skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: I need App ideas for students/teachers
I am the founder developer/phyzixlabs.com (also branded as appynotebook.com), it is an educational App platform. I need some App ideas beyond the basics (gradebooks, calenders..etc)

If you are/were a student/teacher, what sort of Apps would you like to be directly integrated into your work?

Regards
Edmond
I went to one of his book talks, and it was really exciting to hear about. I think he mentioned how it was a one-time rise to stardom, and put me onto the glacial blog[1] that is Climb For Memory, by the guy who has won it for the past couple years.

[1] http://climbformemory.com/blog/
Oh, it's moved, I guess that explains that.
There is no difference between neurological and psychological phenomena, as you cannot have a functioning mind without a functioning brain. What we perceive as "mind" is the emergent property of immensely complex physical (chemical) interactions in the brain. Now that is not to say that SSRIs are the best or most effective treatment for depression. I simply object to your attempt to sort problems neatly into exclusive buckets of "neurology" vs. "psychology." You can't just hand-wave away the topic of drugs by saying "oh that's just a psychological problem."
Yeah I can't even begin to describe how much I think at night. It's when I make plans, collect my thoughts about what happened throughout the day, think about what I have do to tomorrow, the list is endless.

I think that two of the issues is that thinking is fun, and I find that 'not thinking about anything analytical' is incredibly boring for me, to the point where I can get aggravated. So after a while of thinking about my breathing, and random boring, non-thought provoking crap I give up and BAM all the intense thoughts that I was desperate to thing about come back.

A second issue, which is very linked, is the fact that I read a lot. Reading does make me tired, which, I imagine is plus, but it's even thought provoking. I'm not a fan of novels so I tend to read factual books..
Here's an insightful and rather good approach (at least to me when I tried to implement something along the lines of this):
http://engineering.linkedin.com/linkedin-ipad-5-techniques-s...
Wider adoption? In enterprise-scale companies?

For starters, acquire the reputation for providing high-touch, enterprise-grade, enterprise-focused, enterprise-costs support, with all that entails, and preferably with a cost somewhat below what Oracle charges.

Provide enterprise-friendly DBA training, certifications, and other related materials.

Have your sales reps schmooze the C-level office, and the IT leadership.

But adoption of databases in enterprises in general? They're loathe to change their databases, and have massive investments in their existing software and hardware processes, and their staff and training. The costs involved here are staggering.

If you're looking for more organic growth (and as some of those smaller companies grow and get bigger), that'll happen. But it'll take years. Maybe some acceptance in smaller projects in enterprises, but this sort of "shadow IT" can be a guerrilla effort in an enterprise; discouraged by management.
What kind of environments contain bash in a different location than /bin/bash, and why is it done that way?
That seems like a good solution. As I mentioned above I'm not a fan of stories/novels, but I'll give podcasts a shot.
First, I find that every time I want to share the knowledge in my head, someone else has done it "better" (more eloquently, whatever.) Next, I have the most difficult time attempting to put my personal understanding into words that work for other people.

Perhaps my (self-described) unique perspective could be valuable to some future archaeologist, but my motivation, like so many of my contemporaries, comes from my environment. Therefore, it is hard to get motivated to contribute to the millennial conversation. Further, it's hard to think that I, individually, should even be motivated to contribute.
It has to do with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_potency#Totipotency

There are a few good intro lectures about how stem cells work at http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=stem+cell+lectur... (please ignore the Samsung Galaxy S® III ads -- they are not totipotent in the least).
FreeBSD users have bash added in and so is located at /usr/local/bin/bash
Some systems use /bin and /sbin as directories containing binaries capable of being used in single-user mode (where only / is mounted), meaning a pretty bare experience. root's shell would probably not be bash in this case and bash would probably be optional/a package and would be installed elsewhere.
> we can't support making an exception to the law, because that would invite anarchy.

Exceptions to the law are made every day - it is hardly applied at all when the violators are politicians, big media organizations, and bankers. I'd agree we don't already make exceptions to the law when high profile connected public figures (eg the ex-head of MFG and the guy who authorized F&F) are indicted for anything.
Conversions in Javascript
I am wondering if in a lot of code taking this inverse square root is not necessary like when calculating length = sqrt(x^2+y^2) in a lot of code, you just want to know a minimum of maximum value so getting the min or max of x^2+y^2 is what you want and calculating the sqrt is not necessary.
Thank you so much! Great article, found some stuff I could definitely use for games I'm working on.
Correct, in my case its OpenBSD which stores all "third-party" packages in /usr/local
completely disagree. Want to create a quick file server to test a design or an html page in a browser? Yes you could use python SimpleHTTP but python is a dependency that not all times we have access too.
FreeBSD for example does not have bash installed by default since bash is not part of FreeBSD operating system and when it is installed (using ports or packages) it's installed into /usr/local where all other 3rd party software is installed.
What about complex vectors with gradients etc?
Disorder of neuronal circuits in autism is reversible, new study suggests
I hope this doesn't set back the launch of Polygon. We've already been waiting for months, and according to Press Reset (their making-of documentary for the site), it's supposed to launch in October.
Waking up at 0630 makes sure you'll be almost passing out by 9pm-10pm (please don't drive late if you're waking up super early). The goal is to fall asleep after all. You can obviously adjust as necessary, but may as well go all in if you need to experience real sleep again.

Other things that help waking up early: move nine timezones left in the world.
Likewise - Bilal is an awesome person who deeply feels his cause, and has a great passion for building community.
The WiFi radios 2 decades from now will probably be much different, anyway. Just look how quickly we've come since 802.11 A.
I think this one has a better name, Bash on Balls.

https://github.com/jayferd/balls
I agree with your gentle disagreement with your parent.

Google serves ads on top of search results for the same reason that ATT sent bills for phone service: to make money. If you focus on Google's ad serving as their reason to exist, then you might as well focus on ATT as a billing company, as those are the direct ways that both make money.

And in that vein, Google and ATT (well, the old ATT) are much more alike than different. They both took existing fledgling technology and essentially re-invented it into a profoundly reliable and life changing system; in fact they all but invented a new science.

There are orders of magnitude difference in depth and impact between twisting two wires together and the physical and information science discovered and invented by ATT, and there are equally orders of magnitude difference between serving up an html page of a computer's directory and the physical and information science discovered and invented by Google.

Either one is a fine place for Ken Thompson or anyone else to work.
The problem is that I don't have a machine with Mac.
Which version of fontforge have you installed?
Experiences using openSUSE/Gnome3 on the desktop
I got malware warning on Google Reader today. I wonder if this is related.
Some other cool guy wrote this (https://github.com/tlrobinson/wwwoosh) sinatra framework in bash. I am using it to control the lights in my house with my phone.

A very simple js frontend sends get requests to wwwoosh, and some bash commands get executed to control a relays board that turns the lights on and of.

It's very simple, consumes almost no memory and is very reliable.
This whole flag-waving typical Techcrunch rant is based on the assumption that education only serves to feed the economy. Profit is all that matters.

So many of America's social problems can be traced back to a lack of a decent educational system, and if anything, this article inadvertently explains why. If someone really thinks economic dominance is enough to keep an empire from crumbling, I suggest some history lessons.
Hmm, sounds more like la-la-hands-in-the-ears denial.

It's not just schools. The tide's have turned in general.

Before the 17th century Britain wasn't much. Afterwards, it was the world's superpower (with France by the side).

Before the 20th century, the US wasn't much. After WWI, WWII especially, the exchanged the role of superpower with Britain. Now they're falling by the wayside too. It's not something that happens overnight, might take several decades, but it's not like the world looks to the US as it once did anymore (or will again: those things are not normally reversible).
Basically screw 90% of the population. Let private schools educate the rich and if they can't hold up the weight give out student visas to people who actually got legit primary education.

I moved to the states when I was 13 and wasted 5 years in subpar new york city schools. If not for the decent education that I received prior to moving here, I would probably be in a similar position as a good portion of my high school classmates. I'd be finishing up a worthless CC degree and have little hope of getting a job that pays much above the minimum wage.
I find the conclusion dubious.

The US compensates its bad education system by attracting external talent through other factors ? Yeah, I agree with that. But saying "we need not to be scared into trying to be like other countries" is a recipe for disaster on the long term. Because it works until some other country becomes more attractive than the US (not likely right now, but it's imaginable). And, if anything, having a good education system will give you more talent. There's no way it will give you less, since people aren't coming for the education anyway.
This is what fontforge displays when I start it up:

Executable based on sources from 14:57 GMT 31-Jul-2012-D.
Library based on sources from 14:57 GMT 31-Jul-2012.
TL;DR summary: we're not good at educating people, but that doesn't matter because (a) only the top few percent matter, and (b) we can import talent to make up for domestic shortfall.

I don't agree with either of these.

Only the top quartile matter, and therefore the bottom three-fourths can wallow in ignorance and stupidity? We don't have universal healthcare because of this fucking attitude. If you have ignorant people, you end up with an ignorant, fucked-up culture. We pay for the ignorance of average Americans in so many ways that it infuriates me even to get into this discussion.

Secondly, I don't think we can count on being a destination country forever. Our immigration policies are getting worse over time, while European countries and Canada are becoming increasingly attractive. The gap is narrowing. There was a time when the smartest in the world wanted to come to the United States-- not necessarily New York or Silicon Valley, but even central Ohio. Now, they're equally attracted to Canada, Australia, Scandinavia, and even Japan (which is less xenophobic than its reputation would indicate).

I don't think the smartest and hardest-working people come to "America" anymore. They go to star cities, industries, and companies: Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and U.S. research academia are top-notch, and happen to be in the U.S. People come to the U.S. because a few currently-leading locations are here, but what does this do for the rest of the country?

Also, New York is arguably the world's best city and Silicon Valley is the world's best suburb, but these places are also ignominously expensive. Living in the star cities, we can easily delude ourselves into believing that we're insulated from the decline in "flyover country", but the bare fact is that we suffer every day (when we pay rent or make mortgage payments, the prices being so high because it's so hard to get a high-paying job outside of a few locations) for what has happened to the rest of the country.

American decline is real, and it's shitty, and it has everything to do with a lack of education and culture. Hours of schooling are just a proxy measure and not a very good one, but the lack of attention paid to education in this country is a big fucking deal.
Sales Funnel Concept
I still think it would be interesting to see Intel (or AMD) come out with a 64-bit only design for mobile / low-powered servers. I wonder how much space the 32-bit and older SIMD stuff takes on the chip?
The Safe Browsing diagnostic page is your best bet when this happens.

http://safebrowsing.clients.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnost...

Edit: Firefox provides these links in the form of a button labeled "Why was this page blocked?"
Those words only have negative impact because of the power we decide to give them.

Hack your mind, free yourself from being constantly offended and instead absorb the knowledge and experience that these motherfuckers have to offer.
I like to view life as one giant happiness optimization problem. (That's how you can tell I'm an engineer).

Pretty much all problems are taken care of this way. Time working/salary ratio? Too much to do/boredom? Just keep optimizing.

I do make a bit of an exception. If helping someone else makes them happier at the expense of some of my own, I'll go ahead and (try) to do it. Normally, helping someone else makes me happy too, but occasionally there's times where the kindest thing to do isn't the most enjoyable.
I use a red CFL desk lamp when I'm up late hacking. It seems less disruptive to normal sleep cycles than a full-spectrum light.
I think it is the fact that we have such a ``weak" education system that America is capable of institutions such as Google, Apple, and the whole startup culture. Lately, this has been less and less relevant due to the Internet (as long as you have uncensored Internet, it probably doesn't matter which locality you're in).

Nonetheless, I don't think there is anything inherently so wrong about the US college/university system. People outside of the US wouldn't be spending buckets' loads of money to send their kids here. And lately, Canada seems to be absorbing a lot of influence as a tech powerhouse.

I think it is the lack of structure and social order that allows anyone to question any values. As long as America keeps the best and brightest from all over the world in the country, America will stay on top.

However, the Internet has been the great equalizer. It is probable and possible to build great companies anywhere, especially if your products are digital.
The rise of LinkedIn’s news feed
Yeah, it requires specialized equipment, but that's really the biggest barrier. From a protocol standpoint it isn't really any better.
Do you have OpenSSL? I assume you do. Look at the man page for s_server and gape in awe at the -www -WWW and -HTTP options.

The only catch is that you need to rig up a key, it being SSL and all. -nocert probably won't play nicely with your browser.
Hey thanks for your comments, views sound like the way to go for now.

I can see how to go from normalized data to views, but what if there was a way to go the other direction? So like, the SQL that generated the view could be used in reverse, so when you run an update on the view, it would know which fields to update in the original pure data.

If someone got all of that working, then I really question why database organization matters. I know it's important for seeing relationships and all that, but in reality, data just exists. The relationships are a level above that. I really think that someone could make a database that works more like a zip file, where it wouldn't matter how you laid it out, for the most part it would just look like a spreadsheet and each entity would just have all of the data in one row. This is how "regular" folks view things.

Also this is a bit off topic, but automatic normalization has a lot in common with the semantic web. I just don't think it's all that difficult of a problem, but waiting around for humans to do it manually is never going to happen. I guess I'm just naive but, all the semantic web needs is iteration and the relationships will refine and converge quickly. I don't understand why it's not happening.
Well put. They don't realize that a well educated population is a more rational one. It's also one of the reasons why I am against this whole shift in only learning things that are "immediately practical" such as math and science (don't get me wrong, I think math and science are important but other subjects are just as important). It's one of the reasons why I wish philosophy and debate were mandatory courses in most schools. I don't believe making kids memorize multiplication tables when they are in kindergarten is going to help them, especially when they are barely able to comprehend them since they are so cognitively underdeveloped.

In addition: From what I am noticing, the kids that go to college to study degrees that involve dealing with unsolvable or unsolved problems are the kids that understand and not just memorize what they are taught. The education system downplays understanding and focuses on memorization. This obviously comes from America's result based culture. This leads to a population of people that can't think for themselves and only do what they are told. Something that goes against the whole idea of democracy.

TL;DR I believe that at younger ages children should be taught how to think rather than what to memorize.
Actually, SMS spoofing is arguably easier than WhatsApp spoofing.
Help Kickstart a Hackerspace in Iraq - 2 days to go
Full story here:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4528669
The original paper[0], published in '86, in addition to being a huge step forward over contemporary graphics techniques, is extremely comprehensible and an excellent read. It also goes into some detail about collision avoidance, which is hard to see in the browser demo (boids will avoid the mouse but not in a very large area), and goal seeking, which isn't in it. It ends with a fairly eyebrow-raising testament to the increase in computer power over the last two and a half decades:

"This report would be incomplete without a rough estimate of the actual performance of the system. With a flock of 80 boids, using the naive O(N^2) algorithm (and so 6400 individual boid-to-boid comparisons), on a single Lisp Machine without any special hardware accelerators, the simulation ran for about 95 seconds per frame. A ten-second (300 frame) motion test took about eight hours of real time to produce."

[0] http://www.red3d.com/cwr/papers/1987/boids.html
Is it just me or is Kickstarter addicting? It seems like every week there is some new cool project posted and I can't help but back it. If something like this were at Walmart I probably wouldn't give it a second thought, but on Kickstarter I've already in for 2.
Get free web traffic here
Simplehttp Does the trick well enough. It exists on all Linux and OSX we use. I think he is implying that these projects won't have an industrial use.
You mean like how the US prevented Gaddafi from slaughtering people in Benghazi? Yes I imagine even more people there have a favorable opinion of the US now.
In the end they are set by politicians. Not for malicious reasons; politicians don't need to be malicious in order to make bad decisions, they have plenty of other reasons for that. In many parts of the US, surface road speed limits are quite reasonable, but freeway speed limits are ridiculously low.

You are correct, by the way, as far as I know, that the 55mph speed limit was originally an energy conservation thing. This was during the oil crisis of the 70s, when it was federally imposed. Ever since the federal mandate was lifted, speed limits have been creeping back up, but at very different rates in different states.

To give a comparison, in France freeway speed limits are roughly 80mph in dry weather and 70mph in rain (I say roughly because they are, of course, in metric.) In Belgium, and the Netherlands it's 75mph, although The Netherlands has introduced many variable speed limits (electronic signs based on congestion) and recently bumped it up to 80mph on certain rural stretches (rural by Dutch standards). Germany, of course, has no speed limits at all on many long-distance Autobahns (about 50% of the network), although in metropolitan areas, contrary to popular mythology in the US, they often do have speed limits, which go by the charmingly long-winded name of "Geschwindigkeitsbeschränkung," often shortened in colloquial speech to "Tempolimit." The de facto speed limit on the unrestricted Autobahns is 125mph, since that's the fastest unmodified German cars will go.

So did some technocratic bunch of engineers evaluate the conditions in each of these countries and decide that somehow some subtle difference of geography that Germans are capable of safely driving a full 65 mph faster than Hawaiians?

I doubt it.

May I also remind the reader that East Germany used to have a rigorously enforced 60mph limit that was rather promptly lifted after the reunification, which was by no means an event of particular relevance to traffic engineering.
Very cool! This is exactly what I need. I'm going to play with it for a while.
Police charge man with attempted murder after Bessbrook stabbing
The alert says that theverge.com itself is not blacklisted just contains stuff from infected sites.

I would try setting a new hostname for the cdn content servers and see if that works. Assuming of course they have gotten rid of the malware.
Arduino for IED control?
In the words of a good friend of mine:
"You wouldn't download a car? Man if I could download a car off the internet for free, you bet your sweet ass I would!"
The CEO of the company emphasized that point by not attending the meeting after they lost the lawsuit. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/27/us-samsung-apple-s...
Given how long most wifi stuff I've seen lasts, and the fact that the bulbs are rated for 25 years, I'm more worried about the wifi components failing and bulbs becoming useless, of the software becoming obsolete and not being able to run on newer devices.
Sorry for the very noob question, but how do you actually get this to run on a windows XP system?

I just want to run a quick test, but it seems I have to build the project - is that correct?
LEMP/LAMP are out - let's get a new acronym for LEPP
I didn't even know it was going to be $0.99 a year after the first year. I only started using it a few months ago and I already feel a little locked in, I doubt 9 months from now I would bother switching to something else for the sake of a buck a year. Very clever, but I wonder if such a small amount of revenue will add up to enough.
Ask HN: Do you believe in God?
I have always been intrigued by religion, specifically it's power to motivate, inspire and provide hope. Some of the greatest works (and greatest atrocities) have been carried out in the name of religion.

This got me wondering, do my hacker idols believe in God? Are they agnostic, like myself? Are they atheists?
yeah i've been seeing some nice traffic from them for articles i share with my community.
Delete your comment immediately.