skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
All laptop manufacturers stopped using high-quality LCD panels and switched to selling overpriced TN-film based junk

It seems so: http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=7-9320-9...

We know of no IPS screens in current-model laptops, ThinkPads or otherwise, and it's a shame, because our T60's FlexView display has some killer attributes.

But that is a technology-based comparison, rather than a performance-based comparison. There are no intrinsic reasons OHV engines can't outperform OHC (overhead cam) engines; spray-on fireproofing can't outperform concrete fireproofing; or TN panels can't outperform IPS/PVA/MVA.

My latest Thinkpad took away true-color screen

Have you looked at the (TN-paneled) ThinkPad W700? http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=7-9320-9...

If you yearn for a laptop display that rises above acceptable, one whose colour accuracy matches a good desktop display, there's only one in this test: the ThinkPad W700. In fact, for us, it could just about replace a desktop display for colour critical work and even soft proofing for print in Photoshop
I've only scanned the article, but it seems a lot like Buddhism in a nutshell.
ipython rocks with the tab completion, is that what you mean? This is better than ipython's ? and ??.
I'm your main offender
every time a human being does not get offspring because his/her desired mate gets snagged by a more appealing specimen that's evolution in progress

Ouch. Succint and harsh.
Neanderthal Rights : The morality of resurrecting our closest evolutionary cousins
But the RAM is now harder to change than previous model. I guess one changes HDD more often than RAM, so this is sort of an improvement, but...
I think it's a good example of how good people can be at the things they are passionate about. Also take a look at her model JCB, http://www.jenniferclarkbass.com/lego/jcb.htm which includes working hydraulics and a remote control panel to operate it.

Apparently she's also an accomplished musician. In the face of such apparent talent it would be churlish of me to point out the most egregious use of tables for layout I've seen in a while.
New York Magazine had an interesting article recently: Is Urban Loneliness a Myth? http://nymag.com/news/features/52450/
Check out http://www.openstreetmap.org. They provide open-source map data and code (like rana which has a module for routing) that does least-cost routing. There are a variety of approaches based on simple graph algorithms like naive A*.
I was unimpressed by their analysis of the genetic causes of intelligence. Just because some genetic disorders and intelligence happen to be correlated doesn't mean that both are caused by the same gene. I think the reasoning in this article was incredibly sloppy.
Interesting... congrats on the increased sales.

One thing I was a bit confused about: You say you want people to easily be able to continue browsing your marketing copy before committing to buy. But how do they get back to the cart once they've closed the lightbox? Clicking the buy button again reveals just one item in the cart. So in essence closing the lightbox means "discard this cart" rather than "continue shopping", right?
That means your findings only work for pages that have one single item for sale (or items similar enough that buyers only want to purchase one of them, as in your case).

Your sample size is also quite low (94% increase = from 8 conversions to 15), and you're using absolute values in the graphs. Did traffic to the page stay constant over all that time?
Yeah, that's a possibility. I'm not seeing the names change from home, anyway.
Do you really think 80% of government health care money is wasted? [Citation Needed]

The Singapore government spends 1.3% of GDP on health care and the private sector spends around 2% of GDP. Overall, their health indicators are slightly better than our indicators in America. The U.S. government spends 7% of GDP on health care and the private sector spends another 7%. The delta between what the U.S. spends and what I think would be spent with a well run system is what I consider the waste. Singapore is an example of much better run system that exists in the real world. It's not an 80% difference in spending, but it's close.

Most study's suggest that private inshurance is less efficient than public spending so I am not really sure what your talking about there.

I do not find that surprising. "Private" healthcare in the U.S. is really a system of government licensed cartels. The nurses unions, AMA, insurance companies, drug companies, big hospitals, etc have all manipulated the political system to drive up the cost of care.

In 1900 the recorded homicide rate in the US was under 2 per 100,000. 3.7 is about twice that and today Milwaukee has a little over twice the national homicide rate.

The crime rate for Milwaukee statistic was from 1911, the immigration stat was from 1900, since I couldn't find one from 1900.

You can ( and I have) read accounts from the time, and the difference in crime and levels of decay becomes even more apparent. Read How the Other Half Lives and then compare it to The Corner or Gang leader for a day.

Either way, the point stands - these cities, with a high proportion of poor immigrants, did not have anything like the underclass problem that exists in the same cities today.
I like "descent with modification" when explaining what evolution is to layman.

What, then, would devolution be?
I've looked at many CSS grid frameworks and first thing to mind is always "looks like a printed magazine".

I suspect that is why certain designers are attracted to them. But is also why I click away wondering "why would anyone ever do that?"
Automakers turnaround plans ask for more federal help
Dial 1-800-Where's My Bus?
I had tried doing a game startup together with another guy, but so far we rather failed selling our first (and only) game. But afterwards I learned about another business models rather accidentally - advertisment for myself. We kept our website up and just having finished a good looking game was enough to get people interested in working with me. I do now freelance work and that game is my main selling point.

Also missing in the list was that you can certainly also sometimes sell the technology of your game.
You must be new to TechCrunch.
Coincidentally, the Wiki on TransparentAccounting.org also went "live" today: http://www.transparentaccounting.org/wiki/us

The words "accountability" and "transparency" (from Recovery.org) do seem to be used much more frequently by the Obama Administration than its predecessor. This makes me think that the wiki just might work.

I don't know how much work needs to be done on a wiki before blowing the kazoos and writing the press releases. What might be the best way to go about building the site? Starting with abbreviations seems like a good idea, as it seems both techies and government people love the acronyms.

Any and all thoughts / ideas / opinions are welcome.
Future of social network sites
Social networks are gaining a lot of attention from investors and media but hardly any one of them are profitable. Even companies like youtube.com and skype.com have proved to be bad investments for their acquirers as both of them have not generated enough profits to justify the price paid for them.

Facebook and mySPace are also facing decling CPMs and click through rates. In this scenario if these networks are considered businesses then their valuations should be based on some financial matrix. Facebook is recently valued at 15 billion while it has hardly generated 150 million in revenue.

In this scenario what is the future of social networks? Will they become symbol of another irrational exuberance or they will really become viable businesses?
"Although loneliness may be influence brain activity, the research also suggests that activity in the ventral striatum may prompt feelings of loneliness, Decety said. 'The study raises the intriguing possibility that loneliness may result from reduced reward-related activity in the ventral striatum in response to social rewards.'"

So it is not clear here what is cause and what is effect. It's time to set up an experimental study design

http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html

and see if that can be teased out. Meanwhile, a young hacker might proactively seek the company of more human beings.
But in this case, they happen to be right. In the absence of big news items coming from the Valley of late, TechCrunch has become a web 2.0 tabloid.
Because, obviously, there's nothing more useful than reporting on "overrated" blogs. (!)
The Database of Intentions
Even though I consider myself a completely rational person, I still make dumb decisions and weigh alternatives with completely biased probabilities. And while I still do it, at least I recognize it now.
Just a note about that API that I read on a mailing list:

"So far the GOP API is useless, most of the methods do not work and the ones that do are still having issues.

I've spoken to the gop.gov team about this and they informed me they were forced to launch before these features were ready.

Most of the data they offer though seems like it'll be member/bill data that is already widely available"
awesome. huge timesaver. wish it could for for cp paths too
Buying Experiences, Not Possessions, Leads To Greater Happiness
Software Piracy in a Recession
But that allowed them to say TPB did awful things during these two years ;)

Spectrial indeed.
Indeed. Just going off the name, I assumed it would be one of those "rate my ..." sites.

I'd suggest changing the name ASAP.
It is not true that the best way to do geometry is by converting everything into algebra. Proving simple geometric stuff like, the three altitudes of a triangle all intersect at a single point, is a pain using coordinates. Just because it's possible to convert problems in domain X into problems in domain Y doesn't mean that domain X is pointless.
Could have been worse - they could have twittered the rejection.
It's 12 Mississippi before it finishes loading in Chrome. I was about to ask why until I saw it was hosted on Google AppEngine.

I guess we can consider this a datapoint.
every time a human being does not get offspring because his/her desired mate gets snagged by a more appealing specimen that's evolution in progress

No, that would be natural selection. The two are different, keep in mind.
> Git is a distributed system, where every user gets their own repository, so "commit" alters the repository on the local machine. This means you can use version control with impunity and not worry about giving bad code to colleagues. You can commit a broken work-in-progress without harming anything. You can also create branches with impunity and not have to worry about naming conflicts, polluting the space of branch names, etc. If something turns out to be a bad idea, you just zap it and nobody ever has to know.

I can do all those things without involving the source control system, so what do I get by involving the source control system? For example, why would I want to commit broken code? What does a local commit do for me?

In most cases, "distributed" is a necessary evil that folks work to hide, with varying degrees of success.
Kevin Kelly: Many species, one mind?
Or:
- many species, many minds
- one species, many minds
- one species, one mind.

heady.
GPL License? No thanks. Stick with YUI which is the same but more flexible, BSD licensed and far better documented (although admittedly, higher weight).
.99 cent domains on godaddy.com with code "love99"
This is just a really good deal. It is limited to 1 use per account, and for 1 year. I am not making a commission or anything. This is great impetus to make that little web app you were thinking about. Combine the .99 cent domain with super cheap hosting at https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/ and you can have a web site for less than a cup of coffee.
let's pretend you could find a human carrier to gestate your transgenic Neanderthal baby for you.

How about a chimpanzee carrier, as George Church suggested? http://www.google.com/search?q=george+church+chimpanzee+nean...

http://reason.com/news/printer/131717.html

Church would modify a modern human genome so that its DNA matches the Neanderthal version. [...] this Neanderthal genome would not be inserted into a human cell but instead into a chimpanzee cell. This chimp cell would be reprogrammed to an embryonic state, and then introduced into a chimpanzee's womb where it would develop into a Neanderthal infant.
Web Analytics In Review - The Best Stats Package
What is the best analytics service for you blog?
For me most projects tend to consist of a lot of problems I already know how to solve and a few problems I have to come up with solutions for. I usually start by working on the unsolved problems first.

Usually by creating an individual program that does each task. Then the job becomes considerably more tedious: putting everything together and making it work.

I solve new problems for the same project the same way. I create a solution as an individual program and then incorporate it into the larger system.
103-Inch TV Hacked Into a Giant, Multitouch Table Hockey Game
My name is Nikolai B. Round up a couple of friends and I'll give you $6,000 each to build a competitor to SAP. You have only two constraints:

1. You must build a convincing prototype before you run out of Ramen
2. People must actually like using it.

Go!
I think you are half right but you are a little harsh.

The Java eco-system evolved to solve some problems that really are hard, not just simple problems. However you are totally right about the complexity - the real issue is that the complexity introduced by the solutions often equalled or surpassed the complexity of the original problems themselves. And even worse, often people didn't need the problems solved in the first place, but Java gave you the complexity anyway.

So, for example, it is nearly as hard or even harder to learn the JEE specs and all the ins and outs of the java app servers that implement them as it is to solve the subset of those problems you care about generically yourself.
Happiness is an attitude, not a score.
My version: http://akkartik.name/bash.html#cd

But this is nice and self-contained.
They may not be able to "beat" Apple, but I think they have a good chance of moving forward rapidly in the phone OS market.

N amount of phones released for a variety of demographics and lifestyles from different carriers. Their chances don't seem that bad

I don't own an Android based phone, but I can see myself owning one in the next 1-2 years because of this exact reason.
The only thing I ever dislike about programming is being forced to do it at a substandard level, usually because I have to work with substandard legacy code that is too hard to modify other than by continuing whatever bad practices it employed in the first place.

The rest of the time I love every minute of it and I'm enormously grateful to have the privilege of being able to spend every day doing it.
PHP DNS Daemon
Official Google Mac Blog: What's New for iPhone
Sure, TC has a lot of crap. It doesn't all need to be posted/upvoted at HN, though.
I've found that as a tech person, I'm too well acquainted with the shortcomings of products I've developed. I always feel like I'm pulling the wool on the customer by not jumping up and telling them all of the weak points of what I've built.

I find that I need a biz guy to stretch the truth, sell features that I haven't developed yet, and relentlessly hammer the good points in a way that I'm just not prepared to do.
Very cool site. They're using opensource Javascript from MIT's Simile Project to power the timeline at the bottom. Good incorporation of an existing, powerful opensource resource: http://www.newmediacampaigns.com/page/recoverygovs-javascrip...
I prefer the proggit headline: "Where the fuck has this been for the last 30 years? A cd command that learns."
A lot of that has already been done. In the web browsing context, when you ask for something and get a 304 Not Modified back because your cached copy is still current, that's basically compressing away the entire content of that object, which may be huge.

Your other idea has been done, too, with "WAN optimization", but it generally isn't helpful for one person, because you already have good caching and proxying going on, even if you don't realize it. That works when multiple people are pulling down the same contents.

Basically, already done.

At this point, if you start going "But what if we also did this...!", you are about 95% likely to start getting into the compression crackpot zone. Information can only be squeezed so hard and once you start proposing other exotic solutions the only explanation that works in response is usually "No, that won't work, but you won't believe me, so, prove it. Implement it and sell it for millions of dollars. Be sure to count all the bytes, not just the ones you like." And generally, that's the end of that.

I am far more likely to believe that you have built a working anti-gravity device, which is at least at the very edge of plausibility under certain not-yet-disproven physical theories, than that you have actually made a huge compression advance, which is effectively mathematically impossible. (Not because compression can't be advanced, but because it's only going to advance incrementally from now on. There's no room left for a breakthrough in the general case.)
I'm not sure if this is why, but this way, the headphone jack is the same as the recharging jack, so there is one less hole in the device.
I use

import readline, rlcompleter; readline.parse_and_bind("tab: complete")

(executed at PYTHONSTARTUP) for tab completion.
He isn't disagreeing with the goals of math as practiced. All your quotes illustrate is that he thinks the usual methods are woefully inefficient.

More quotes:

"and I believe that mathematicians who continue to do pure human, pencil-and-paper, computer-less, research, are wasting their time." If they learned how to program, in, say, Maple, and used the same mental energy and ingenuity while trying to use the full potential of the computer, they would go much further.

I.e., human + computer >> human.

"The axiomatic method is not even the most efficient way to prove theorems in Euclidean Geometry." Thanks to Rene Descartes, every theorem in Euclidean Geometry is equivalent to a routine identity in high-school algebra,

I.e., verifying algebraic identities is easier than euclidean proofs, especially if done by maple.

His main argument is simply that computer-assisted proofs should not be held to a higher standard than human-only proofs.
For all the “open” talk, Android Market sure has a lot of rules
First, there's less of a need for many libraries because it's so easy to write your own things.

If it's so easy, why aren't there good libraries for it? Nobody has done it because it's too easy? Eh? It's ridiculous and counter to the point of programming in general to suggest people ought to keep reinventing something because it's easy to do so.

Even worse, if it is easy, then it's merely a distraction not a challenge - causing you to lose where you were in your program while you think about reinventing an easy wheel.

Not that I believe it for a minute - implementing a good library to do something complex isn't easy - I just don't think "I want a script to process email, I could use Python and start with 'import email, pop' or I could go with Lisp and reimplement a POP client and an SMTP/MIME email parser it'll only take a minute".
A library used by only one project has a pretty high barrier to use.

A library used by zero projects is going to be nearly useless!
only in the south
Anonymous Caller? New Service Says, Not Any More
There's a small subset of people who will pirate in hard times as an act of desperation. These are people who wouldn't otherwise. $300 for office is just too much right now. I'll buy it later when times are better...

Here's hoping that open source alternatives will be in a position this time around to be a more morally acceptable 3rd option.
Good links, thanks.

But do you think a chimpanzee carrier makes it okay to inflict (with reasonably high likelihood) mutations and health problems on animals you are expecting will have near-human, or even human, levels of intelligence?

I don't.
9 Startups to Help You Build Your Virtual Economy
I liked the article except for this complaint -

I see businesspeople ask for tech all the time to build a great idea but where are the tech people clamoring for a businessperson to market and sell a great product?

Many tech people can do a reasonable job at business for a while until you find just the right business person. Whereas much of the "clamor for tech people" is from business guys who need tech people just to get started, so they are desperate for anybody.
The maniacal obsession with unassailable formal proof gives mathematics its credibility, above all else. There is a lesson here for all other endeavors that seek truth: Rigor uber alles. Take nothing for granted.
I knew we could live up to our reputation! (Thanks for the update)
It isn't. Blue State would never use Drupal. Blue State uses Expression Engine and their own suite of tools.
From the website :
"You will never get a virus on iMagic OS. There may be one or two that have been written for Linux, but iMagic OS comes with three of the strongest firewalls available, protecting you from any possible threat."
They're feeling lucky.
Strange sentiment, given that "pro" is itself little more than a marketing label. Are people who aren't concerned with swapping out batteries or easily replacing the hard disk less professional than those that do?
Poll: Orange Names
Now that some time has passed, I'm curious what everyone else thought about the orange-names experiment. (In case you are not a Hacker News addict, a couple weeks ago there was a period where people with a comment-score-average of 3.5 got to have their names appear in orange.)

Also see previous discussions:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=467427

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=467895
I liked orange names
I did not like orange names
Not sure on Swedish law & double jeopardy.

Is this a criminal or a civil case? If it's the latter I'd assume that double jeopardy doesn't apply.
I'm curious, how many people here would attribute playing with Lego when they were a kid to their interest in hacking?

I certainly do. I never had the cool sets that were in the stores so I had to get creative and imitate it with what I had.
Odd. They went out of their way to hide the /node/ extension, which on Drupal typically returns a list of new entries.

Since it's pretty easy just to not display information on /node/ at all, it's interesting that they took the time to hide their CMS identity.
Innovation: Answers to The Silver Lining Audio Conference Questions
The thing with Android is, since you don't need the market to install apps, even if the rules were stupid it wouldn't be as big a deal as it was with iPhone. It's the difference between being effectively censored and just being shut out by one retailer.

But it's a moot point since most of those rules make sense.
Blogger: Bloggers Paradise - Post "Atomic Blogging 2"
How often do you change RAM? More than once or twice ever?
I don't think that's fair. Exposing government data in general will allow people (citizens, consumers, whatever...) to see _systemic_ corruption. Often when we hear of corruption, it is represented as a single point (politician X, company y, etc...) of failure in the democratic system.

Exposing data like thins allows the citizenry to be data driven instead of anecdotal and emotional. I think that's the important break from past governmental practices.
Hmm. The URLs are pretty tell-tale Drupal:

* http://www.recovery.gov/modules/pathauto/pathauto.js
* http://www.recovery.gov/?q=content/impact

(Though Drupal is fully capable of having pretty URLs that would have made that less visible.)