skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Fantastic. I love the swipe for settings. Coincidentally, I just started on adding almost the identical thing to an Android app I'm doing that needs very simple gestures so it can be used in the car.

The only jarring note is that when selecting things, the cue from the orange tick is removed and remains very faint. It's slightly hard to scan as the visual difference between a tiny tick and a tiny plus is so small.
http://investor.apple.com/common/download/download.cfm?compa...

Check out page 26, which gives you a good breakdown of their various divisions. (Although, I don't remember if it is net or gross now, and I'm on an iPhone so it is difficult to go back and check; Apple makes about $170 margin on an iPhone, however, for conversion, so maybe 30%.)
Well... They try to get to a new simplicity. I agree that they fail at making it great, but you´ve got to give them some love for trying.

Metro is actually innovative, yet not ideal for desktop PCs. And it´s just the same with the new Logo: Strict simplicity (which makes Apple great), but not thought through in a way.

To me it feels like there´s a gatekeeper at the top missing asking the tough questions before the product is out of the door. The one that asks: "But does it really make sense and how can we do better" when the managers self-congratulate themselves on the bold moves.
Maybe mine is broken because all I can see is a mildly obnoxious page. I don't understand how this will stop people from emailing me while on vacation.
Wow, right before it touches down the camera just gets still and I get sucked right into the video as it touches down. Otherworldly.
6 Lessons I Learned as a Crappy Bootstrap
At PARC we had a slogan: "Point of view is worth 80 IQ points." It was based on a
few things from the past like how smart you had to be in Roman times to multiply two
numbers together; only geniuses did it. We haven't gotten any smarter, we've just
changed our representation system. We think better generally by inventing better
representations; that's something that we as computer scientists recognize as one of
the main things that we try to do.

Alan Kay http://billkerr2.blogspot.com.au/2006/12/point-of-view-is-wo...
I actually like Minnesota and really enjoy the seasons there-- the winter's not that bad-- but I'm going to chime in with a +1 for Hacker News. The quality, for an internet community of this size, is unparalleled. That doesn't mean there aren't a few useless posts here and there (shit, I've probably written a couple of those) but the overall quality remains high... and I haven't seen any evidence for a drop.

One thing I really like about the HN-sphere is the optimism. I'm naturally a cynical, dark person, as opposed to the Silicon Valley optimism and positive-sum outlook I see here. Neither is superior; both perspectives are needed. Too much optimism and you make bad choices (hence the engineers joining pre-funding startups for 1% equity) but too much pessimism and you lose your courage. It's best to have a splash of each.

It's refreshing coming to a place where people have faith in the ability for smart people to take back the world. Looking at recent improvements in compensation and autonomy for solid engineers, that might actually happen. There are a lot of bad startups too, but it's the good startups that are driving that.
Neat. Too bad it's drupal, rendering it totally useless to people with actual taste or skill.
I really appreciate the offer, but just to be clear, I didn't fund the whole treatment! (I'm a beer drinker, but I live near Toronto and won't be near San Francisco any time soon - but if plans change, will do.)

I know you've had a ton of ideas thrown at you in this thread, but I've been thinking about your site since donating and I think what would be really amazing, if you can accomplish it somehow, is a way to encourage people to donate regularly.

There are probably many ways you could do this, but here's one: allow people to donate a sum of money, up front, that is not assigned to a particular person who needs treatment. Periodically prompt this person to fund treatments using some portion of this sum. Alternatively, support subscription billing where each time the money is withdrawn, the person is notified and asked to assign the money that was withdrawn to a particular person who needs it.

I really feel that a recurring process of some kind could both vastly increase the amount of money you raise, and also benefit donors by giving them a periodic uplift in their mood and level of happiness. It could become, if this word is not too misplaced, addictive.
Hey benologist,
I can see you're frustrated by the frequent submissions that The Mac Observer and other tech sites make to HN. I've read a lot of your commentary on the topic and I agree with many of your points.

In my own personal opinion, it's not cool to simply dump every article that a site publishes to places like HN, Reddit, etc. I also agree that a lot of sites generate content solely as "link bait," fill their articles with useless internal links, and offer no real substance other than to re-report what some other site said.

However, in this case, and in the relatively few articles I've submitted to HN and other places (check my profile), I think that the content is both original and of general interest to the HN community.

I'm not going to lie: there's definitely a problem with many sites "spamming" HN, but in some cases there's arguably a legitimate reason to submit a story. If you don't agree, could you please elaborate on why?

As for me, I'll continue to submit infrequent stories from The Mac Observer and other sites that I think offer original perspective and are of potential interest. If you think this is unreasonable, please let me know.
And specifically it includes a drupal-org.make file which is a manifest for the Drupal.org packaging system which bundles up this profile, all of it's dependencies, and Drupal core into a single download. Perhaps they are planning to put it there, or just decided to mirror it on Github for now.

Also FWIW, the petition namespace on d.o is already occupied, perhaps that is blocking the release on d.o?
Nice work. A good idea. FB is looking to profit from UGC. UGC mean User Generated Content in case you are not familiar all the acronyms. You send them _your_ stuff and they use it to make money but restrict others from using it. They do this with a silly license thanno one reads. So use the CC license instead. If you are into "sharing", then CC is the better choice. If you want to enrich FB, then I guess keep agreeing to FB's license.

Truly, they are _your_ photos, not FB's, and you can license them any way you want. The CC license is there because people generally do not write up their own licenses. How many people even truly understand copyright? Most lawyers I know do not even fully understand it. Nothing is to say you can't draw up your own license though. One of my favorites is the "Do Whatever the Fuck You Want License". It is one line: Do whatever the fuck you want. Beautiful.

Another one I like is the "non-license". It's two words: Public domain.

This is the web. Everything gets copied. And licenses are just words. What matters really is whether someone is going to sue you. A license can make that easier or harder to do. But the truth is, if someone really wants to sue you, if you are in the US, they can. License or no license. Whether the suit goes forward is another matter. Still, getting sued is a hassle, even if the suit is baseless. (A strategy is born. Eureka.)

Apologies for the profanity.
Disagree. 70,000 people signing a petition wanting marijuana legalized does not obligate the government to legalize it. The response they gave contained their view on marijuana legalization and scientific research supporting some of their claims.

All in all, the release of this code was probably for two reasons. 1) The developers liked what they built for the government, and felt that people should be able to use/learn from it. 2) Releasing the code with the readme it has shines a good light on Obama and helps his reelection efforts.
ChrisTV Online Premium Edition 7.50
VMWare vSphere Client issue in Windows 8
I'm from Greenville, there's a huge tech crowd here. I'm in an accelerator and we have a huge office space I'm sure we could use.
To clarify, I am very much not in favor of standalone lithium ion battery packs; I'm just talking about harnessing the inevitable unused capacity of electric car batteries to smooth out the grid. The revenue from which could incentivize faster adoption of EVs, since the marginal cost of getting an EV is falling. If you had to pay for them as dedicated energy storage, it would be horrifically expensive.

As you say, many other technologies are far more suited to this kind of use.

You may be right about the cycle count; EVs are designed to be daily drivers, but charging and discharging 40-50% of a battery daily is likely more punishing than 10-20%. Though even if that is the case, it would just push my analysis 10 years into the future, when cheaper batteries and PV will make up the difference.
Spotify doesn't support 'custom' Android ROMs
They've been doing quite a bit. In the year and a half since I purchased my Thing-o-Matic, they've come out with three new hot ends, the Replicator, and dual-strusion. The Replicator is supposed to be easier to calibrate and easier to use. It also uses accelerated printing by default, which is a nice improvement.

From what I've seen, they are definitely continuing to work hard. They probably could have kept the Thing-o-Matic as their top machine, or just done a much more minor upgrade, and been safe for an additional 6-12 months. It's only now, 6+ months after the Replicator came out, that I'm starting to see posts about other commercial 3D printers (i.e. not DIY kit like a RepRap or Printbot).

Good luck with your business. Makerbot's customer service has been excellent the few times I've had a question. If you were to buy a Tangibot, I wonder how much support they will offer directly vs. having to ask the community. Of course in that case, you're really no worse off than if you sourced & built a printer yourself like a RepRap.
Better mouse control for games in the latest Chrome Beta
> The difficulty is that, unless storage gets dramatically better, ...

Refrigeration! Put all the air conditioners and refrigerators on timers. Run them hard during peak solar hours. Then turn them off during the evening peak. If that would make the buildings too cool, make ice and melt it later to chill the air. (Some event venues already do this to handle air conditioning ten thousand people during midday.)
You'll never be cutting edge by cutting corners
At least the irony of him noting the discourse had turned negative is not lost on you...
The scale of capital investment needed is really only feasible in the context of an acquisition or maybe a huge DDG boom stemming from a massive Google privacy scandal.
The article doesn't focus much on spot pricing, which is really important in what is going to happen in the future. They showed a big drop in utility revenue during peak hours. This revenue used to be caused by high usage multiplied by really high prices. Now its high demand multiplied by moderate prices.

If solar adoption continues along the path described (which is inevitable at this point, considering steadily dropping solar PV equipment prices) then the midday spot price will continue to drop as well.

We'll find out some answers to the question, what do you do when the spot price of electricity approaches 0?
Water desalination.
Pump water uphill.
Charge electric car batteries.
Electrolysis to convert water to hydrogen, for later use in fuel cells or combustion engines.

We will certainly see some innovation in short term energy storage, since the price of electricity just before the late afternoon peak will be much lower.
Hi toadkick,
That's a great idea. Our 2011 MacBook Pro that we used in the test can run 10.6, so this weekend I'll see if I can roll it back and run the tests on Snow Leopard for comparison.
Local in values and principles is precisely what leads to an echo chamber. Of course, an echo chamber is very much the state of the paleolithic human...
So you expect serious government action from an online petition system?
Two moves that tell you everything you need to know about Twitter’s future
you'd think if you were asking for $50,000 you could at least take some time to create a simple mockup of how the software will look and work...
Can you tell me more about the GiveWell verification?
Link to your GH profile?

I've written dozens of pull requests and most of them either get merged, or I get a concise explaination about why they're not being merged.

probably 3/5 I have to go through a few iterations of hack and rebase before they go upstream. I'm fine with this.

With some more background maybe we can offer feedback about why your code isn't making it upstream?
Nope, nobody from Toronto.

(Written at Coxwell & Queen) ;-)
We are bummed out that the site makes you feel this way, but we genuinely appreciate you voicing your opinion. We're here to listen to the public, and if people disagree with what we are doing, we will shut down immediately. That said, I'd like to point out a few things.

1) This is not a bidding war. We won't remove a profile until it is fully funded. This is why we only post a few profiles at a time (and not hundreds) - to ensure they are all funded in a reasonable amount of time. If the patient needs treatment before the profile is funded, we will front the cost of care.

2) Humanity has always decided who lives and who dies, and it sucks. It makes me angry, but it's a reality. The only difference is now, because of how connected the world is becoming, this reality is a little harder for those of us that are the most fortunate, to ignore.

3) We aren't first come first serve. That wouldn't make sense, because our Doctors identify patients, they don't identify us (that would lead to fraud). Instead, we are lowest-cost, highest-impact first. Every profile is reviewed by at least two independent doctors (usually more) to determine which cases are the best ones to fund (and I assure you that "cuteness" is not a criteria these Doctors use to make a decision). See our FAQ for more info on treatment guidelines.

We feel terrible that our site presents itself in a way that you think is twisted, and we would love to make whatever changes we can to improve it. Feel free to reach out to me directly at chase (at) watsi (dot) org with any other thoughts. We've spent a lot of time thinking about this (and even consulted with a medical ethicist), but we always have a lot more to learn.

But perhaps the most important thing - the internet funded 11 medical treatments today for people that wouldn't have had access to them otherwise. You guys literally changed (and saved) 11 lives. I don't know how that can be a bad thing.
I'm in Mpls and would love to meet up.
Hacker homes: Would you couchsurf Kansas City just to get Google Fiber?
It seems like profitable open source hardware relies on a sort of essential hypocrisy: while a project makes its cred off "maker" and "open source" buzzwords it fails as soon as someone actually uses that openness.
The final drop is quite messy, there´s a lot of dust.

I wonder how happy NASA is with the sky-crane solution - would they do it again as the new standard for mars rovers or is it in the "nice try" category?
This is how Wolfram described SMP which was the precursor to Mathmatica:

SMP is intended to be close to conventional mathematics. The fundamental operations of mathematics are included among the 100 or so primitives of the language, together with about 250 mathematical functions. Direct use of these primitives alone suffices in some simple calculations, such as those in Figure 1. However, as in mathematics itself, higher level constructs and operations must be defined to cover the immense variety of methods and calculations encountered in practice. SMP was designed at a fundamental level to make use of the notations and mechanisms developed in mathematics for such definitions.

http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/articles/computin...
Why would an automatic X% donation be "escaping [your] responsibility as a citizen"?
If magic with an explicit lack of even the potential to be explained existed, science would still allow for it. At no point does science require that reality must explain itself.
NYC Partners with Mashable, Tumblr to School Small Businesses on Tech
That's good to hear - there's always the risk that someone is going to come along and say "Well, but they hadn't done anything in a while!" As long as they keep investing and pushing the envelope, the copycats shouldn't drag them down too far - 3D printing, especially, is a huge market right now.

Not in the market for one myself, still prefer subtractive machining, but I imagine, like most new and small companies, support will be hard for Tangibot at first. They'll either get it and move ahead, or struggle under the weight of success (should they succeed). An interesting experiment will be to see whether they meet their goal, now that they're making the news.
i don't get it. how is this different from Swype? or is Swype not available on iOS?
Ask HN: I make $8/hour and can't pay for college. Any advice?
My situation: I work a food service job and make slightly above minimum wage. To make a long story short, paying next semester's tuition bill is going to be tough. I could get another food service job, but I think I know enough to make a better living. The question is: how?

Here's what I can do / what I've done:

- I have two side projects: PitchRemix.com, a service that creates elevator pitches, and NamingKings.com, a name-creating service. Both have made money and are profitable (although costs are obviously low).

- I can write well. Check out my HN comment history or NamingKings.com/Blog for writing samples.

- I'm proficient at HTML, CSS, and WordPress. I can design minimalist sites and logos (check out the two sites above).

- I know "how" programming works (loops, variables, OOP, etc.). I just don't know how to implement it and make something. I'm currently going through Hartl's Rails tutorial to fix this.

Any advice on how to make more than minimum wage? Should I try the freelance sites (eLance, etc.)? Aim for a remote job/internship?

Thanks a million.
Exactly. But why should it be limited to just prototypes?

If I can produce a casing for a development board that looks as good as some overpriced Apple junk or locked down Microsoft OEM crap, there's no need for me to jump through all their silly hoops. I can make my own device to do just the things I want it to do. My way.

re: the electronics of today's hardware: It's all the same stuff, more or less. How many factories are there? How many chipmakers? Oustide of uber-geeks, people are not that fussy about what's on the inside of their devices. Give them the power to make their own gadget that is personalised and programmable, and many of them will have no need to play games with Apple or Microsoft.
Links, if you want to check out my projects:

http://namingkings.com

http://pitchremix.com
One-Molecule-Thick Material Has Big Advantages
I just comment to follow this conversation, and to give you some traction too :)
I will pass absolutely no judgement on you because I have no idea who you are, what you do, what the quality of your code/work is, but have you considered that maybe there is actually something wrong with the pull requests?

With no references to examples if what you're talking about, it comes off as a bit of a temper tantrum. But that's just what it feels like, but I have no idea because I have nothing to look at to form an opinion.
College is information pimping.

http://www.google.com/search?q=textbook+torrents
The Bain Files
Wow. Just wow.

How about the fact he is contributing and trying to make the government better and more open instead of whinging like an immature, sanctimonious dick.

I have 100x more respect for people that at least try.
Revolution Software is looking for Kickstarter backers for new Broken Sword game
To play devil's advocate, women who play video games may be more likely to be with boys who play video games, or otherwise have a partner that can identify with having a time consuming and less than social hobby, one that is also mostly designed to cater to men.
Very true. The Keen-Minsky model is the only notable attempt to look at effects of private debt in an economy.
http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/
In the Bay Area and NYC, a self-taught coder can find work without a college degree. I recommend that you work very hard on your Rails skills, build a website all by yourself using rails, and put the source on github. If your site works, looks good, and you know how to present yourself in an interview, you can get a paid internship at a startup that uses rails. Of course this doesn't solve your short-term cash crunch, but depending on how disciplined you are, you might not need to finish college right now.
@replicatorblog - i don't think you're going to find a lawyer that will go on record saying "uses the same plastic as LEGO" is the same as "TangiBot is a MakerBot clone" "TangiBot is a MakerBot knock-off" "TangiBot is the same quality because it's a MakerBot clone"... if you had someone look at a LEGO and a makerbot, they're clearly different called different things, marketed different.

LEGO is very good about their trademark, if there was any issue with makerbot saying "same plastic used for LEGOs" they would have been told not to ever say that. if you're really interested to know for sure, email me and we'll both email LEGO.

if you could show makerbot's usage of LEGO with a specific link that would be helpful too.

please keep in mind the company that the creator of the tangibot promoted as his previous job and current group of experts he's working with did sue people for using the name "Cricut"..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cricut#Third_party_software
"Provo Craft has been active to resist the use of third-party software programs that could enable Cricut owners to cut out designs and to use the machine without depending on its proprietary cartridges.... Provo Craft also asserted that Craft Edge were violating its trademark in the word "Cricut" by saying that its software could work with Cricut machines. Provo Craft asserted that this was likely "to cause confusion, mistake or deception as to the source or origin of Defendant's goods or services, and [was] likely to falsely suggest a sponsorship, connection, license, or association of Defendant's goods and services with Provo Craft"

if anyone saw the tangibot anywhere they'd assume it was a makerbot... and lastly, i don't think tangibot could even get their name trademarked for what they're doing, but a lawyer could weigh in on that perhaps.

i'm not a makerbot owner, but i did back the tangibot.
I have had similar things happen to me.

https://github.com/joyent/node/pull/3710

I sit and argue my pull like crazy but it is just getting derailed :/ oh well.
Great! Now if we can just get some transparency into issues that matter.
I assume when he says "Western," he means people who had no idea who Psy was before this video, much less which album of his this was, and don't know "Spela Mig På Radio" from Adam. While I'm sure you're fairly Western, it sounds like you have much more background in the Korean culture than the average person who can barely find it on a map.
They didn't ignore it. They answered your question.

You just didn't like the answer. At least be intellectually honest.
But does Android use context clues? iOS can't quite handle the two-letter distance, but it accurately corrects "kryywt" (kryuwt is too far away) without any context.
I'd prefer to finish my degree right now. Thanks for the advice though, that may be my best shot post-graduation for a real job.