skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
My bedroom is lit by LEDs and it's fine. I also use a big 17W bulb as a table lamp and it's often the only light I have turned on in my apartment. It works almost as well as my big 6x40W halogen fixture. (Though obviously the halogen light is much brighter, there is "enough" light either way for things like walking around, getting dressed, etc.)

The only problem is that I think the color rendering index must be pretty bad. When I'm only using the table lamp, everything feels black-and-white like it does at night under sodium lamps.

I otherwise have a bunch of halogen lights, and they aren't that great either. I'm beginning to think it was a little early to ban incandescent lamps.
It's debatable customers benefit if a company fails and open sources their product. The customer, assuming they're willing and able to install it, misses out on any further upgrades (rare is the salvaged open source that goes anywhere) and support. Though I don't discount that there is _some_ benefit and that many customers might over-estimate that benefit.
My experience is the opposite. I build websites in Go. I find it about as easy as building in Python. Web programming is mostly about filling html templates with data and Go's built-in html template is excellent (on par with Django templates).

Comparing Go to C for web dev is ridiculous - no sane person would write the whole thing in C.

Even compared to Java Go wins by a huge margin when it comes to speed of development and conciseness of resulting code.

I haven't used use Ruby but writing web services in Go I'm as productive as I was in Python (using App Engine or Tornado).
You don't want to work in a room with a flashing light.

Also, there are tons of colored LEDs that integrate with CI systems already. And it's something you can whip up with an ATtiny or similar in about 10 minutes anyway. (Hint, your VGA port has an I2C pin on it.)
So move it to another host?
You compare a hoster for servers with a storage solution. Don't get me wrong, I know that hetzner offers cheap iron and it's really amazing, but all this comes at the expense of the network and the support.

RE: S3 – it scales any time and on demand. I can upload 2 TB starting now and don't have to order a server which may or may not be around on Monday (tomorrow). You could compare S3 to something like Rackspace Cloudfiles or Nirvanix. Your Hetzner argument makes little sense – not even as far as TCO is concerned.

Also, good luck recovering your servers and storage array on a public holiday in Bavaria. ;)
Informatics in Radiology: Use of CouchDB for Document-based Storage
This looks good. Does it keep history? I think one of the benefits of web-based systems like HipChat and Campfire is you can log in and see the previous conversation even if you weren't there.
No, it's not true

programming computers is like writing stories, except the compiler for programming is a dumb CPU not a living human brain

every human who has been appropriately taught has learnt to read and write. They can also learn to code. And pretty much the same proportion will make a living coding as do make a living writing stories.

But the future of humanity will be immeasurbly enriched by all it's people able to express them selves in code, just as it has been enriched by it's people able to read and write.

It will be a good future.

Now stop wondering if we are special, and start worrying how we can make a world that is so rich, so peaceful that the worst horror it's children face is curly brackets.
Hells yes!

Donald Knuth said only one person in 50 has the brain wiring to understand CS.

Programming is a little less exclusive, but that still holds.
Wow! I just decided 4 days ago that I would do at least 5 things every day to improve or promote my apps.

To put the focus on putting my time in, not on getting immediate gratification. Like sending out a promo code for the app to an editor every day instead of checking the website statistics every day.

To get rid of my perfectionism, good enough is good enough. Like recording the demo video yesterday, which is FAR from perfect and deciding it's good enough, I'll put it out, I can always put out a better version later.

I take waking up and finding myself on the front page of HN as a sign that I should continue doing that :)
Thanks, I'll fix this today!
Thanks for the link. Here's a video from 2012 starring him: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sln-gJaURzk
Not an interview, but he sometimes says a sentence.
We still have people checking the tickets!

We have a weird mish-mash of ticket barriers at most (but not all) stations, and guards on most (but not all) trains.
The Power Of “Native Advertising” Is In The Hands Of The Brands
When in a hole, stop digging.

> Statistics repeatedly fail to bear out your assertion.

Except they don't: http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s1108.p...

More interestingly: http://www.trb.org/Main/Blurbs/157220.aspx

I'll leave off the usual pedestrian fatality statistics here, because you seem not to be interested in that, and it's shooting fish in a barrel.

> Promised increases in death rates that accompany increased highway speed limits essentially never materialize.

From the second link's abstract:

...a speed limit increase from 55 to 65 mi/h on the average section would
be associated with a 24% increase in the probability of an occupant being
fatally injured, once a crash has occurred.

That study looked at actual collision data. Where people had raised the speed limits, and actually seen actual increases in actual death rates.

> Modeling drivers as ideal gas particles whose collision rate is proportional to speed is simply wrong.

Don't do that, then. It's not directly proportional to speed, but there is a positive correlation. If you're going to convince me that speed limits are pointless and irrelevant, you're going to need to explain away some pretty basic physics.
No but it is true that not everyone can do it well.
What I don't understand is why they dont sell it on Sitepoint or somewhere. The app must surely have several hundred dollars a month in revenue at the very least. Someone would pay several thousand dollars for that.
HTML5 not Facebook's biggest mistake. Zuckerberg's excuse harms HTML5
China only seems mysterious because it lacks an independent press. Everyone knows the official line parroted by Xinhua and CCTV is often BS, but there is really nothing to fill the gap. So everyone is reading tea leafs because there are important questions that need answers. What happened to Xi Jinping and who will replace him (if he really had a stroke)? What official is going to get beat down b/c his son was hot rodding recklessly in a Ferrari? Will Beijing introduce a property tax that will severely reorganize the property market? Are they going to keep the pension cap at 12K RMB income or will they open it up to be more progressive, virtually forcing all of us laowai to leave (since no one believes we will be able to collect)? Its hard to understand what an unfree press gives you until you've experienced it.

The Hu/Wen government has been very disappointing compared to their predecessors. I mean, 10 years with basically no political or economic reform! Perhaps this is because of the battling between reformists and traditionalists, or perhaps all those officials have just been busy cashing in for their kids (have to pay for those Ferraris somehow). And we have no idea what Xi will do; more of the same? Change for the good? Change for the bad? Its like if we elected a president in the states who had no past.
They are clearly using a Philips led lightbulb as a base. Maybe this kickstarter project is in conjunction with Philips.
We are already thinking about those ideas and trying to tackle them in the ways we can (more ideas are welcome)... In the Beirut Hackerspace (where Bilal, the guy from the kickstarter is also helping get the project up and running) on the first few workshops we had a clay workshop and a silk screen printing workshop where the ratios were 50-50 which hopefully will help close the gap in the gender ratio in such geek oriented initiatives.

Here are some pics from those workshops
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=401814289872014&s...

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=401814389872004&s...

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=402180926502017&s...
First: spending high school hacking is not mutually exclusive with taking AP classes and getting good grades. Second: a lot of top colleges would actually be impressed with someone who had the initiative to pursue their own projects and have something unique to talk about in the application. So I don't think you need to worry too much about those kids.
$70 for ONE bulb, so that's $280 for 4 in one room, You could hack an LED bulb together to cheap using cables instead of Wifi, A better future proof idea would be to have a very very customizable app that you sell, An app that let's you interface with computer controlled Lights
Now that is one amazing domain.
Nope. It is like writing poetry. It is hard and only very few could master the set of skills.
I don't think you can compare it to stories. The only things programming has in common with stories is words and typing. What's different?

A story can't be 'wrong' as long as the grammar is used correctly. There (usually) are no hard requirements on the outcome or even the resource use of a story.

I'd rather compare programming to writing (classic) poems. Poems have a fixed structure, so the author needs to be economical and plan ahead with the syllables he uses and the story elements he introduces. While the outcome is still more or less open, we have to count in the artistic element (which is somewhat missing in programming), so this might introduce enough cognitive workload on the author to compare.
>For me, you can view that problem two ways, "I'm going to work harder and prove my value to the company" or the move the goalposts approach, "I really didn't want that promotion anyway, I'll spend more time with my kids! No one will judge me as a failure if I do that."

The idiocy of the comment is that "not getting that promotion" is not a failure anyway.
I'm sure it will end up in back-ports soon.
That's interesting, we had the same thought, see my other comment.
Climate change, common sense absent in pending new US farm bill
Lechers and Sodomites
A core set of the apps were written in HTML+JS using the Enyo framework, but apps can also be written quite easily in C++, too.

Enyo2 was released recently and is being incorporated into Open WebOS: http://enyojs.com/

How anyone can stand to use javascript for anything significant is beyond me, but Enyo, and hopefully whatever FxOS uses, can have substantial parts of an app's logic written in something like Coffeescript or Clojurescript.
Sure, it is true. It is like not everyone could become a poet or even a fiction writer.

There are keyboard with all characters, notepad.exe and a reference of English language - go on, write a novel and become a new Selinger or Pamuk.

Almost everyone could become a coder - a translator from a language of specification to a programming language.

http://karma-engineering.com/lab/wiki/Programming
Programming involves the ability to deal with abstraction, a lot of it. Just like most kids hit a wall in calculus (which is really their first exposure to abstraction), most kids hit a wall in programming. Those that can deal with abstraction well get programming.

Programming benefits from the ability to tell stories, but many programmers are not great story tellers (i.e. communicators), its a skill that you have to learn separately, then your programming improves because of it.

I'm sure many more people make a living programming than telling stories (journalism, authors, etc...), but if you have evidence otherwise, would like to see that. Anyways, that has more to do with demand (for programmers vs. authors) than supply (those able to program or write).
A First: Organs Tailor-Made With Body’s Own Cells
Even then I would argue that everyone can learn the basic structure of a poem and start writing one.
Yeesh, you're right, that's pretty bad. The assumption that the customer isn't going to need to update the database version (and thus shell out more...) in those 10 years invalidates the cost assumptions all on its own.

There's legitimate reasons to buy from the big three DB providers: there's a shortage of quality DBAs for postgres, and of course there are the 5-10% of cases that actually need the features/performance of the big 3. Evaluations like this, however, do not make a good case.
Most people can't write stories with any degree of competence, though. Certainly not well enough to do it professionally.
It depends on what you call programming. If you call Excel work programming then yes, anyone can do it.

But if you mean writing great (usually more complex) software then no ; we evaluate/interview plenty of people, even with CS degrees who cannot program at all. And they had plenty of practice; still they cannot write anything which works over a few lines themselves and they don't have a real understanding of what they are doing (just learned stuff by heart). The end result might 'work' but it's never solid; it will have really strange bugs and no-one understands the code upon reading.
True, but the prosecution won't spin it that way, which won't look good to the jury at all.
We've been using HipChat for several months now and have been quite happy with it. I'm using it to manage several remote contractors. The pricing is very reasonable. And it has an XMPP interface should you need it as well.
The home automation market has been an utter disaster for decades. I hoped the "green" movement would nudge it mainstream. Not yet, and Google even killed off their home electricity monitoring projects.

Here's a similar product:

http://www.smarthome.com/2672-222/INSTEON-LED-Bulb/p.aspx

No color change capability and requires some other stuff as part of the system, but once you start turning on lightbulbs you quickly realize you need relays and sensors to control other things, too. So then you want a "system." And the systems currently suck.
cool, i'd have to add the following though:

1. Schadenfreude (German) - when you're happy about something bad that happens to someone else.

2. ihr|vosotros|wy (German,Spanish,Polish) - the second person plural, I think english really lacks this, the best solution I know of is ya'll but this has a lot of southern dialect connotations, you guys sort of works but the gender plural of guys makes it seem awkward.
But once somebody switches it off (with a switch), yo cannot switch it back on with the phone. It seems to me that having a home automation system that includes the light switches would be much better.
I'm pretty confident all the data in PACER will be made public at no cost at some point in time. I think the $.08/page charge is supposed to cover the administrative costs (like paying for photocopies) but the PACER program actually runs at a surplus. I think this may have even been part of the rationale for the trial they ran which Swartz used to do the downloads. The government wants to open up PACER.

But what struck me as partularly stupid about what Swartz did (besides the fact that the data will probably be released anyway, in due course, without the need for "activism") is that he installed stealth code on a computer in a Federal Court Law Library. Of all places he chose a federal building, and a Federal Court Law Library. This just sounds idiotic.

And the irony of it all, at least to me, is I just downloaded his Superceded Indictment for free from archive.org. It appears others are succeeding in making court documents publicly available without installing stealth code on federally-owned computers. Maybe they do not have everything in PACER yet, but I think it's only a matter of time. Courts are perhaps a little slow to change with new technology but despite their budget constraints they are definitely making progress. And publicresource.org seems to be getting bulk data with the blessing of the courts and without installing any stealth scripts on Law Library computers.

If one really wanted to engage in some sort of activism to free up (what should be free) legal documents, maybe a better focus is Lexis-Nexis. A true monopoly, founded on a dubious intepretation of copyright law. Can you copyright court decisions? They managed to do it. And the founder is on the Forbes list.
There exist enough definitions of "everyone" and enough definitions of "programmer" to make the answer to this question almost worthless without context.

I'll leave this here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
Would jump at something like this for outdoor, solar lights.
Which patents?
>My experience and some of my friends' experience is that Linux is quite unreliable. Microsoft is really unreliable but Linux is worse. In a non-PC environment, it just won't hold up. If you're using it on a single box, that's one thing. But if you want to use Linux in firewalls, gateways, embedded systems, and so on, it has a long way to go.

Huh? Linux _IS_ used in servers, embedded devices, gateways, firewalls, cellphones, what have you...

What exactly is "unreliable" about it, except a very vague accusation?
It's only true if you work/learn/pair program with people that think this is true.
I don't know about your friend, but I'm happily using the latest version of Sparrow with no issues whatsoever, maybe he has some other unrelated problems...
WTF | Socyberty
Hypothesis: Limbo --> Alef --> Go?

Is this wrong?
Meme-based blogging style != in a well written, multi-page article he added 2 meme pictures for fun.
This is probably the right crowd to ask: all the memory techniques that I have seen seem to be for memorizing sequences. Are there any techniques for remembering factual information more powerful than SRS? Like for the main points of a technical paper or similar?
Leftist is completely redundant in the above comment. If you don't have a committed hard core of true believers you have a talking shop not a poitical mvement; left or right.
God, yes. Things get much easier.

A certain class of startup-building problems gets way easier as you grow and can afford to hire specialized resources.

Get to the point where you can hire a good finance person? Things just got way easier.

Get to the point where you can hire a dedicated HR person? Things just got way easier.

Get to the point where you can hire a dedicated office manager? Things just got way easier.

Get to the point where you can hire a personal assistant? Thing just got way easier.

Beyond that, your life gets way easier psychologically as you start to achieve some success.

Your family and friends stop wondering when you're going to get a real job? Your life is way easier.

Got a big and diverse enough array of clients that losing a big one won't sink the company? Your life is way easier.

Doing well enough financially that you've been able to build up a sizeable nest egg? Your life is way easier.

As for luck, Bo Peabody's 'Lucky or Smart?' is the classic here - it's a great little book. Companies do get lucky break, but they have to be able to recognize and take advantage of luck when it comes.
The poor color rendering is what the comment above you is talking about. If a bulb makes your wood walls look funny and the picture of your girlfriend on the desk look like an alien, it's not going to go mainstream. Especially if it costs $50.

Mike Herf (of Picasa/F.lux fame) wrote some articles when CFLs were going to solve everything, you know, three years ago. Applies to LEDs as well. His wife is a painter. Let their struggle be your guide:

http://stereopsis.com/fullspectrum/
This seems to be a recurring topic on HN. The "goats vs sheep" study cited in the link's "highest-voted answer" has appeared on the front page at least once before, recently.

I am more interested in the meta-question: what are the implications of this question? I.E. if we knew for certain that the answer is "yes," how would this change our behavior (and likewise if the answer is "no").

I would think: if we knew for certain that some people can program and some people just can't, we would focus more energy on sorting people early on, to avoid wasting everyone's time trying to teach the unteachable. By contrast, if we knew for certain that everyone could program given the right circumstances, we would focus more energy on devising better teaching methods, etc.

Because of this, I am inclined to maintain a deliberate bias toward "no" (I.e. I am inclined to behave as if anyone could learn to program). Even if the answer really is yes, there are sure to be some cases where a "programming-capable" individual struggles at first for some reason, and an "anyone can program" general attitude is more likely to save them from mis-categorization as a non-programming "goat."
http://www.justin.tv/sfpug/b/331890663
In addition to the initial photograph, check @55 seconds on the right. In general, I think educated people tend to have more moderate views. Think of this as helping to promote life long education.
Most people can't write well because they don't have the hours of practice underneath them.

Sounds familiar...
I'm not sure about the answer.

I am sure that not everyone should be a programmer.
JSTOR is a non-profit. They dropped their charges once it was clear the data had not been re-distributed. The state of Massachusetts also dropped its charges. Only the federal government is pursuing him now.
Sparrow is essentially an IMAP client. I don't see Google turn off IMAP support any time soon. Way too many clients are actively using that.
http://amzn.com/B006RJRBY6 - a similar product, but not so smart. I guess you could hook some IR blasters to a WiFi-enabled device (eg: OpenWRT router) and write software that replicates the same functionality.
I think the comments here on your reaction are interesting; most people with careers (especially on HN) are working 24/7 to be able to spend, for instance, time with their family in the future (which, if you are an entrepreneur, statistically, is not likely to happen soon). And yet the responses here are saying that if you think family is important, you would let other things drop. There definitely are people who value family over all, and I know quite a few of them (my sister being one), but she is not on HN on a sunday. Neither does she value the amassing of money as something important in life. Reading most of HN shows that most people here do, no matter what (outside of killing others (at least openly; killing in China in factories is fine until the press finds out); killing yourself is acceptable risk).

So i'm not sure how everyone is so '4 hour workweek' in their comments; you can be with your family and you don't need millions to do that. If you really want that, there is no reason you are not doing it right now. I think if you have passion for something and you are postponing that for 'something something pot of gold', you don't really consider it that valuable.

Something for instance you quite often read in forums and such; 'I want to be with my family most, but I live in a city so I have this and that $$$$ costs per month minimum which is preventing me, in this economic climate to be with my family.' That's of course crap; move. There are tons of places in the world you can live of $500-600 / month and be happy with your family. But no there are a million excuses why 'thats not possible'. So you don't really want to be with your family that much, then, you have other goals topping that which you are trying to hide/disguise for yourself because you sound like a dick admitting that?

You can exchange 'family' with any passion. I have a friend who's biggest dream in life is to be a musician. But he comes up with 1000s of reasons why it cannot happen now. For the last 15 years mind you...
It is not about `can`, it is about `wish`.
I read this as "Ballmer screaming: There’s no doubt Windows 8 will be a success."
Can the Siri voice be changed to Ballmer screaming everything?
Has anyone made a "Ballmer" voice for OS X or Windows text-to-speech?