much much smaller scale) and Dwolla was just as ignorant and dismissive of it. Fundamentally, they went into a business that they did not understand. I know this to be true because early on (even before any Tradehill incident) we emailed them to ask about ACH chargebacks and how they handle them. They claimed there were no chargebacks and this was everything I needed to know about their lack of understanding.
Hmm, that led me to several assumptions that I'm not sure I would make without that information. Seems interesting. Thank you for sharing.
I didn't meant to say that Ruby should use Debian package management or anything like that: it needs its own stuff at its own speed. More that they should be a bit slower on the draw when it comes to pissing on other people's work.
Firefox was a transitional product. Early versions of Firefox looked a lot like Internet Explorer. Outside of some small differences in naming (e.g., favorites versus bookmarks), users could transition without re-learning much. There were even Firefox skins (yeah, they used to call them that) that made Firefox look like IE.

At the time, Firefox was also a much better product. It was faster, it was more secure, and some of its seemingly obscure features (by the mainstream metric) made it wildly popular with geeks. It became "cool" to use Firefox.

Firefox taught regular users was a "browser" was. I bought a Firefox t-shirt early on. At first, no one knew what it was; no one knew what a browser was. But over time, people started speaking up: "Hey, I use Firefox."

Fast forward three or four years, and users already know that switching browser isn't all that painful. They've already done it once, and Firefox isn't the fastest kid on the block any more. Everything Firefox taught users -- to the undoing of IE -- is now being done to them.
It's weird that things as different as S3 and Redis all fall under the umbrella of "NoSQL". We should probably replace the SQL-NoSQL dichotomy with terms that more accurately reflect the real differences.
The city should have the bare minimum equipment possible required to perform the functions required of it, because it's purchased from tax revenues, which are forcibly extracted from the population, and thus should be spent only on things that are necessary for the proper governance of the city.

Sure, web and print designers should have Macs if they need them but it's pretty clear that a lot of people who don't need them have them.
>I'm not sure there is much of a demographic of people who are "indie gamers" , most people who play indie games also play AAA games, so a console for Indie games only doesn't seem like it would have a huge target market.

It looks like they are trying to take the PC indie game market and bring it to the TV. It doesn't matter if indie gamers also play AAA games, the point is (and what I was replying to) that people who play indie games, of whom there are many, are willing to overlook graphics for gameplay.

>that huge a deal especially considering there are also ports of android for x86

Almost anything resource intensive is done with the NDK which is in C/C++, if they used x86 almost no Android games would play out of the box.

>Couldn't this be mostly done by using a motherboard from a laptop or similar?

It could be done, yes. But at significantly more expense. Think about the price of a mobo, CPU, GPU and RAM. You can get an arm SOC with all the above included for less than $25--that's how they're able to sell these things for $99.

>Indie developers are unlikely to develop around a platform that does not already have significant user base.

That's why the $99 price tag is such a big deal, hopefully it will help them reach critical mass.

Additionally since it runs android, developers can develop for it as well as touchscreen android devices with almost no extra effort (for non touchscreen essential games).

>...developed around the 360 first because it already had a significant market.

X-box primarily attracted indie developers b/c they made it easier for them than any other console. But the PC has way more indie games than the X-box because it is even easier to develop for and distribute (even though there are way more console gamers than PC gamers).
Cost Saving Tips for Amazon AWS Usage
This particular limitation of MySQL hit me HARD HARD HARD circa 2008 when I tried to use some of that upside down text you find online as test data, and just couldn't work out why I was getting data corruption.

Luckily Perl's Unicode support is fantastic, and saved my ass
I've also tried outlooks tasks and while it's good as one-off reminders it doesn't solve the big problem with email, and neither will this mockup that doesn't even propose anything else than the action-lists.

The problem with email is that all information you need is everywhere! It's a matter of discipline. Labels only solve half the issue. To start with we've got improper headlines, emails with information about many, totally unrelated tasks, replies to old messages in same conversation - this breaks threading in every email client i've tried, especially if many different senders jump in and out of the conversation.
I swore off most of Google about 6 months ago or so. Contrary to apparently popular opinion, there's a whole big Internet out there that isn't part of Google.

I still use Search at work, solely because the project I'm currently working on (last 12 months or so) requires a lot of searching for information, and my browser history with google is helpful in determining places I have/have not already searched when altering search terms. Other than that, I can count on my fingers the number of times I hit a Google product each week, and usually have fingers left over.
I'm wondering how they try to solve the problem of getting a touch optimized game to work fine with a analog controller.
I know that they said something about a touchscreen, but havn't shown some sort of concept for it.
> The National Association of Secretaries of State disagree with you, including in the following public report "Issues and Trends in State Notary Regulation: NASS Report on State Notarization Policies and Practice" found here: http://www.nass.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=ar....

> Key Quotes Regarding electronic notarization: “New state and federal laws, such as the 2000 Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act (E-SIGN), authorize every state-commissioned notary in the nation to use electronic signatures in performing official acts.”

You are misunderstanding the issue California and other states have with electronic notarization. As the document you cite notes, but you appear to have overlooked:

As previously mentioned, all states require that an individual seeking
to have a document electronically notarized appear in person before the
notary at the time of notarization. Colorado’s law specifically emphasizes
that electronic notarization is not remote notarization–the signer must
appear in the presence of the notary and swear, affirm, or acknowledge
the electronic document being notarized.

The laws that have made electronic signatures valid in many contexts, including notarization, just deal with using electronic signatures to replace paper signatures and other physical records. For instance, again from the document you cited:

Therefore, UETA permits a notary public and other authorized officers
to act electronically, effectively removing the stamp/seal requirements.
However, it does not eliminate any of the other requirements of notarial
laws. The process of notarization remains the same under UETA. Only the
technology used to make a signature is different.

More:

Under the NASS electronic notarization standards, RULONA, and the most
recent version of the Model Notary Act, an electronic notarization must
meet the same basic standards as a paper-based notarization. The traditional
components remain present, including the notary certificate, the notary
signature and the notary seal information. In most states, the signer must
still appear before the notary public face to face in the same room.
Requiring personal appearance allows a notary to interact with and affirm
the identity of the signer, ensuring that he or she is authorized to sign
and is not doing so under duress.
Power vs. Adventure - PL/I and C (1994)
The iPad is about cool apps, not useful apps... I want to try this out and see if it's enjoyable.
Unfortunately, this is only a larger symptom of the role money plays in congress. I don't see bills like this stopping any time soon. sigh
I love the idea and I have talked about the possibility of an ARM-based console for the past 2 years, but the Ouya is one of those cases where the execution doesn't seems right.

There's a lack of differentiation, it has no exclusives like big consoles have which can be critical to move units. The GTA series alone moved more PS2s than any other games in that console, and it had tons of great titles. By the time GTA3 made it to the Xbox the PS2 was getting the blockbuster San Andreas 8 months before any other platform did. In comparison most of the games on display for the Ouya are phone/tablet games. The anti-console crowd argues that people wont buy consoles anymore despite the fact that big consoles like the X360 have exclusive games not even available on PC. Simply put, why should I buy a Ouya if I can get the exact same games on my phone or tablet?

I don't really understand the whole "hackers can modify the hardware"-part, wasn't the fragmentation of the Android ecosystem due to multiple hardware variations the reason why many developers stick to iOS? Wouldn't homogeneous hardware like that of the Kindle Fire make more sense in this situation?

Since it's a console and not a handheld portable device I don't see why it couldn't have a HDD for storage instead of the paltry 8GB it has. It could easily pack 500GB in a 2.5 drive, leaving tons of space to store games, but with just 8GB less than 10 1GB games will use up all of the storage space, so users will have to delete those games and then redownload them every time they want to play, and waiting for a 1GB download is way slower than DVD loading times on consoles, let alone HDD times.
Open Movie Ara's Tale is Released
If it's only a KeePass database or a small (1MB?) TrueCrypt volume for text/documents, the traffic still won't ever become appreciable. Also, you're implying that the only selling point for Dropbox is that it uses deltas, which is far from true.
I would also suggest you read: http://www.shtylman.com/archives/319

A while back I recapped what happend between myself and Dwolla and why they are not a useful service.
Couldn't agree more. I wrote up similar thoughts a few months ago where I tried to outline a lightweight protocol that would be implemented at the editor level (as a plugin) to support common editor functions such as opening files, switching tabs, and of course real-time syncing.

https://gist.github.com/1999816
The Power of Focus and the Perils of Myopia
The first thing I check on any Life simulation is how they handle the edges. There are three easy ways: edges wrap, just off screen is permanently dead, and just off screen is permanently alive. This sim uses wrap. That's how I've always done it too.

The real way is to allow for an arbitrarily large grid off s screen. In fact, a true implementation requires that. But I can see how you might overload the machine pretty quick when you're implementing in Javascript.
Linux code search
great idea i know my developer would surely use it :)
> More than a month into its tenure on the App Store's shelf, though, the app has only made about $5,000

So the app made more than 80% of apps will ever make. Also after just one month the app almost break even. That's not too bad if you consider that the product is something ultra trivial.
"...and we hope that the city saying it will not buy Apple products will make Apple reconsider its participation"

Not sure Apple is willing to reverse their current design trend over this. They would have to move away from 'cutting edge' designs to get back to disassemble-able products (a requirement for the certification) My "wanna-be eco-friendly soul" is somewhat pleased at this stance though. I think the future disposal of a product should be a concern in the design and if it makes it a millimeter thicker, so be it.
Sponsored by:

Clock http://clock.co.uk/

Geekli.st http://geekli.st/community/nodeup

PeepCode https://peepcode.com/
I don't see why not. But even if they are contractors and not full-on "city employees" they are still likely to be working on city issued equipment which makes their actual employment status a moot point.
I wonder why the sales dropped so low on June 16th. Didn't the "Chomp" update not roll out on the 22nd?

I don't like the Timer example because it's such a new app. Let's see how it places in 3 months. It's also competing on a crowded search term. I can't imagine hoping to make top 3 for such a crowded niche. Maybe it will eventually get there though.
The Other Reason We Were in Stealth Mode
If you are a merchant, please read this before thinking about using Dwolla (or any service for that matter). Feel free to contact me about what I wrote and my personal experiences with it.

http://www.shtylman.com/archives/319

This is not meant to be trolling; I genuinely want people to be aware of what they are getting into and understand the risks so they can avoid the problems I (and others) have already faced.
I certainly do believe that some city workers would become more effective through choice of their computer, but Mac purchases, if allowed, should be limited explicitly to these individuals. The way governments work, that doesn't happen - everyone finds a way to justify it.
> Also: how the heck is Ouya pronounced?

From the FAQ:

OOO-yah. Apparently it doesn't have the most pleasant meaning in Swahili.
I'm similar - I love indie games and therefore love the humble bundles, for examble.

I do play AAA games too, but I'm a PC gamer when it comes to AAA and don't own any consoles at all. I'd happily buy a console for great indie games and then play the rest on my PC (which I have anyway because I use it for plenty of things besides games, some of which are sometimes even intensive enough to require an expensive computer)
Livestream broadcaster: HD live video to web without a PC
I see tow problems with this.

First, the fact that "beautiful" is very subjective... what makes code beautiful? Is it the idea expressed, the syntax, the cleverness?

Second, the fact that this subjective property could imply that something is fault tolerant, without being clear of what you mean by fault tolerance. This being a very large research area requires one to be precise of what one is talking about, before saying that you solve the problem by writing "beautiful" code.
JavaScript Code Editing with Autocompletion in Eclipse Orion
That's why I was putting more emphasis on the word "domination" than on "monopoly". I agree that WalterBright may have been making a very dense and mostly irrelevant point, to which the proper response may have been "so what?". I simply disagree that this is how we should interpret it. Rather I would give the benefit of the doubt and take him as making a real, germane, substatial-but-misguided libertarian talking point. That is, there are legitimately people in the libertarian camp (I was one of them!) who falsely conflate deregulated markets and competitive ones.
Because people don't understand it or don't care, and that doesn't garner eyeballs like the story about Tom and Katie's split.
Drug made from toxic weed kills cancer
Building Full Text Search and Pattern Matching on iOS with Postgres
A little context? I checked out the link and didn't really see anything that caught my eye. Read a few blog posts, still didn't get it.
If you don't need to do anything that you can't do effectively on a 2004 machine, why would you need anything more? City employees are welcome to buy iPads and Lexuses with their own money (although it comes from my pocket, it's theirs to dispatch as they see fit), but when it comes to spending mine, they shouldn't have anything beyond what they need to perform their job function.
Cloud Computing: Google Apps cloud has a relatively high carbon intensity
It's called a lobby. There are all kinds of them out there to study: NRA, pro/anti abortion, doctors, lawyers, unions, and so on and so forth.
Show HN: Gridspot, 10x cheaper cloud compute using distributed computing
I think Uber and AirBnB are in very different situations. Uber is a clever hack within the rules, that seems to follow the claimed intention of the laws (though violates a lot of the reasons that certain interests had for aiding in the creation of those laws).

AirBnB however has a business model that encourages people to do something that in many, many places is just not allowed. It also runs afoul of the spirit of zoning laws.
Some of my thoughts on the GitHub investment
Even the messages app is almost too confusing, let alone combining everything else as well. As far as I understand it, if I send an SMS then anyone with a signal can get it; if I send an iMessage, then they need an internet connection or it won't go through -- is that right? If so, it's a pain to mix them up, as many areas do not get good 3G coverage (especially indoors) but excellent phone signal.

Surprisingly few of the people I text have iPhones (or smartphones at all), so I can't easily verify this.
> over-optimized

That does seem like a better term for it. Or at least an equal term for it :)
One reason is that the London Interbank Offered Rates (LIBOR) are just not as relevant as they used to be:

"...the scandal has shed light on an inconvenient truth about these interbank rates which are used to determine the price of so many hundreds of trillions of dollars worth of global financial contracts.

That inconvenient truth is that even when London Interbank Offered Rates are not "fixed", they may still not bear very much relation to reality - because banks are not actually offering much unsecured money to each other at all."

See: Inconvenient truths about Libor
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-your-money-18701623
I heard about "LIBOR fixing" but this was the most detail I found on it so far. (To be fair I've been busy and haven't gone proactively digging for information on it.)
Sheriff Mack was "the Internet's" candidate of choice to run against Smith. Unfortunately he lost the primary, with Smith winning nearly 80% of the vote.

It really bothered me to the primary results so skewed in Smith's favor. Most of the people who pulled the trigger for him probably either never heard of SOPA, or if they had, didn't know he was the bill's sponsor. (Not that his malfeasance is limited to SOPA, of course.)
Ask HN: Why is there no good business dashboard creation tool? 
I've tried Geckoboard, and a couple hosted options aswell. They all seem to be rather simple, but are too much work if you want it to display and work your way.

What (hosted/open source) tool do you use for your business dashboard?
> This is a MySQL limitation that they have fixed in recent releases (as the OP notes)

TFA notes that this is not fixed, the `utf-8` mysql encoding still isn't utf-8. And as TFA also notes related technologies (aka drivers) may not be compatible with it (the example he uses, mysql2 for Ruby, still hasn't had an official release supporting utf8mb4[0])

> it's true that Unicode is (relatively speaking) very new for such a fundamental technology

That's becoming quite hard an argument to swallow when encountering astral planes issues in 2012 when Unicode 2.0 was introduced in 1996.

[0] https://github.com/brianmario/mysql2/issues/249
Gadget Lab Show: Roomba, App Store Woes and Nokia 808 PureView
iPhone 5 Engineering Samples
My tutorial (http://www.moncefbelyamani.com/how-to-install-xcode-homebrew...) is mentioned in the article, and at the time I wrote it (back in March), those were the steps necessary to install all of those tools.

I published it to help others avoid the pain I went through, and to share what I've learned so far. Given that it has had over 15,000 views so far (mostly search traffic), I'd say it's doing its job.

A few weeks ago, I used my own tutorial to set up a new MacBook Pro, and noticed that the latest version of the Xcode Command Line Tools and Homebrew seem to play well now. Originally, the separate CLT download from Apple and Kenneth Reitz's osx-gcc-installer resulted in errors when installing Homebrew, but I'm planning on trying them again soon and updating my tutorial with my findings.

I'm also planning on evaluating the new RailsInstaller for Mac, but when starting out, I recommend learning the hard way to understand what each tool does and to pick up some basic command line skills.
Television (even The Wire) is not very important and the viewing habits of strangers does not merit this much thought. Watch, read, and listen however you would like to.
Show HN: Gridset app
What's the best way to get in touch? about.me/spark
This would be a valid reason to spend more money upfront. If this is the actual reason (not just the reason put on paper), I'd be pleasantly shocked.
Is this something that could be rolled into ifttt.com?
You should talk to the guys over there via this link: http://ifttt.com/api

If This Than That (ifttt) connects popular, public APIs and bridges them to create Trigger/Event pairs to automate tasks.
Accused of downloading porn, Kentucky woman sues the pornographers
I read the Kickstarter page, then read the HN comments, and then went back and refreshed the Kickstarter page, and in perhaps twenty minutes, it had jumped almost a thousand pledges and over $100,000. That's... impressive.

EDIT: Another hour, another couple thousand pledges, another couple hundred thousand dollars, and it's funded. (And they bumped up the $99 pledge point from 5K to 10K.) That was fast.
This is a great question, and it is nice that it's easily answered.
tl;dr: the wait between episodes of a serialised tv show are really an integral part of the narration (build suspense, time to reflect, etc.)
Ask HN: Where is Chuck Norris?
is that the Penny Arcade mailchimp.com password on the whiteboard at 3:10?